Question- What is meant by criticism of life? What is the 'vision of life"? Point out the criticism and vision of life in A Tale of Two Cities.

Answer-

According to Henry James, novel "is the most independent, the most elastic, the most prodigious of literary forms". It has certain values, beyond mere entertainment. Life is the principal ingredient of a novel. In fact, all the literary forms are an expression of life. A novelist transmits his vision to others. Even the minutest details of life do not escape the notice of a novelist. Not all novelists, but the good and great ones, have deeply thought about life in all its manifestations. They have deeply thought, and transmitted the thought. Not the trifling events, but the enduring truths, "eternal passion, eternal pain", ripe wisdom, give the novelists a vision of moral significance. Not that the novelists will set forth certain moral or ethical principles. Far from it. The heroes and heroines must not be the embodiments of all kinds of virtues. If so, the novel will be a moral treatise. Moreover, readers by and large may feel alienated, for they cannot love and feel akin to such patterns of virtue. All that is expected from a novel is philosophical significance. Virtues are abstract qualities. A novelist is concerned with facts that are concrete. Dr. Johnson complained that Shakespeare was writing for convenience rather than morality. A host of critics, on the other hand, complained that Shakespeare was positively immoral. Bowdler went so far as to expunge from his plays all that he considered immoral and indecent. And yet the fact remains that Shakespeare dealt with the hard facts of life.

A novelist must not be a moralist, but he must have a philosophy of life. In Shakespeare's Hamlet and King Lear certain lines leap out of the text and just a few words embody the poet's philosophy of life, e.g.,-'Ripenes is all' and 'readiness is all'. They speak volumes. Moulton observes: Every play of Shakespeare is a microcosm, of which the author is the creator and the plot the providential scheme.

In estimating the philosophy of life in a novel, says W.H. Hudson, have to test it from two points of view-that of its truth and that of its morality.

Science deals with facts. A novel, and for the matter of that, every branch of art poetry, drama, novel, short story, painting, sculpture, music, etc., are dealing with truth. Walter Pater, however, says that all art permanently strives towards the condition of music. Plato has banished all poets from his ideal Republic, only because they are twice removed from truth. His disciple Aristotle defends poetry and drama against the wrong allegation. According to Aristotle, 'Poetic truth' is what a poet deals with. On the analogy of truth there may be 'novelistic truth' or 'artistic truth' is different from what Hudson says 'fidelity to facts'. It is Aristotelian 'ideal' probability.

De Quincey draws a distinction between 'literature of knowledge' and 'literature of power'. The former deals with all branches of science. The latter deals with literature that lifts us. It has the quality of the sublime. "The supreme element of truth" is what is conveyed in a work of art, and novel is a major form of art.

Goethe, the great German poet observes: "The artist's work is real in so far as it is always true; ideal, in that it is never actual". This is the criticism of life.

Mathew Arnold in his essay says, "Literature is the criticism of life". In his famous essay on "The study of poetry, he says that poetry is the criticism of life'. What he means is that criticism of life is the profound application of ideas to life.

A Tale of Two Cities is a criticism of life. The French Revolution is supposed to have ushered in the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. But in reality the French Revolution has not attained the much- hyped ideals. It has become a colossal waste of life. It has been an expression of wanton cruelty, mob fury, violence on a large scale. La Guillotine was constantly at work. The aristocrats were indiscriminately guillotined. Along with them a huge number of innocent people, women and children, all poor and oppressed, were mercilessly slaughtered. The poor Seamstress is a case that illustrates the grimness of this truth.

This cannot be described as an ideal Revolution. The revolutionaries under the leadership of the Defarges were out to crush humanity. But what have they created? Have the lives of the survivors become any the better? That is why Dickens himself draws an indictment against the Revolution.

"Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.

Six tumbrels roll along the streets. Change. these back again to what they were, powerful enchanter time, and they shall be seen to be the marriages of absolute monarchs equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaming Jezebels, the churches that are my father's house, but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No, the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the creator never reverses his transformation.

Dickens sincerely believes that moral regeneration precedes a revolution; or there may not be any need of a Revolution at all. Society is an aggregate of units. The units are the individuals. If the individuals are good, honest, decent, loving their fellowmen, the possibility of a war or Revolution becomes remote. One Sydney Carton does not constitute the society. Greed, lust, passion, love of power cruelty, selfishness misguided men are rampant. Man must have self-introspection. He will understand that while finding motes in others' eyes, he has missed the beam in his own.

Vision of Life in A Tale of Two Cities

Vision of life and criticism of life are almost alike. There is just a degree in the levels of truth. It is in great novels that we get a glimpse of the vision of truth. 'Bad novels' cannot aspire to a vision of life. Such novels are the novels of wish-fulfilment. Readers, particularly those who love romance and glamour, wish that the heroes should do what they expect. Such novels end in wedding bells, moon-lic badinage, the patter of tiny feet. These novels deal with falsification.

In good novels there are no short cuts to happiness. The hero does not evade truth however unpleasant. He widens our imaginative range. But the highest degree of truth does not emerge. In a great novel it does. Emily Bronte in her Wuthering Heights attains the highest degree of truth and vision of life. She lets us know the oneness of primitive passions of man and woman. "I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul"-This sums up the truth of life. The individuals and the giants of history in Tolstoy's War and Peace have an interaction, and there is the vision of life.

Dickens at times becomes grotesque and sentimental. But in A Tale of Two Cities he has caught the vision of life that transcends earthly limitations. Sydney Carton is a man who has that beatific vision. While dying for the sake of love he becomes undying, and lets us have a glimpse of that truth, of that vision:

"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come. I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out."

...Prev | Next...