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One of the things that can be a little confusing about A Tale of Two Cities is the fact that
it was written in the past, but that it's set in an even further past.
Here, look at this timeline:
See that? Dickens wrote this book in 1859, more than 60 years after the French Revolution
ended.
So if you want to find out more about the time period in which Dickens was writing,
check out Recap 6 in the Great Expectations album. But if you want to find out more about
the time period Dickens was writing about, you've come to the right place.
The French Revolution took place over a ten-year time period, during which the social and political
systems in France underwent HUGE changes. The absolute French monarchy collapsed and
was replaced by a democratic republic. And the oppressive aristocrats got booted out
in favor of a society in which citizenship and inalienable rights were extended to the
poor and the masses.
So how did all this dramatic change come about?
Dickens' story may be fiction, but he actually did a pretty good job of portraying some of
the real-life causes of the French Revolution. Check out Book One, Chapter Five, will you?
Notice how Dickens repeats the word hunger over and over and over again? That's not just
Dickens being clever with his pen. In fact, hunger was one of the main causes of the revolution.
Some historians estimate that in the really hard years before the revolution, around 90
percent of the peasants earned only—and barely—enough to feed their families.
Tired of the omnipresence of poverty, the huge divisions between social classes, and
rampant oppression, the people joined together to rise up against the nobles.