Christianity and Literature Vol. 59, No.

1 (Autumn 2009)

A Tale of Two Mimeses: Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities and Ren Girard Kevin Rulo
Though Wilkie Collins's The Frozen Deep and Thomas Carlyle's history of the French Revolution are two important sources' for A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens's more general admission that "all my strongest illustrations are derived from the New Testament" (qtd. in Ackroyd 504) should perhaps loom larger. Historical novel, socio-political reflection, A Tale of Two Cities surely is.^ But it may also be profitably understood as a narrative mimesis of the Gospel texts. Such a mimetic impulse toward Bible narrative, and the New Testament in particular,' is not confined in Dickens's oeuvre to A Tale of Two Cities. His The Life of the Lord represents the most obvious example, but the Bible plays a formative narrative, as well as thematic, role in several other books."* Biblical-narrative mimesis can be rightly seen as a pervasive textual strategy in Dickens's work as a whole. It is achieved in a most harmonious and masterful way, however, in A Tale. Dickens's religious orientation and his use of Christianity have generally been seen, within the context of Victorian cultural developments, as a secularizing of the sacred and naturalizing of the supernatural. Peter Ackroyd has referred in this connection to Dickens's faith as "established upon practical philanthropy and conventional morality," and his religion as one of "natural love and moral feeling" (507). This kind of reading would see Dickens's mimetic desire toward Gospel discourse as a Victorian attempt at appropriating the moral and ethical weight of the New Testament in an increasingly scientific, mechanical, and empirically based society.^ Although this secularization reading remains credible, the anthropology of Ren Girard may point to a more complex process: a stripping away of the ritualistic crust of the Gospels to get at its core, mimetic desire, mimetic love and war, and the scapegoat mechanism. Dickensian biblical mimesis, then, should be seen not only as a thematic imitation of the Gospel or an imitation of the spirit of the Gospel message, but perhaps most preeminently

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as a mimesis of the structural principle of the Gospel texts. A Tale of Two Cities imitates the unique element of the Gospels, and of the Bible more generally, the manner in which they dramatize and expose the scapegoat mechanism.* As Dickens's famous opening both parallels and contrasts "best" and "worst," "wisdom" and "foolishness," "belief" and "incredulity," "Light" and "Darkness," "spring of hope" and "winter of despair," "Heaven" and "the other way" (1.1.5)all binaries of the biblical traditionso too does the novel draw together and distinguish love and war in their most primordial and vital senses. Kenneth M. Sroka has written on the novel's connection with the Gospel of John, showing how both texts construct similar dichotomies of light and darkness, good and evil, progress and regression: "the movement opposing the progress from darkness to light and lifelessness to resurrection is, similarly, a dia-bolic counter-movement toward extermination' specifically personified in Madame Thrse Defarge and in the representative French aristocrats. Monseigneur and Monsieur the Marquis" (152). As Cirard might put it, in a way far more amenable to Dickens's sensible religious naturalism, the novel represents the dynamic of collective violence, mimetic contagion, but in contrast with the foregrounding of mimetic war's opposite, conversionary mimesis and sacrificial renunciation. And just as in the Gospels, the horrors of collective violence and murder are exposed for what they are by the transformative power of agape, self-sacrificing love. For those who see the violence of the novel as "caricature" (Cotsell 13) or for others who cannot seem to forgive Dickens's embarrassing sentimentalism, or still others who might feel the novel's ending forced (Gross; Hutter), a thoroughly Girardian reading of the novel can help to uncover the seriousness and human depth of A Taie. A Girardian Excursion Ren Girard's theories of mimetic desire, the sacred, and victimization provide an anthropology of culture and human societies perhaps more wideranging, and yet suppler, than any of the chief postmodern philosophical paradigms. He offers nothing short of a theory of the origins of culture and human society, as well as a way of understanding how various cultures and societies have developed, what drives their internal structures, and how they operate in our own day. What is more, Girard has made his advances.

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in sharp contrast to many of his postmodern peers, largely as a result of his seriously engaging religiously informed understandings of our world. As Chris Fleming has put it, Girard's work ... has not simply entertained [religious reflections] at the hermeneutic levelas scholars such as Paul Ricoeur and Rudolf Otto have donebut has instead attempted to carry out a wholesale epistemological inversion which asserts that the traditions that most "educated" minds regard as supernatural fantasyJudaism and Christianitytell us much more about the "natural" paroxysms of violence found in the modern world than the social sciences to which we claim undying allegiance. (150) Alongside this bold "inversion," the interdisciplinary scope that his theories encompasswith practitioners in literature, theology, psychology, anthropology, and historyattests to Girard's more remarkable achievements and represents a good reason to suppose his thought will be influential for some time to come. Since the publication of Mensonge romantique et vrit romanesque in 1961, Girard has been elaborating on and refining his thinking about human beings and the societies they inhabit. The centerpiece of this work is the concept of "mimetic desire," which for Girard is the idea that human beings are by their nature imitative creatures. In his words, "we tend to desire what our neighbor has or what our neighbor desires" {I See Satan Fall Like Lightning 8). But while mimetic desire is "intrinsically good," allow^ing us to transcend the realm of the purely animal (J See 15-16), it is also the genesis of violence and discord within societies. A properly channeled expression of mimetic desire ends in love and self-giving, la an imitation of Christ (not unlike his imitation of the Father), but when mimetic desire turns to mimetic rivalry, the "imitation of a model who becomes a rival or of a rival who becomes a model," what results is a mimetic crisis, where individual mimetic rivalries spread and become pervasive within human communities, resulting in conflicts of "all against all" {I See 8-13). This creates a cycle of mimetic violence the climax of which occurs when the community, itching to cure itself of the ubiquitous disaccord, transfers its collective and individual animosities onto an innocent victim, the "scapegoat," making the mimetic war of "all against all" one of "all against one" (J See 19-31). After the sacrifice of the scapegoat, the pressure of the contagion created by the cycle of mimetic violence is relieved, and the community experiences

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a newfound peace. This process of blaming the victim for the ills of the community while also attributing to the victim the power responsible for the new order and tranquility Girard has called "double transference" (/ See 72). Girard has linked these theories with primitive societies and ideas of ritual and sacrality.'' He has shown in book-length works like The Scapegoat and / See Satan Fall Like Lightninghow these notions of mimetic desire and the cycle of mimetic violence can be found concealed in the Oedipus myth and other myths and also how the Bible, and to some extent literature,^ exposes the scapegoat mechanism of human communities, rendering it powerless. And along with important interpreters and practitioners of his theories,^ he has shown how, although more active and potent in older communities, these realities still pervade modern civilizations. They are, in fact, palpably depicted in Dickenss A Tale of Two Cities.
True Love and War

J. Hillis Miller has said that A Tale "dramatizes Dickenss new concept of love against the background of the French Revolution. Love and war are here metaphorically related" (247). Although Dickens's "love" is certainly not newit is in fact an understanding of love deeply affected by biblical valuesMiller's formulation underlines the most important contrast in a novel of contrasts. The world of the French Revolution, the political implications gestured at through the novel's relation of England and the Continentthese are distractions or, better, scaffolding for the novel's subtler interests, a more general (but more incisive) consideration of human communities and the fundamental dynamics animating such communities."* From the perspective of the political or historical novel traditions, A Tale may look naive and inaccurate; from the vantage point of anthropology, however, it seems a far greater achievement. Where A Tale fails to capture the political situation of the Revolution, still less the cultural matrix of nineteenth-century Europe, it succeeds in its subtler analysis of more vital impulses and behavior. If Miller correctly outlines the structural composition of the novel, or rather the central binary axis on which the novel turns, his insights remain elliptical and suggestive. A more comprehensive consideration reveals, first and foremost, that the love and war of the novel are fundamentally mimetic in nature and represent the two paths that humanity's mimetic nature can take. The novel is, in other words, a tale of two mimeses.

DiCKENs's A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND REN GIRARD Just as it was a time and a world of the "best" and the "worst," "the season of Light" and the "season of Darkness" (1.1.5), so too is it a world where the good mimetic desire of Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay, and their friends and family is presented alongside of the mimetic desirecum-mimetic rivalries of the crowd and the leaders and instigators of the crowd." The final action depicted in the novel is not unlike the action of the Cospels as read by Girard. The crowd, animated by "Satan" in Cirard's anthropological sense of the term (/ See 32-46), seizes upon the innocent victim, charges him falsely, and then ritually murders him for the sake of greater communal harmony and peace. As in the Cospels, Dickenss novel exposes this scapegoat mechanism for what it is (the collective murder of innocence), and the hero of the novel"the scapegoat"willingly accepts in love and renunciation his being sacrificed. Mimetic and Triangular Desire in Darnay's First Trial Scene In his early study Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Cirard outlined his theory of "triangular desire," which holds that desire exhibits a triangular structure, comprising the self, the mediator (or model), and the object that the self desires because it is desired, or is perceived to be desired, by the mediator / model.'-^ Contrary to Romantic notions of spontaneous desire, Cirard holds that desire and human relations in general are "interdividual"'^: interdependent on individuals (I See 137). Our desire, then, results from and is directly related to the desires of those around us, those whom we choose as our mediator / models ("Desire according to Another," as he refers to it at one point) {Deceit 4). . Within these general parameters, Cirard emphasizes the importance of "distance," or spiritual proximity of the subject (self) to the mediator. Such "distance" is "spiritual" because, while physical distance may be significant, the degree to which the worlds of the subject and of the mediator intersect is of primary importance (and this factor does not necessarily correlate with physical distance). Closely related to this is the idea of "internal mediation" and "external mediation." In the former case, the subject-mediator relationship with the object is one of competition and rivalry, while in the latter such rivalry is not present because there is greater distance between the subject and the mediator {Deceit 7-11). In Dickenss A Tale, Lucie Manette is the object of desire par excellence. She is desired by all almost intuitively (except perhaps Madame Defarge

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and The Vengeance). In Stephen Koch's words, she should be seen as "incarnating everything that ought to be desired and loved in life" (362). The scene of Darnay's first trial is a profound depiction of Lucie Manette's situation as object of desire and of the triangular structural features that Girard sees as constitutive of desire. Because of this, it is w^orth considering in some detail. On trial for treason, Darnay is placed under a mirror so that the light shining may reflect down and illuminate his person. He notices a "bar of light across his face" and " [looks] up," seeing a reflection of his "face flushed" (IL2.66). He turns his gaze from this and looks toward his left, where he catches sight of Lucie Manette and her father. The crowd imitates Darnay's gaze, and "all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them" (IL2.66). These "starers," who did not themselves pity their object of transference (Darnay), "were touched by her," whispering to each other, "'Who are they?'" (IL2.67). That this chapter is named "The Sight" (IL2.61-7) only reinforces the action of mimeticism and of mimetic desire that it so compellingly dramatizes. Seeing is the means by which mimetic behavior is largely achieved. Most of the imitation in the scene is enacted through visible gestures. At first, the crowd's "sight" is fixed upon the scapegoat. Darnay's "sight" rests upon his own image reflected in the mirror. The text gives no explanation for why he looks in the direction of Lucie, though it would seem tenable to suggest that it is the result of his being somewhat unsettled at the "sight" of his own reflection (seeing himself as the crowd sees him, a criminal and the object of hatred). His sighting of Lucie and Dr. Manette is, then, arbitrary and by chance, the result of his wanting to see himself as anything other than as the crowd sees him. This seeking out, this need to find a proper object for his "sight," one that might reverse the crowd's "sight" of him, can perhaps account for the abruptness with which he fixates on Lucie and her father. They are not of the crowd. They are full of "compassion" and "pity" for him, and this, in a room full of a brutal crowd whose ire is directed at him (IL2.67), is a refuge. Darnay's sighting of Lucie and her father, his first "sight" of what will become his object of desire, does not incur in him a "lie of spontaneous desire" (Deceit 16) but instead is the fulfillment of a longing for acknowledgement as an innocent person whose life cannot rightfully be utilized as a "cure" for community ills. The crowd for its part reacts mimetically to Darnay's "sight" of Lucie. Although Lucie has been present throughout, it is only after Darnay gazes upon her that the crowd takes an interest. When on the stand, Lucie, "to

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whom many eyes are directed" (11.3.75), looks out upon the crowd (and Darnay) and is "unconsciously imitated" (II.3.75) by them. Then, we are told that "when the Judge looked up from his notes" the "foreheads" of the crowd "might have been mirrors reflecting the witness" (II.3.75). But in this case, their imitation of Lucieher image is on their facescoexists with their implicit desire for her as an object (their desire for her is also present on their faces). She is therefore both the object and the mediator / model for the crowd. Here that "fascination" {Deceit 10-12) that the subject can feel for the rival / model seems present in the crowd in their imitation of Lucie, though it is perhaps undistinguishablebecause in this context the object and model are the samefrom the fixation of desire that the crowd projects onto her. Sydney Carton, who is also present though depicted as not a part of the crowd (he is aloof from it in spending most of his time looking at the ceiling, just as Darnay had been), is just as fixated on Lucie. The difference is that, in like manner with Darnay, Sydney takes up the crowd's (and Darnay's) desire for Lucie but not their concomitant imitation of her. Unlike the crowd he does not resemble Lucie (he resembles Darnay, although it is significant that here at the outset the "strong resemblance" [11.3.79] is diminished). In a (biblical?) prefigurement of what is to come, Darnay's own situation and behavior point to not only his desire for Lucie but also how his desire is grounded in mimesis. He is impelled to search for a model by the repugnance he feels toward his own image, the object of hatred presented to him in the mirror. His sight then rests upon Lucie and Doctor Manette. His desire is ultimately a desire for being, a "metaphysical desire"'* for the likeness of another. Here such desire is clearly impelled by the hopelessness of Darnay's situation and by the attractiveness of the agape-oriented relationship of Doctor Manette and Lucie, the antithesis of the crowd's mimesis. And in fact, the novel emphasizes at word of his acquittal Darnay's mimesis of Doctor Manette's being "Recalled to Life": "'If you had sent the message, "Recalled to Life", again,' muttered Jerry, as he turned, 'I should have known what you meant, this time.'" (II.3.82). Here Darnay imitates Doctor Manette's resurrection at the novel's opening, just as Carton at the novel's close will imitate Darnay's. The first trial scene as a whole demonstrates well the "interdividuality" of mimetic desire and of the objects of desire therein. There is a structure of desire based on the collective. What at first glance may appear to be an individual and immediate eruption of identification and desire, the look

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exchanged between Darnay and Lucie for example, is seen upon closer examination to be an expression of desire within a larger "structure." The closeness with which this scene has been considered here is justified not only by its demonstration of mimetic structure but also because it gives a clear picture of the origins of triangular desire in the novel which can now be investigated more fully. "Why Should You Particularly Like A Man Who Resembles You?" In contrast to the crowd, the mediation of Darnay and Carton, and ofthat circle of characters in general (including the triangular relationship between Darnay, Doctor Manette, and Lucie), could be described as "external" in that the mimetic desire expressed in these relationships is invariably of the "intrinsically good" variety. At every point where objects of desire intersect, and therefore where the prospect of rivalry increases, the characters turn away from resentment, jealousy, and envy in acts of sacrificial renunciation. Doctor Manette, for example, does not allow his love and need for his daughter to turn him against Darnay in a poisonous relationship of rivalry. Instead, he sacrifices his wishes and allows his daughter to marry. Darnay, for his part, defers to Doctor Manette in this matter, telling him that he will only ask for Lucie's hand if the Doctor approves. Their triangular relationship thenceforth is one of mutuality and respect, where nothing is horded and minimal mimetic competition exists. The same is true for the triangular relationship between Darnay, Carton, and Lucie. What makes this relationship of triangular desire more interesting, though, is that by all available markers it should be one of mimetic competition and rivalry. Carton's mediation should be internal, and his desire for Lucie should engender in him a hatred for his mediator / model. But as we know this is not what happens. Amidst the seeming inevitability of mimetic desire, of the entanglement of the object of desire and the seeming closeness of distance between subject and mediator / model, Darnay and Carton do not enter into a mimetic competition for Lucie. Carton's desire for Lucie, his imitation of Darnay, culminates in sacrificial renunciation of the highest order, the exchanging of his life for Darnay's, and the ultimate imitation of Darnay is in the end an imitation of Christ's sacrificial gift of himself on the cross. But in the initial stages, things are not so certain. The possibility for mimetic rivalry is present from the beginning, as the scene in the courtroom

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shows. Shortly after Darnay is acquitted, after Darnay and Carton have spoken with each other (Darnay thanking Carton for the part he has played in his acquittal). Carton turns to a "glass that [hangs] against the wall" and speaks to his reflection (about Darnay): "Do you particularly like the man?" he muttered, at his own image; "why should you particularly like a man who resembles you?... What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow." (II.4.89) This passage gives us a clearer picture of Carton's desire, particularly how interdividual it truly is. He desires not simply Lucie's blue eyes but to be looked at "as [Darnay] was" looked at. In other words, his desire for the object (Lucie) is inextricably caught up with imitation of the mediator / model, Darnay. In order to fulfill and achieve the object of his desire, he must "change places" with Darnay; without Darnay as a model / mediator (the someone to change places with) he could not conceive of a relationship with Lucie. His conclusion"You hate the fellow"shows well the potential for mimetic rivalry with Darnay. In fact. Carton has seemingly already committed himself to it. He has recognized his object of desire and also the obstacle / model that stands in his way. The stage would seem set for mimetic violence to take its course. With the character of Stryver, a situation of mimetic competition presents itself and is likewise relieved without the onset of destructive rivalry Stryver decides to propose to Lucie but, when counseled against it by Lorry (who knows he will be turned down), does not follow through (11.12.147-54). His conversation prior to that with Carton gives a good sense of the nature of his desire for her. He observes that Carton has been to see Lucie as much as he has. He announces his intention to marry in a fashion that seems more interested in Carton's reaction than the substance of his declaration: "Are you astonished?" he says, "You approve?" (II.l 1.145). As with the others, his interest in Lucie is based largely on Lucie's being the interest of others. Eventually, it is Darnay who receives Lucie's hand in marriage (with the self-sacrificial fiat of Doctor Manette: "Take her, Charles! She is yours!") (11.18.201). When the couple arrives back home after their honeymoon.

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they are visited only a few hours later by Sydney Carton, with a "rugged air of fidelity about him" (11.20.214). He makes known to Darnay his "wish [that they] might be friends" and asks that he might be considered "a privileged person" in their home (11.20.214, 216). Again, the conditions would seem to be ripe for mimetic competition. In Cirard's own examples, Stendhal and Flaubert, he establishes that when the mediator is "within the same universe" of the hero the mediation will be internal and competitive {Deceit 7-9). In Dickenss novel, such conditions are clearly present. The two characters penetrate the same world and have the same object of desire, Lucie, who also has a temporal existence among them. The situation would seem all the more conducive to rivalry when we consider Cirard's assertion that the more drastic the mimetic doubling the more dangerous and more likely that the desire will turn toward violence (/ See 22-3). And yet Sydney, in the face of what would appear to be a rival (of one whom he resembles so closely), extends the charitable gesture of friendship and seeks not rivalry but solidarity. As readers of the novel know, he will not stop there; he will ultimately give much morenothing short of the ultimate giftin his mimetic desire for Lucie. Just as Cirard's understanding of human interconnection can help us better to understand the significance and achievement of A Tale of Two Cities, so too might Dickens's mimetic world aid students of Cirard in coming to a fuller, more nuanced understanding of his conceptual framework. The anti-Romanticism of Cirardian theory, the attempt to locate desire not within the individual's emotional or interior center but within an exterior, interdividual structure, shares a certain affinity with postmodern constructivist orientations. Foucauldian readings of desire,, for example, would also seek to ground human desires and related notions of identity in sources apart from the understanding self. But for Cirard, as Dickens's rendering can help to show, the element of human freedom, while at times diminished or problematized, is always present. The nature of mimetic desirewhether of rivalry or of conversionwhile affected by situation and by external circumstances is never purely determined by such circumstances. Here the Christian direction of Girard's thought becomes most evident. Sydney Carton's choice is the choice for self-sacrifice, for agape, for lovefor that which is only possible through choice. Collective Violence and the Scapegoat If Sydney Carton, Doctor and Lucie Manette, and Charles Darnay offer examples of positive mimetic relationships, even in the face of conditions

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conducive to rivalry, the depictions of the crowd show the other avenue of mimetic desire: mimetic contagion leading to collective violence. Dickens presents a very idiosyncratic picture of the Revolution. He accentuates the violent, the terrifying, the paroxysmal savagery of the crowd. Many have questioned this emphasis, and Dickens has even been accused of employing propagandistic strategies for it (Craig 86). When read in light of Girard's theory of the scapegoat mechanism, however, Dickens's mimesis of violence can be understood as a particularly striking and accurate portrayal of confiict and disaccord in societies.'^ In The Scapegoat, Girard sketches the general parameters in which collective violence occurs, along with its constitutive features: situation of crisis, the undiiferentiation of the crowd, and the differentiation of the victim (12-23). These elements can be easily found in A Tale. The violence of the novel takes place within the larger social crisis of that time, where famine and general disorder are normative. As a result, societal institutions of law and order are not as strong, and conditions are conducive to "mob formation" (Scapegoat 12). The Parisian mob depicted here, holding "life as of no account ... was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it" (n.21.223). Defarge's wine-shop, the sight of the metaphorical mimetic contagion in Book One, is the epicenter of this rising sea, and the Defarges, Madame and Monsieur, lead the crowd, guiding them in their frenzy, "all armed alike in hunger and revenge" (IL21.224). The word "alike" is not to be overlooked.'^ It signifies the process of "mimetic doubling" whereby the members of the crowd lose their difference and undergo a process of undifferentiation.'^ This can be seen more generally throughout the work in the common dress (red caps, working class clothes) of "citizens." The mob first storms the Bastille, beheading the governor and seven others and setting seven prisoners free (11.21.229). The overturning of the social order involved in this constitutes a key element of collective violence. As Girard has said, "Crowds commonly turn on those who originally held exceptional power over them" (Scapegoat 19). The governor is held responsible simply for being a governor. Because of his position, he is blamed for the ills of the community (just as the King was blamed and subsequently beheaded).'* In addition, he is selected as a victim and persecuted largely because of his difference from the undiiferentiated community. The second scene occurs only a week later. The mob is not satisfied, and the lack of efficiency in the scapegoat mechanism means there is a need for more victims.'^ This scene depicts the ritual killing and scapegoating of

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Foulon, a wealthy aristocrat who is said to have "told the famished people that they might eat grass" (11.22.231). The ills of the community, just as with the governor, are attributed to Foulon. The anxieties, the anger, and hatred of the community are channeled into the person of Foulon: Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming. Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want!... Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! (II.22.232-3) They continue on, asking that the mob might "rend Foulon to pieces ... that grass may grow from him!" (11.22.233).^ Dickens here presents a vivid representation of collective violence and mob persecution. Foulon, whatever crimes he may or may not have committed, certainly is not guilty of all, or even any, of what was attributed to him by the mob. Nonetheless, he is dragged before the mob, ritually tortured, and collectively murdered, with "grass enough in [his] mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of" (11.22.234). Afterwards, there is peace in the community; to use Girard's idiom, Satan has cast out Satan: the principle of mimetic rivalry and violence has become the very thing that provides the remedy to the problem of mimetic rival and violence (if only temporarily). "Sparks of cheerfulness" fly, and all rest in tranquility (11.22.235). Both of these scenes describe the cycle of collective violence as understood by Girard. The mimetic crisis in the community, brought on at least in part by famine and hunger, threatens a mimetic war of "all against all." To relieve the mimetic crisis, the hatred, jealousy, and rage in the community are transferred to a scapegoat, one who exists in a relationship of differentiation with the community. The scapegoat is blamed for the ills of the community and is ritually sacrificed as a cure. In the aftermath, peace reigns, for however brief a period. Is There a Persecution Text in This Class? Some of the elements of the novel discussed here have already been traced to an extent by Mark M. Hennelly, Jr., whose work interfacing certain aspects of Girard's theories and the novel is an important contribution to our

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understanding of A Tale. His comparative use of methodologies, including Derrida, Frye, and Girard, has produced interesting results for the novel and for Girardian theory.^' But in only focusing on the idea of the "scapegoat" in Girard's thought,^^ and in a more secular conception, Hennelly's study does not take into account other aspects of Girard's work related to his theories of the "scapegoat" that further illuminate the scapegoat component and its larger role in the novel.^^ The "language of Christian sacrifice," for example, is ever-present in the novel and has been recognized as such (Koch 364). Given this, and given the fact that the totality of Girard's theories contains an integrity which links these aspects, more direct connection between the scapegoat mechanism, mimetic violence, and the Christian conceptual matrix would seem to be warranted. This is all the more important because, as Hennelly points out, the novel is full of scapegoats; in fact, "almost every character at every level of dramatic importance seems a 'scapegoat' of some kind or other" (225). Hennelly demonstrates well that the four stereotypes that Girard outlines in The Scapegoat are all present in the novel. But perhaps because he has only considered Girard's theories in a comparative fashion with other theorists like Derrida and Frye, Hennelly continually refers to the novel as a "persecution text" (225, 228). We must ask, from the standpoint of Girard's formulation, whether the novel is in fact a persecution text. A persecution text, according to Girard, is a text where "the representation of persecution [is] from the standpoint of the persecutor," one which conceals the "hidden structural principle" of the scapegoat mechanism and persecution as a whole. The antithesis of this is a text, like the Gospels, that "reveals the truth of the persecution" and exposes the scapegoat mechanism for what it is
{Scapegoat 119).

One must acknowledge an element in the novel of the "covering up" of violence and the origins of violent acts. The story of the rape and death of the peasant girl, a crime that remains hidden for most of the novel, and the symbolic concealing of the Monseigneur's death with the "Gorgon's Head" imagery help to show how, in Albert D. Hutter's phrasing, "the larger action of the novel turns on seeing what was never meant to be seen" (91). Both of these examples could be taken for founding acts of violence that lead to the French Revolution, and various critics have seen them in such a light (Hutter, Stewart). Doctor Manette's being "buried alive" in the Bastille is a literal concealment of the rape, which the narrative mimics not only by not

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referring to it until nearly the end but also by cloaking it in the symbolic phrase "the substance of the shadow" (Koch 354). As Stephen Koch has said, "Dickens himself drapes the crime in yards of symbohsm and Gothic obscurity," the crime that "initiates the novel's entire cycle of violence and guilt" (354). But despite this, the final scene and the various depictions of mob violence and of collective persecution place the novel firmly against "the standpoint of the persecutor" (Girard, Scapegoat 119). The novel quite clearly condemns the violence of the Revolution, and more than that, it shows the internal "hidden structure" at work within it. In every case, and in the trials of Darnay in particular, the crowd is depicted as "demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice" arbitrary victims (11.22.223). The text makes clear at all points the injustice of the crowd and the ruthless persecution in their collective violence. In the case of Foulon and the governor of the Bastille already noted, the near-diabolic ferocity of the crowd and their fantastic claims against the victims are made starkly clear. The mindset of those who enact the persecutions of the Revolution is unveiled from the outset. In the chapter "A Sight" considered earlier, Jerry Cruncher enters the courtroom and speaks to an anonymous member of the crowd about the man on trial (Darnay). "Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half-hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence." "If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso. "Oh! they'llfindhim Guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid of that." (II.2.64) Dickens presents here another succinct, powerful portrayal of the crowd. In his dramatization of the ritual torture and cruelty of mob persecution, the blind insistence on the victim's guilt and the concomitant refusal to see the victim as a victim, and the crowd's "relish" in violent ritualistic torture, Dickens has penetrated to the very core of the scapegoat mechanism. His novel is a profound critique of collective persecution in the same manner as the Gospels. Like the Gospels, Dickens's noveJ takes the side of the victim, showing him to be innocent and exposing the scapegoat mechanism as a tool of collective violence and ritual murder.

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Biblical Narrative Mimesis In a letter to Wilkie Collins just after he finished the novel, Dickens said that he believed it was art's duty to "shew, by a backward light, what everything has been working tobut only to suggest, until the fulfillment comes. These are the ways of Providenceof which ways, all Art is but a little imitation" (qtd. in Schlicke 550). For Dickens, Art is a narrative mimesis of Providence, where all comes into focus only after the fact. This is an inherently biblical enplotment. It contains within it a Christian philosophy of history important to understanding this historical novel. The Christian symbolism and themes of the novel are well understood. But the novel's likeness to the Cospels, to the Bible, is not merely on the order of its highly allusive character. It is, in its attempts to show the prevalence of mimetic desire and its two tales (love and war), a mimetic narrative of the Cospels themselves. In Sydney Carton's triangular relationship with Darnay and Lucie, he seeks an imitation of Darnay, who is (as the first trial scene shows) the Scapegoat. In this, his imitation of Darnay, who has himself rejected mimetic rivalry in his triangular relations with Lucie and Doctor Manette, leads to his ultimate imitation: that of Christ, the Ur-Scapegoat, who gives himself in sacrificial renunciation. Carton's sacrificial act therefore mimics Darnay's self-giving love of Lucie and her father, even while it mimics Christ. If he is able to achieve at the novel's end a mimesis of Christ, Carton's redemption includes himself He was at one time a promising young man (III.9.325), but he fell from that into a bad-tempered life of wasteful drinking. He sees himself as a no-good, "a disappointed drudge ... [who cares] for no man on earth" and for whom no one cares (II.4.89). He does not believe he is capable of love, nor that anyone is capable of loving him. But with the entrance of Lucieand Darnay, for he cannot conceive of Lucie without Darnay^"*into his life, things change. As he tells her, "Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight" (11.13.157). Later in their conversation, the intuition grows even further. He says to her (echoing Christ's words to his apostles of his own impending sacrifice), "The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you.... [T]here is a man

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who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!" (11.13.159). His prescience is more than Dickens's artifice; she has awakened love within him, and not mere desire but agape, Christian self-sacrificing love. This is followed by real change. He comes to visit them but never "heated with wine" (11.21.219), and just before his death he has a meal without strong drink "for the first time in many years" (III.12.351). And of course, the final transformation comes at the end where he does "a far, far better thing" than he has ever done (III.15.390). But his imitation of Christ extends beyond sacrifice, into resurrection.-^^ Resurrection in the sense of Carton's name living on in the Darnay family is obviously essential to the Christian symbolism of the novel and to Carton's characterization as a kind of Christ. But Girard has said that "conversion is resurrection" (Reader 286). Conceived so, the very act of Carton discovering himself and changing, the very act of his sacrificial renunciation, which represents a turning away from the failures of his life and toward the fullness of his being, toward the fullest potential of his human capacity to love, is very much a kind of "resurrection." The Gospel passage John 11:25-26^* that Carton recalls to mind several times throughout his final agony and passion, when read in light of resurrection as a kind of conversion, acquires all the more depth of meaning. But Carton's imitation of Christ, and the final scene's narrative mimesis, extends further. He dies at three p.m., the hour that Jesus gave himself up in sacrificial renunciation on Calvary. He is ritually murdered in an act of collective violence (the guillotine, his cross). He is murdered for the "crime"^'' of another. By his death, others live (he brings Darnay back to life, twice). And can one take Carton's being the twenty-third victim to be a reference to Psalm 23 (III. 15.389)? Some have argued that the recounting of Carton's final thoughts, so concerned they are with how he himself will live on as a result of his sacrificial act, undercuts the sacrificial nature of the act itself and therefore its Christlikeness (Vanden Bossche 211). Self-sacrifice, however, need not be seen as an act out of which the one sacrificing expects nothing in return. John Milbank, in his article "The Ethics of Self-Sacrifice," has outlined the ways in which all gifts and sacrifices expect some return (however indeterminate the return may be at times). Interesting for our topic, Milbank connects true self-sacrifice not with a gift that expects no return-gift but with the resurrection, the hope of redemption, which is very much a return-gift (3338). In light of this. Carton's concern with his return-gift cannot be regarded as fundamentally incompatible with its sacrificial character.

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Others have argued that the Christianizing of the story is exaggerated, forced, and not at all convincing (Kucich 133; Wlder 198). Reading the Christian aspect of the text in light of Girard's theories of triangular and mimetic desire can help us arrive at a more considered judgment in this regard. The Christian symbolism and themes in the novel become naturalized and more palatable when read in light of these theories. Likewise, the actions and motivations of Carton become more probable (and believable) and can be justified to a greater extent in the reader's eyes. Conclusion and Novelistic Conclusions Girard has said that "all novelistic conclusions are conversions" and that "every novelistic conclusion is a beginning" {Deceit 294, 297). The final thoughts of Sydney Carton that end the novel represent the consummation of his conversion toward self-sacrificing love, and at the same time the beginning of his true liberation from death, his resurrection and eternal "rest." The novel's depiction of this sacrificial self-giving, the proper expression of mimetic desire (Carton becomes Darnay and Christ), is contrasted and made even more explicit by the mimetic violence of the crowd, caught up in the cycle of violence, the principle of "Satan." But just as in the Gospel texts, though darkness may have its hour, in the end the spirit of God, the principle of self-sacrificial love, triumphs over "Satan," the spirit of mimetic rivalry. In this way, the tale of two mimeses explored here can be related on both a textual and a meta-textual axis, depending on whether one considers the mimesis in the novel or the mimesis of the novel: that is, the tale of love and war in the text (itself a tale of two mimeses, love and war) and the tale of Dickens's mimesis of the Gospel. The present study has been an attempt at (a tale of?) considering both possibilities and relating each to the other.
Tiie Catiioiic University of America

NOTES
'See Andrew Sanders's 7?ie Companion to A Tale of Two Cities; Michael Goldberg's Carlyle and Dicicens; William Oddie's Dicizens and Cariyie; and Laurance Hutton, Tiie Dicicens-Collins Letters.

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a good discussion of A Tale as historical novel, see Robert Alter, "The Demons of History in Dickens' Tale" Gareth Stedman Jones has referred to the novel as a "warning" to the British public that the country could go the way of France as a result of inaction and unreasonable contentment (17-18). ^Dickens's mimetic aspirations with regard to the Bible should not be seen as controversial, given that he has referred to the New Testament as "the best book that ever was or will be known in the world" (qtd. in Ackroyd 505). "See Janet L. Larson, Dickens and the Broken Scripture; Jane Vogel, Allegory in Dickens; and Kenneth Sroka, "A Tale of Two Gospels: Dickens and John." 'Kenneth M. Sroka conceives of the novel as, perhaps, "another Victorian gospel"' (145). Gary L. CoUedge has referred to Dickens's "practical or ethical Christology" (126). "For a good discussion of this phenomenon in the Bible, see Girard's Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, 140-80. ^See, in particular. Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlin and Guy Lefort. 'Girard has acknowledged the central role that literary works have played in the development of his theories: "the only texts that ever discovered mimetic desire and explored some of its consequences are literary texts. I am speaking here not of all literary texts, not of literature per se, but of a relatively small group of works.... Implicitly and sometimes explicitly, these works reveal the laws of mimetic desire" (Introduction to "To Double Business Bound," vii-viii). 'See Cesreo Bandera, The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction, and Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. '"Even if the novel penetrates beneath such strata, the political and sociocultural dimensions of the novel remain essential to understanding A Tale and its author. Much valuable work has been done in this area. Gareth Stedman Jones, Hilary Schor, and Richard Myers represent a few of the more recent examples. "This group / individual binary and the related public / private binaries have been noted and developed by scholars in different theoretical contexts. See, for example. Cates Baldridge and Albert D. Hutter. The present study relates it specifically to the love / war opposition. '^For a complete theoretical presentation of triangular desire, see Girard, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, 1-52. "This concept is also dealt with more extensively in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. '"For more on the concept of metaphysical desire, see The Girard Reader, 290. "The charge that Dickens has not given an adequate account of the ruling powers' role in the process of this violence is well-taken. As Girard has pointed out in another context, however, this does not invalidate the accurate depiction of mob frenzy {Scapegoat 18-21).

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'^For an extended discussion of how words of likeness and unlikeness, sameness and difference, work in the novel, see Mark M. Hennelly's article "Like or No Like." ''The disappearance of important differences with regard to gender is interesting as well. The women, for example, are decapitators (see Madame Defarge's beheading of the governor [n.21.229]) with the same ferocity as the men. '*See The Scapegoat for an interesting discussion of Marie Antoinette's beheading and the charge against her of incest (20-21). "Something Girard sees as common in more modern societies, where the scapegoat mechanism has been exposed to a greater or lesser degree. See The Girard Reader, 16. ^The imagery here echoes the Osiris myth, whereby the dead god is the soil from which sprouts the harvest. Given what Girard says about the Gospel as anti-myth, and about myth as the purveyor of collective violence, this point is significant. ^'Similarities drawn between Derrida and Girard's idea of the pharmakon and between Girard's undifferentiation and Derrida's la differance are fruitful from a theoretical, as well as from a critical, perspective. ^^He cites only The Scapegoat both in the paper and in the bibliography. ^^Hennelly's comparative use of methodologies has yielded worthwhile results. But it may be fair to say that Girard's theories and their interaction with the novel have not been allowed a full application because of Hennelly's methodological eclecticism. ^"His admission, considered earlier, that "a good reason for taking to a man [is], that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been!" (11.4. 89) shows the extent to which Darnay, just as much if not more than Lucie, can be said to be the cause of his amelioration. ^'See Andrew Sanders, Charles Dickens, Resurrectionist. ^*"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die" (II1.9.325). "The epithet "crime" should be used loosely; Darnay is in effect innocent of the crime charged to him.

WORKS CITED
Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. London: Sinclair-Stevenson Limited, 1990. Alter, Robert. "The Demons of History in Dickens' Tale'.' Novel 2 (1968-9): 135-42. Bailie, Gil. Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. New York: Crossroad, 1995. Baldridge, Gates. "Alternatives to Bourgeois Individualism in A Tale of Two Cities." Studies in English Literature, i500-i900.. Nineteenth Century 30.4 (Autumn 1990): 633-54.

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Bandera, Cesreo. The Sacred Game: The Role of the Sacred in the Genesis of Modern Literary Fiction. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1994. Colledge, Gary L. "The Life of Our Lord Revisited." Dickens Studies Annual 36 (2005): 125-51. Cotsell, Michael A. "Introduction." Gritical Essays on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Michael A. Cotsell. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998.1-15. Craig, David. "The Crowd in Dickens." The Changing World of Charles Dickens. Ed. Robert Giddings. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1983. Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Richard Maxwell. New York: Penguin, 2003. Fleming, Chris. Ren Girard: Violence and Mimesis. Maiden, MA: Polity, 2004. Girard, Ren. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1965. ."To Double Business Bound": Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthroplogy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. .The Girard Reader. Ed. James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad Herder, 1996. .Mensonge romantique et vrit romanesque. Paris: Grasset, 1961. ./ See Satan Fall like Lightning. MaryknoU, New York: Orbis, 1998. .The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. .Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World: Research Undertaken in Collaboration with Jean-Michel Oughourlin and Guy Lefort. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1987. .Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1977. Goldberg, Michael. Carlyle and Dickens. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1972. Gross, John. "A Tale of Two Cities" Twentieth Century Interpretations of A Tale of Two Gities. Ed. Charles E. Beckwith. Englewood Glifs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972. Hennelly, Mark M. Jr., " 'Like or No Like': Figuring the Scapegoat in A Tale of Two Cities" Dickens Studies Annual. Vol. 30 (2001). 217-42. Hutter, Albert D. "Nation and Generation in A Tale of Two Cities." Critical Essays on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Michael A. Gotsell. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998. 89-110. Hutton, Laurance, ed. The Dickens-Collins Letters. New York. 1892. Jones, Gareth Stedman. "The Redemptive Power of Violence?: Garlyle, Marx, and Dickens." History Workshop Journal 65 (Spring 2008): 1-22. Koch, Stephen. "Afterward." A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. New York: Bantam, 1989. Kucich, John. "The Purity of Violence: A Tale of Two Cities" Critical Essays on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. Ed. Michael A. Gotsell. New York: G.K. Hall, 1998. 133-47. Larson, Janet L. Dickens and the Broken Scripture. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1985. Milbank, John. "The Ethics of Self-Sacrifice." First Things 91 (March 1999): 33-38. Miller, J. Hillis. Charles Dickens: The World of his Novels. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1965.

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Myers, Richard. "Politics of Hatred in A Tale of Two Cities" Poets, Princes, and Private Citizens: Literary Alternatives to Postmodern Politics. Eds. Joseph M. Knippenberg and Peter Augustine Lawler. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996. 63-74. Oddie, William. Dickens and Carlyle. London: Centenary, 1972. Sanders, Andrew. Charles Dickens, Resurrectionist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1982. .The Companion to "A Tale of Two C/fi'es." London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Schor, Hilary "Novels of the 1850s: Hard Times, Little Dorrit, and A Tale of Two Cities" The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens. Ed. John O. Jordan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 64-77. Schlicke, Paul, ed. Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford UP, 1999. Sroka, Kenneth. "A Tale of Two Cospels: Dickens and John." Dickens Studies Annual 27 (1999): 145-69. Stewart, Garrett. Death Sentences: Style of Dying in British Fiction. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984. Vanden Bossche, Chris R. "Prophetic Closure and Disclosing Narrative: The French Revolution and A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens Studies Annual 12 (1983): 209-21. Vogel, Jane. Allegory in Dickens. U of Alabama P, 1977. Wlder, Denis. Dickens and Religion. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.

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