I just went on the net searching for anything on 'Memory Carton' and I came up with this from an article at answers.com:
Quote:
Memory and Reminiscence
A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel, about events approximately seventy years past when Dickens wrote the work. For the author in A Tale of Two Cities, memory is often a trap, pulling people into an abyss of despair. Madame Defarge's hatred of aristocrats in general and St. Evremonde in particular is based on her memory of the rape and deaths of her siblings at his hands. However, it can also be a force for redemption. It is Dr. Manette's memory of his dead wife, seen in his daughter's face, that begins his process of resurrection from the grave of his prison and madness. "Darnay listens to the voices from his past," states Ruth Glancy in A Tale of Two Cities: Dickens's Revolutionary Novel; "his desire to right the wrongs of his family is primarily due to his mother's reliance on him to do so." Perhaps most interesting, however, is Sydney Carton and his relationship to memory. His colleague C. J. Stryver calls him "Memory Carton" for his brilliant legal mind. Dickens's portrayal of Carton, however, shows him inspired by the memory of his love for Lucie to renounce his passive life. "When Carton dies with the words 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done,' he is renouncing the mental prison that has prevented him from making something of his life," writes Glancy; "he is living dynamically, as Doctor Manette does, and even if for him the action will soon be over, its repercussions wil be felt for as long as the Darnay family survives."
I found some other sites that state that when Dickens was deciding on a name for his novel this idea came to him "Memory Carton"....kind of a strange name for a book, don't you think? Glad he decided on "A Tale of Two Cities" instead....sounds more intriguing.
I came back to edit this because I just found this at another site:
Quote:
Since this is a story primarily designed to move the reader emotionally through a sympathetic identification with its characters, A Tale of Two Cities is not the collective memoirs of the Cruncher family, the Manettes, the Defarges, Sydney Carton, and Charles Darnay. As Forster points out, "A memoir is history, it is based on evidence. A novel is based on evidence + or -x, the unknown quantity being the temperament of the novelist" (55). A Tale of Two Cities is not a history of the French Revolution--that is partly why no historical characters actually appear in the story (the other reason is that Dickens distrusted the ideallism of such revolutionary leaders as Marat and Robespierre because of the monstrous deeds they justified in the name of Liberty); rather, it is the revelation of what Forster terms "the hidden life" of certain imagined characters who are reflections of the temperament of Dickens himself (notice, for example, that one of the book's protagonists has the initials "C. D." and that the model for Lucie was not merely Lucy Crayford in the melodrama The Frozen Deep, but also Dickens's extra-marital liaison, Ellen Ternan; furthermore, Dickens originally intended his chief protagonist to be named "Dick Carton").
The full commentary at this site is quite good:http://victorian.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp...va/pva212.html
This is something I had thought of, but thought the idea wasn't backed up enough to post, however apparently my thoughts were in the right direction - about the name Evremonde (Everyman):
Quote:
Even Darnay's real name, D'Evrémonde, suggests that he is an Anglo-French Everyman ("every" plus "tout le monde"). As Alter notes, Dickens probably intended that "Charles Darnay's French name, Evrémonde, should sound like an English name of a different sort: he is the Everyman who is drawn to the heart of destruction, virtually gives up his life there, in legal fact and physical appearance, to be re-born only through the expiatory death of another self, and so to return to his beloved, whose name means 'light'" (138). From a memorial plaque in Westminster Abbey's South Transept (the "Poets' Corner" where Dickens himself would one day be buried) Dickens might have been familiar with the French poet-soldier of the seventeenth century, Charles de Marquetel de Saint Denis de Saint Evrémond (1613-1703), the period in which through his excesses and his denial of even modest democratic rights the Sun King of France, Louis XIV, was driving future generations inexorably towards violent revolution.
Interesting, isn't it? Well, mull these things over until I get specifically, back to your great posts.
