Bastille Day: How literary writings see the French Revolution

He also laments many historians’ and writers’ emphasis on the violence and destruction associated with the Revolution. Hobsbawm considers historian Simon Schama’s bestselling book Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (1989), which highlights the violent nature of the Revolution through an engaging narrative. He sees it as part of a tradition in England established by Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and many other popular works.

But how do Romantic poets like William Blake, William Wordsworth, and P B Shelley depict the French Revolution? Why does Albert Elmer Hancock say that the French experience “humanised” Wordsworth? Why does Jane Austen deliberately avoid discussing directly the events of the French Revolution that so disturbed her world, but incorporate many of her responses to those events in her writing?

Blake exhorts people to destroy Bastille

The French Revolution was not a single event but a series of developments, including the Fall of the Bastille and the succeeding Reign of Terror lasting from September 1793 to July 1794 when mass executions took place across France. These developments affected writers, poets, painters and other creative minds. 

William Blake, a precursor of the Romantic movement in England, always raised his voice against Church authority in his poems and wrote a long poem, “The French Revolution”, in 1791. In the first book of the poem, which was intended to be a series of seven books, Blake exhorted the people of France to destroy the Bastille:

Seest thou yonder dark castle, that moated 

(See that dark castle which has a moat around it)

Around, keeps this city of Paris in awe. 

(and which keeps the city of Paris frightened)

Go command yonder tower, saying, Bastille 

(Go and conquer that tower saying’ Bastille) 

Wordsworth in France

William Wordsworth visited different parts of France in 1790 and 1791 during which he developed a close relationship with a French woman, Annette Vallon. Three books of his long autobiographical poem The Prelude (1850), book ix, x and xi, present his poetic account of the time spent in France. Initially welcoming the Revolution, Wordsworth recalled his early enthusiasm for it in Book xi with the famous lines: 

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very Heaven! 

But the Reign of Terror that followed the Revolution disillusioned him. 

Shelley and Byron imbibe emancipatory ideals 

Unlike Wordsworth, the younger Romantic poets like P B Shelley and Lord Byron, who were born after the Revolution, imbibed the emancipatory lessons of the Revolution. In his book The French Revolution and the English Poets: A Study in Historical Criticism (1899/1967), Albert Elmer Hancock describes Shelly and Byron as “partisans of revolution to the end”, and Wordsworth and Coleridge as “lost leaders”. 

Shelley’s ideas of liberty, freedom and revolt against authority were largely shaped by the French Revolution. His famous poem “Queen Mab”, writes Hancock, “records the period when the doctrines of the French Revolution were inoculated into his thinking”. 

However, despite Wordsworth’s loss of interest in the Revolution, Hancock observes that the French experience “humanised him” and shifted his poetic focus to the presence of man from nature that earlier dominated his concerns. 

How French revolution affected English novelists 

English novelists, too, did not remain unaffected by the French Revolution. Though Jane Austen’s novels largely focus on love, romance, marriage and family life, she was aware of the cataclysmic developments taking place in neighbouring France. Concerns over England’s war with France following the French Revolution feature in both Mansfield Park (1814) and Persuasion (1817). 

In his book Jane Austen and the French Revolution (1979), Warren Roberts discusses “the impact of the Revolution and its ideology on England and Austen, and not just from 1789 to 1799, but to the end of her life”. Elaborating on the role of politics and religion, particularly Evangelicalism, he argues that Austen “made a deliberate choice not to discuss directly the events that so disturbed her world, and yet incorporated many of her responses to those events in her writing”. 

Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities documents the chaos, violence and executions in France during the Revolution, including references to people boarding tumbrils which took them to the guillotine – the two most brutal symbols of the Reign of Terror. Drawing on Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History (1837), which itself reads like an interesting novel, Dickens presents London as a peaceful city, contrasting it with a turbulent Paris. 

Dickens and the revolutionary imagination 

Many characters in the novel represent different aspects of the Revolution. Doctor Alexandre Manette is imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 long years for simply providing medical help to a peasant family – Madame Defarge’s brother and sister – after they were wronged by the aristocratic Marquis St. Evrémonde family.

Marquis St. Evrémonde, representing the French aristocracy, in A Tale of Two Cities, believes that “repression is the only lasting philosophy”. He throws a coin at Gaspard, a peasant, whose child is crushed by his carriage. Marquis’s nephew Charles Darnay is so revolted by the inhuman attitude of his family towards the peasantry that he disowns his family name. 

The Defarges lead the crowd in storming the Bastille. Chapters titled “Echoing Footsteps” and “The Sea Still Rises” show a surging crowd in the district of Saint Antoine, dominated by the working class population, which played a key role in the storming. It dramatises the capture and lynching of Foulon, a wealthy aristocrat based on Joseph-Francois Foulon, and the burning of a chateau.

A Tale of Two Cities inspired many cinematic and stage adaptations and even influenced filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, who included allusions to the novel in his film, The Dark Knight Rises. At the economic summit in Paris in 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher presented the original 1859 copy of A Tale of Two Cities to French President Francois Mitterrand. 

But the gesture caused a controversy, as it came shortly after Thatcher denied the significance of the French Revolution in conceiving human rights and rather asserted that Britain’s Magna Carta (1215) and the US Declaration of Independence (1776) predate the French Revolution. 

Glimpses of 1789 in Wilde and Tolstoy

Many other famous literary works, even when they refer to the French Revolution cursorily, reflect broader attitudes towards its events. In Act 1 of Oscar Wilde’s famous play The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Lady Bracknell mentions the excesses of the French Revolution in her conversation with Jack Worthing. In this reference, which equates an ordinary incident of Worthing’s birth in a handbag to big changes brought about by revolutions, Wilde satirizes Victorian fixation on propriety and noble lineage. 

Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869), set during the Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and using French language in dialogues in many scenes, portrays the impact of the French Revolution on European society and politics, particularly Russian aristocracy. Though the novel takes a critical view of war and violence and challenges the greatness of heroes, Pierre Bezukhov’s comment in the novel, “The French Revolution was a splendid thing”, reflects the attitude of the Russian aristocracy towards the Revolution.   

The French Revolution continued to inspire works in the twentieth century. Baroness Orczy, an advocate of aristocracy and upper classes, wrote a series of historical novels featuring the French Revolution. The first in the series, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), which evolved from her highly successful play with the same title, was co-written with her husband, Montagne Barstow.

The novel introduced the character of Sir Percy Blakeney, who leads a double life as a foppish English aristocrat and as an expert swordsman and master of disguise. He saves aristocrats from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror, leaving behind a scarlet pimpernel, an annual flower, as his calling card. The series features important French historical figures, including Robespierre, Georges Danton, Louis Antoine de and Jean-Paul Marat.  

Post Read Questions

How did the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, a defining event in the French Revolution, come to symbolise political rebellion?

The French Revolution was a series of developments, including the Fall of the Bastille and the succeeding Reign of Terror lasting from September 1793 to July 1794. Comment. 

How does the French Revolution affect writers, poets, painters and other creative minds? Illustrate with examples. 

Liberty, equality and fraternity, the spirit of the Enlightenment, and the overthrow of aristocracy by the middle class are seen as positive legacy of the French Revolution. Evaluate. 

In 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher presented the original 1859 copy of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities to French President Francois Mitterrand. But the gesture caused a controversy. Why?

(Mohammad Asim Siddiqui is a Professor in the Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University.)  

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