Dickens’ (#7) “Tale of Two Cities” (#5): Why does Dickens portray both Dr. Manette (definitively) and Sydney Carton (probably) as having multiple personality?

Characters in this novel are consistent—Lorry is businesslike, Lucie is compassionate, Madame Defarge is relentless, etc.—except for Dr. Manette and Sydney Carton, who have the behavior typical of persons with undiagnosed multiple personality: puzzling inconsistency, caused by switching among more or less unrecognized, alternate personalities. (Search “puzzling inconsistency” in this blog for previous discussions.)

Sydney Carton

What is Carton’s personality? Aimless drunkard? Courtroom “memory” and “jackal” (as his law partner calls him)? Romantic hero? How different from most of the other characters is this puzzling inconsistency!

Carton’s main symptom suggestive of multiple personality is that he hears “old voices” and has “heard them always”:

“Since I knew you [Lucie], I…have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent forever” (1, p. 156).

“These solemn words, which had been read at this father’s grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets…’I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet he shall live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die’…Now that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on…he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but he heard them always” (1, pp. 323-324).

I suppose that most readers interpret such references to hearing voices as metaphors, but since Dickens, himself, literally heard voices (see old posts), it must be assumed that when his characters say they hear voices, they literally hear voices.

And when sane people hear rational voices over the years—not just in culturally accepted, religious ceremonies—they are probably hearing the voices of alternate personalities, speaking from behind the scenes.

It may also be significant that Carton is given a backstory suggestive of a traumatic childhood (typical of multiple personality). When, as a youth, he originally heard the above words at his father’s grave, “His mother had died, years before” (1, p. 323).

In short, Sydney Carton probably had a traumatic childhood, is sane but hears voices, and has puzzling inconsistency. This does not prove he has multiple personality, but makes it possible, even probable.

Dr. Manette

In previous posts about Dr. Manette’s definitive multiple personality, I criticized the novel’s apparent implication that he got it from his eighteen years imprisonment as an adult. Multiple personality has a childhood onset, as a way to cope with childhood trauma.

However, later in the novel, there is this description of his shoemaking, alternate personality:

“Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the ground, like a distracted child” (1, p. 352).

I had presumed that the cobbler personality was an adult, but this certainly looks like the behavior of a child. And since I know that the single most common type of alternate personality is a child-aged personality (due the fact that multiple personality has a childhood onset), it makes sense.

It makes me think of what Dickens recalled as the major trauma of his childhood, the months he was sent to work in a blacking factory. Now suppose that Dr. Manette had had a similar childhood trauma, but instead of being sent to a blacking factory, he was sent to apprentice with a cobbler. He may have developed a child-aged, shoemaking alternate personality to deal with that experience. And this alternate personality, dormant until his imprisonment, came out to deal with it.

Another concern I expressed about this character’s having multiple personality is that there is no good reason for its presence in this novel. Dr. Manette could have been portrayed as having severe, recurrent depression since his imprisonment. What added value is there in making it multiple personality? Many readers do not even notice that it is multiple personality, per se.

So I still maintain that the multiple personality of Dr. Manette is gratuitous, and that the only reason it is present is that it reflected the author’s own psychology.

1. Charles Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities. New York, Signet Classics, 2007.