-ik it is describin an ambivalent age but how...good responses pleez! : )
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Think about the French Revolution and its aftermath, for the book is placed in that period. The Revolution had high ideals (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity): Wordsworth who was in France at that time wrote "Bliss was in that new dawn to be alive/ But to be young was very heaven": to respect everyone regardless of social station, to ensure that everyone had enough to eat (Queen Antoinette was supposed to have said that if the common people did not have bread they should eat cake). But as the Revolution entered its later stages, the insurgent political leaders disgreed about its course, and having executed the King and members of the aristocracy, began turning on each other. One leader was murdered in his bath by his opponents. Hence Dickens' "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". Similarly with all the opposite qualities he mentions: the Revolutionists were believers in new ideals but doubtful (incredulous) that anyone but their own particular faction could realize them. The early phase of the Revolution was the spring of hope, its later phases the winter of despair. Dickens implies that what was true of France at that time was true of England and many other societies as well in a different context. The Revolutionists may have thought that new social structures would mean a new human nature but their cruelty to their enemies, Dickens says, signifies that human nature does not change that much. The permanent human condition is captured in the contradictory propositions with which Dickens begins his novel. Dickens was very English in placing the personal self-sacrifice of Sidney Carton far above the thoeretic idealism of the Revolutionaries: he saves a married nobleman, the husband of the woman he adores but has had to give up, from the guillotine, to which he himself goes with hope in his heart for a regenerated France. Dickens was a strong believer in progress but not in the progress attempted through Revolutionary violence. The "noisiest authorities" of every age consider their own time the best for good and evil (the superlative degree of comparison only) but Dickens contrasts them with the quietly heroic Sidney Carton.
This quotation simply means that it was a time of change. For change to happen there will be events that may alter the characters view of life. And to attain change, there were some drastic measures needed.
Yes, the ambivalence of the times, that two conflicting emotions can exist at the same time and in the same place and how we are able to deal with these changing times
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