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영어

The paper aims to analyze the microscopic narrative so called ‘herstory,’ female or feminist viewpoints on history of modernity in terms of melodrama in The Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens. The historical background of The Tale of Two Cities is the revolutionary period in France and England from 1775 to 1793 including the French Revolution and the American Revolutionary War. The novel not only represents the historical development of human rights in the birth of modern subjectivity based on reason and rationality, but also releases melodramatic explosive power of extravagant emotions, feelings, and affects. The main historical drive to move rational male modern subjects like Alexandre Manette, Charles Darnay, and Javis Lorry in the turbulent era, comes from emotional female subjects like Lucie Manette and Terese Defarge. And hidden narratives of her-story control the manifested history because the decisive motives of the French Revolution and final transformation of Sydney Carton from a meaningless machine to a sacrificial Christ are derived from the herstory about Teresa’s revenge and Lucie’s love. The significance of herstory with respect to melodramatic subjective feelings can shed new light on the buried affects in the narratives under the surface of objective modern history. (Kyung Hee University)