Tale of Two Cities 5

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens and Students

of English as a Second Language

PART 5

I summarise my thoughts briefly – in order to learn to speak English you must read English, but you must not read old English (language) literature.

I offer two pieces of evidence on which I rest my case, two of my favourite passages from ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ –

‘Young Jerry seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated.’

[end of Book II, Chapter 1 headed ‘Five Years Later’] And –

‘It’s hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It’s hard enough to kill him, but it’s wery hard to spile him, sir.’

[Jerry Cruncher, Book II Chapter II headed ‘A Sight’] [‘wery’ is Dicklish for ‘very’]

A reversionary interest is a sophisticated concept of English law. Broadly it refers to the position where one person has the use of property [the income or enjoyment] usually for life, and someone else has the benefit of it when the first person dies.

The interest of the second person, Young Jerry in this case, is called a reversionary interest. Dickens, who had trained as a lawyer, is making a joke because he is referring to the mundane and worthless straw, which contrasts with the large sums of money or estates that are usually reflected in such an interest.

This is one of the best legal jokes in all of the novels by Charles Dickens. Really. It’s funny. Trust me.

‘Spile’ is Dicklish for ‘spoil’. Jerry is making a heavily ironic joke, that anything can be worse than death. But he means ‘spile’ in a deeper sense which is not ironic – he means desecration of the body.

Quartering is described elsewhere in the book. It means cutting the body into four pieces. It was widely believed that the soul of a body that had been cut up in this way, desecrated, could not then go to meet its Maker.

And in that light it was a terrible punishment that reached beyond death and into eternity. Jerry [and the author] are expressing their revulsion at this practice which, as Jerry says, was barbarous.

Now, I can guess how long it would take me to explain all this to students, and I would hope that they would learn something of value in the process. But would they be learning English?

Still summarising, I see that I have not given due attention to the contributions of wise and experienced teachers in the classroom, but that falls outside my terms.

I give all credit to teachers of English wherever they may be in the world. I simply suggest that the time a teacher must spend guiding students through the doubtful vocabulary, the legal background and the dead social details of another country and in another age, could be better spent teaching English, the language.

For the truth is that we are talking – still – about an author scaling some of the highest peaks ever reached in the English language. The air is thinner here, and you can fall. You have to be equipped; you have to be ready.

To share in the joy of Dickens you must bring a large store of English with you, even if it is still growing. Because Charles Dickens does not teach English – he teaches life.

Main Menu