While walking around and exploring London, one of the first things I noticed was the extreme juxtaposition between the historic, classic architecture that has been preserved for centuries and the modern, sleek, glass buildings that accompany them. Everywhere you look, there are pubs, towers, and chapels that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, yet on the same blocks there are highly contemporary and modern corporate skyscrapers.
This contrast is a great representation of London, at least to my understanding of it. London is an incredibly historic city, and it is a city that is proud of its history and that seeks to preserve it and honor it as much as possible. This can be seen through the architecture as mentioned before, but also through the preservation of customs and traditions. One of the streets we walked down was lined with countless gentleman’s clubs, membership only clubs in which a clientele of mostly older men gather to have a drink and read the paper. These clubs may seem like quite an archaic concept, but the tradition has prevailed and the clubs still have plenty of regularly attending members.
This is just one example of London and the greater UK’s attachment and loyalty to its past. The most significant of these is, of course, the monarchy. The British Monarchy no longer holds any political power, but it still stands as a symbol of the United Kingdom, and it holds an air of importance across the nation. Depending on your point of view, London could be a city that honors its historical legacy by preserving the old, or it could be a city that hangs onto an era that no longer exists.
On the other hand, the modern, glass skyscrapers that fill London’s skyline represent the other side of London: an incredibly modern, innovative, melting pot of a city. London is one of the leading cities in the world when it comes to art, culture, entertainment, industry, finance, and education. While it is a city that is steeped in thousands of years of history, it is also on the cutting edge of culture.
The skyline shown in this picture is a perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. On display in the center of the image is the Tower of London. The White Tower, which lies in the center of the Tower of London, was built in 1078. This building has nearly a thousand years of history, serving as everything from an armory to a prison, and standing as a representation of the monarchy for many centuries. In this same image, on the right end of the more modern buildings, stands a contemporary piece of architecture colloquially known as The Gherkin, a cylindrical corporate skyscraper that gets its nickname from the fact that it kind of looks like a pickle. The Gherkin was built in 2004. Nearly a thousand years separates these two buildings, and they look absolutely nothing alike, yet they both decorate the skyline of London, and somehow it makes perfect sense.
It’s especially interesting to notice these differences while bookpacking A Tale of Two Cities. It is quite a unique experience to see the locations from the novel nearly exactly as they would have looked at the time it took place juxtaposed with the modern developments of today’s London. We went to have a meal at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a nearly five hundred year old pub that Charles Dickens frequented (which was also likely the inspiration for the pub that Stryver and Sydney Carton met at near the beginning of the book). When you enter the pub, it’s like entering a time machine. You can practically picture Dickens sitting in the corner of the pub working on his latest novel. The dim, moody lighting, the old wooden floors and creaky stairs, an old figurine resembling the parrot that used to hang out behind the bar. Then you take a step outside, and suddenly you’re in a bustling, modern, corporate city filled with finance workers on their lunch break.
This comparison and coexistence of old and new ties in perfectly with the texts we have been reading, both A Tale of Two Cities and Les Misérables. These are both historical novels whose plots very directly hinge on the history of the time in which they take place. A Tale of Two Cities is very explicitly a story of the French Revolution that took place in the late 18th century, the entire plot of the novel is contingent on it. Les Misérables takes place during the June Rebellion of 1832, which is massively important to the plot. These novels firmly take place in very specific moments in history for very specific reasons.
However, despite this grounding in history, the stories told and lessons learned from these novels can be interpreted through a very modern lens. A Tale of Two Cities is a story of social injustice and inequality, and the inevitable violence and destruction it leads to. While it is centered around the French Revolution, the story can absolutely be related to this present moment in history. Not to mention, the contrast between new and old quite directly relates to the iconic introduction to the novel (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”), in which Dickens uses juxtaposition to introduce the complicated nature of that moment in history.
The same can be said about Les Misérables, perhaps to an even greater extent. Although it is an old novel set nearly two hundred years ago, its morals can be applied to today. Jean Valjean’s story is one of redemption and rehabilitation, Javert’s represents the injustice and absoluteness of the law and the criminal justice system, Fantine represents the crushing weight of poverty. Just like walking through London and seeing ancient towers next to modern skyscrapers, reading these novels introduces you to historical events and their modern parallels.
