Cultural hegemony in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities

This study delineates the use of cultural hegemony in Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859) through the vantage points of Italian critic Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who clarifies domination of the ruling class over ruled class. Cultural hegemony is the mastery of the middle class and governing groups among the lower divisions. Antonio Gramsci declares that the only means of keeping cultural hegemony by super leaders is not the handling of power and coercion; instead, consent, language, use of intellectual men and educational instruments are the ways regarding the implementation of cultural hegemony. In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens expresses the effects England and France, and manifests the tyrannical events of French Revolution. The beginning of A Tale of Two Cities asserts extreme tyranny and a violation of aristocrats as well as its ending through which the rebels punish sovereigns and the king after the French Revolution. Dickens also shows the ideals of the aristocracy with highlighting the function of cultural hegemony in France and England. Gramsci illustrates that the upper floors by way of indirect control over the mass media, educate their own feelings and values in society because domination is often taken out by means of consent, not compulsion. Ultimately, this research looks for the signs of cultural hegemony, and depicts the alarming events of French Revolution.