Why did Charles Dickens misrepresent the French Revolution?

[Politruk]

In Dickens' telling in A Tale of Two Cities, the revolution is a thing planned years in advance by a secret society — not Freemasons or Illuminati, just a group of peasants and shopkeepers who meet in secret and call each other "Jacques." ("Jacques Bonhomme" — "Jack Goodman" — had for centuries been a generic name for a French peasant, which was why the peasant revolt of the 14th Century was called the "Jacquerie.")

This is an important plot point, because after the revolution starts this organization has a lot of clout, indeed seems at times to be the actual government, and the Defarges are leading figures in it. This leads Darnay to be tried and condemned, for crimes of the St. Evremondes that only the Defarges remember.

In actual history, no such thing existed. The revolution was started by educated bourgeoisie who were elected representatives in the Third Estate. The lower classes did not get involved until "things in general" grew chaotic enough for them to loot their lords' chateaux, or commit acts of mob violence like the September Massacres, and get away with it.

Apart from the storming of the Bastille, Dickens never even mentions any of the really important events of the revolution, such as the Oath of the Tennis Court or the king's flight to Varennes.

 

[HordHolm]

Full diclosure: I avoid Dickens (and most other 19th Century literature) like the plague - 40 years out of school, and that's the last time I touched old Charles. But, some thoughts:

Dickens was writing only 70 odd years after the Revolution, within living memory of some people, and what followed until 1815 was definitely within the memory of many. In England, the wars with the French Republic and Napoleon were the greatest conflict that country had ever been involved in until that time.
He was writing in a country that, whilst Parliamentary Democratic in nature, was very hierarchical and had a beloved monarch (Victoria had yet to lose much of her popularity by going into seclusion following Albert's death). Anti-monarchical revolution was not a favoured viewpoint except within a small minority. A lower-class conspiratorial plot would feed very well into common fears, magnified by...
He was also writing only a decade or two after the events of 1848, which put the right-royal shits up a lot of people in the upper and middle-classes across Europe. Dickens was writing for a middle-class audience who were, almost certainly, not generally sympathetic to the political aspirations of the working class/peasantry and might easily have seen such as a direct threat to them.
This period was beginning to see the growth of anarchist and Fenian conspiracies and the like. It was certainly not beyond the realms for a writer to play into the fears of conspiracy.
Lastly, he was writing fiction and not a history textbook.

 

[Politruk]

Lastly, he was writing fiction and not a history textbook.

It's historical fiction, and there are limits to reasonable artistic license in that field. This is like writing HF about Julius Caesar and blaming his assassination (44 B.C.) on a Christian conspiracy.

 

[StillStunned]

Or someone making a movie with Napoleon leading a cavalry charge at the Battle of Waterloo...

Or someone painting the death of the Marquis de Montcalm at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, and including palm trees that Quebec is known for worldwide...