Alexandre Manette

Doctor Alexandre Manette is a character in Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale of Two Cities. He is Lucie's father, a brilliant physician, and spent eighteen years as a prisoner in the Bastille.

At the start of the novel, Manette does nothing but make shoes, a pastime that he adopted to distract himself from the tortures of prison. As he overcomes his past as a prisoner, however, he proves to be a kind, loving father who prizes his daughter’s happiness above all things. When Charles Darnay is arrested in France, Manette is his witness that he is innocent. Unfortunately, Darnay is arrested again, due to a diary that Manette wrote when he was in jail, which sends Darnay back to prison. Darnay is forced to go again, but Sydney Carton (out of love for Lucie Manette) takes his place in the guillotine and dies for him.

Analysis

Dickens uses Doctor Manette in his novel, 'A Tale of Two Cities', to illustrate one of the dominant motifs of the novel: the essential mystery that surrounds every human being. As Jarvis Lorry makes his way toward France to recover Manette, the narrator reflects that "every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other." For much of the novel, the cause of Manette’s incarceration remains a mystery both to the other characters and to the reader. Even when the story concerning the evil Marquis St. Evrémonde comes to light, the conditions of Manette's imprisonment remain hidden. Though the reader never learns exactly how Manette suffered, his relapses into trembling sessions of shoemaking evidence the depth of his misery. Like Carton, Manette undergoes a drastic change over the course of the novel. He is transformed from an insensate prisoner who mindlessly cobbles shoes into a man of distinction. The contemporary reader tends to understand human individuals not as fixed entities but rather as impressionable and reactive beings, affected and influenced by their surroundings and by the people with whom they interact. In Dickens' age, however, this notion was rather revolutionary. Manette’s transformation testifies to the tremendous impact of relationships and experience on life. The strength that he displays while dedicating himself to rescuing Darnay seems to confirm the lesson that Carton learns by the end of the novel — that not only does one's treatment of others play an important role in others' personal development, but also that the very worth of one's life is determined by its impact on the lives of others. His daughter "recalls him to life" after he is rescued from his cell in the Bastille. At the end of the first book of Tale of Two Cities he is asked: "'I hope you care to be recalled to life?' And the old answer: 'I can't say.'"

Cinematic and Theatrical Portrayals

In the 2008 Broadway musical adaptation of 'A Tale of Two Cities,' Dr. Alexandre Manette is played by Gregg Edelman.