A Character sketch of Tellson's Bank
In A Tale of Two Cities Dickens describes Tellson's Bank using the
humor and satire. The Tellson's Bank, a type, which actually existed
in 1780, is described by Dickens as "an old fashioned, boastful, small, dark
and ugly place with musty odour"(p.51). His derogation with this bank is
obvious through the whole description even when he relates staff as "the
oldest men carried on bussines gravely" and when he directly says that
young men taken to the tellson's bank were "kept unseen like a cheese
until they had the full Tellson's flavour and blue-mould upon them"(p.53),
he clearly shows his negative opinion toward this convective institution.
His disagreement with circumstances in the bank is reinforced by
strong Satire, which makes the Bank with the staff appear ridiculous in
order to show how foolish, wicked and incompetent they are. He uses
ironical even the satirical accounts as for example " Tellson's wanted no
elbow room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment.
Noakes and Co's might, or Snook Brother's might; but Tellson's, thank
Heaven." (p.51) or when he says " Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's
was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience." (p.51) to support his
critical ideas against the ignorance of a progress.
Using satire Dicken's relieved otherwise hard and very serious
story by propagation of new 'revolutionary' thinking. He actually calls
people to the acceptation of progress by humor and sarcastic criticism of
convective principles of synchronic society.