Of tides and men: history and agency in Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety

Resumen

Carlyle’s The French Revolution and Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities have been influential on the British construction of the French Revolution, and both historian and novelist share their perception of the Revolution as revenge exacted by the French people against their aristocratic oppressors. In making the leaders of the Revolution the protagonists of A Place of Greater Safety and in foregrounding their private lives, Mantel writes a new kind of historical novel in which the issue of agency is left unresolved.