Double Double Doctor Doctor..Double Doctor!

"'Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was in his ear. 'O me, O me! All is lost!' cried she, wringing her hands. 'What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, and is making shoes!' Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy...Doctor Manette took what was given to him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see" (202).

Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross enter panic mode when they see Doctor Manette making shoes because that is what he did to pass his time as a prisoner. When they ask him questions and talk about his life and his daughter, even themselves, he does not understand what they are talking about or who they are. Something about his conversation with Charles Darnay prior to the wedding ceremony, made Doctor Manette enter his previous blank state of mind - he went into relapse after doing so well with Lucie by his side. The double factor of this situation lies in the Doctor(s) identity. It's almost as if he has a double identity - Doctor Manette, Lucie's father, and The Doctor of Beauvais, the prisoner. On pages 196 and 197 when Doctor Manette is reflecting on his time in prison, Dickens calls him the Doctor of Beauvais; but otherwise, he is referred to as Doctor Manette. It's like the doctor suffers from multiple identity disorder, because we know it's not just a mood change since he is not aware of these two identities. On pages 207 and 208 it seems as though the doctor is back to his Doctor Manette self, but he is very confused. At breakfast he looks at his hands many times, and does not remember how they got to be so weathered - he does not remember how he vigorously worked on making a pair of shoes. "Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the Doctor looked troubled" (196). And then, the worried Mr. Lorry brings up a situation involving the "case of a particularly dear friend of" his. Mr. Lorry proceeds to tell Doctor Manette his own biography and the doctor is completely oblivious that this is what he has been for the past nine days and nine nights. The Doctor then diagnoses what he doesn't know is himself and says, "it is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled - say, under certain circumstances - say, on a particular occasion." The entire thing is dramatic irony because we all know that Doctor Manette is the one Mr. Lorry speaks worriedly of, but he does not. Whatever Charles Darnay confessed to his now father-in-law, brought out the "second identity" in Doctor Manette because of the memory that was triggered. It must have been and extremely painful memory, indeed.