How Is Madame Defarge Presented In A Tale Of Two Cities

Theme of the war between passion and responsibility is conveyed in many stories. A character in a story is conflicted with pursuing a passion such as love, happiness, or revenge and acting on moral duty. Such characters are shown in “A Tale of Two Cities”. One of these characters is Madame Defarge. To pursue her passion of revenge Madame Defarge she has to go against her moral values.
Madame Defarge like most commoners before the revolution wanted to revolt against the monarchy. The difference between Madame Defarge and the rest of the commoners was her desire to revolt. Madame defarge was fueled by her deep hatred for the aristocrats especially the Evremondes since her family was killed by Marquis Evremonde. In spite of this Madame Defarge becomes deeply involved in the …show more content…
While the revolution is being planned Madame Defarge knits the names of people that are to be killed during the revolution. Instead of seeing the revolution as a chance to overthrow the monarchy she sees it as a chance to kill . After encountering the english spy John Barsads Dickens shows Madame Defarge’s reaction by her saying, "'Eh my faith. It is a portrait!' said madame, laughing.'He shall be registered to-morrow.'"(Dickens 180). Madame Defarge who rarely shows any emotion shows great enthusiasm knitting her next target, through this Dickens shows what really matters to Madame Defarge and that’s killing the aristocrats. Madame Defarge’s transformation is fully revealed when the revolution begins. As she sees the corpse of her enemy Dickens writes, “See!” yelled Madame Defarge, pointing to him with her knife. ‘See the old villain tied with ropes. They did well to tie a bunch of grass on his back. Ha, ha! That was done well. Now let him eat it!’ Madame put her knife under her arm and applauded as if she were at a play,” (Dickens 226). Madame Defarge has become so psychotic that she applauds the dead corpse complementing the