Madame Defarge Character Analysis

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Recommended: Role of women in general literature

During the Victorian era (1837-1901), there was a specific image that women were expected to conform to. This image was called the “Angel in the House,” named after a poem by Coventry Patmore. The poem detailed how the ideal woman should act; submissive, loyal, and pure. This ideal is shown through certain characters in A Tale of Two Cities. Lucie Manette, for example, is almost an exact replica of the Angel. Miss Pross, though she does deviate from the ideal, also represents the Angel. Madame Defarge, on the other hand, is the inverse of the Victorian ideal. By modeling the key female characters in A Tale of Two Cities after the Victorian Angel, Charles Dickens is trying to say that all women should seek to impersonate the Angel.

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While Miss Pross and Lucie Manette both had qualities of the Angel, Madame Defarge has little, if any, similarities. The Angel was supposed to be tranquil, polite, and submissive to her husband. M. Defarge defies the Angel’s traits, and occasionally is the more dominant between her and her husband. The novel states, “Defarge, a weak minority, interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. ‘Tell the Wind and Fire where to stop; not me!’” (Dickens 339). Men were typically the stronger, more stubborn half of a relationship, while the women were passive, merciful, and “weaker”. However, Madame Defarge and her husband seem to switch roles, making M. Defarge the tougher, more masculine of the two. Madame Defarge’s masculine traits are much clearer when she is in battle. During the fall of the Bastille, she proclaims, “‘To me, women!’ cried madame his wife. ‘What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!’ And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge” (Dickens 213). M. Defarge’s viciousness and savagery go against everything the Angel stands for. Dickens uses Madame Defarge’s intense nature to show the way women should never

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