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Society and Class in Charles Dickens a Tale of Two Cities

In a Tale of Two Cities author, Charles Dickens, uses different characters to represent and emphasize different social classes in society during the period of the French revolution and during the present period being when the book was written and published. Dickens uses characters to express the hatred and tyranny between classes. . In a Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens takes you into the life’s of individuals before and during the French Revolution; the characters class in society becomes a major factor in the way they are portrayed. Can some ones class or social ranking completely change the type of person they are to become? It seems that in the novel this is true.
Madame Defrage is one of the character used to represent the commoner during the French Revolution. She runs a wine shop that becomes the nerve center for all things revolutionary and she never stops knitting. Madame Defrage hates the abuse the aristocracy afflicts on to the common people such as herself and her family. Her sister was raped by the marquis St Evremonde, her brother was killed trying to avenge his sister’s death, and her father died of grief. Dickens explains that Madame Defrage was, “imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong”, along with a “inveterate hatred of a class” (3.14.33). Throughout book two of a tale of two cities she shows a deep hatred for anyone against the revolution or for anyone who is associated with the aristocracy or family to the aristocracy. The awful things that members of the aristocracy did to her and her family where the “opportunity (that) had developed her into a tigress” (3.14.33). Madame Defrage’s childhood growing up as a commoner faced with the a...

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In a Tale of Two Cities the characters are not very in-depth, most of the time the reader is just getting the surface of the characters. The reader does see however strong distinctions between social classes in the society of the time. The society to which a character is born can completely determine the type of person he become, except for maybe in Darnay’s case. Madame Defrage, the Monseigneur, and Lucie however show the difference in social classes can create very different people. The reader can assume Madame Defrage wouldn’t be so cold and the Monseigneur wouldn’t be so pompous if it weren’t for their social order. In a tale of two Cities society and class are major themes of the novel Charles Dickens uses characters as a means to show the different classes in depth so that the reader can gain a better understanding of the big picture and the time.

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