Late Post: Madame Defarge

Madame Defarge’s involvement in the revolution was essential to the novel. Her role as an (if not the) organizer of the revolution was of great consequence. However, her reasons were of a deeply personal nature rather than of a higher nationalistic cause. She is then the initiator of revolution not because of her belief but her ability to mobilize and lead the people.

There is no doubt that Madame Defarge had devoted her life to the revolution. When told that they might not be alive to see triumph she maintains a somewhat optimistic view claiming victory will come none-the-less (“we shall have helped it… nothing that we do, is done in vain”). This might lead one to believe that her reasons were altruistic, considering her own lack of impoverished state.

It is not until the third book that the reader finds out her motive for participating in the revolution, but from the very beginning it is evident from her devotion to the cause that there seems to be a personal attachment. Her constant knitting and “watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything” only prove her entire life is dedicated to the cause, leaving no room for error (…she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided).

When Lucie implored Madame Defarge to help her husband she replied that she has no reason to do so when her people have suffered the same way at the hands of the aristocracy (“… All our lives we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness…and neglect of all kinds?... Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?”). While she did want to see the fall of aristocracy it is the Evremondes in particular she wanted retribution from. Here we see how strongly she felt about getting revenge. For her, revenge was not simply punishment for the perpetrator of crime but his entire family (“but, the Evremonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must follow the husband and father”). To a certain extent, despite having been able to run away and not coming under direct harm, she herself felt like a victim. She even visits Lucie and her daughter to see the sufferings of the “Evremondes” first hand.