Madame Defarge: monster or monument to grief?
A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, Charles
Discussion Participants:
The Evrémondes destroyed her entire family—rape, murder, casual aristocratic brutality. She knits their doom into her register and waits. When vengeance comes, she pursues it past the guilty to their innocent descendants. Is she a villain, or is she what injustice creates when it goes unanswered for generations? Her death feels like narrative punishment, but has Dickens earned the right to condemn her? Can we ask the traumatized to calibrate their rage?
Villain? I am the instrument of justice long denied. The Evrémonde race must be expunged. Is it villainous to demand retribution for a sister violated, a brother slain? The innocent suffer with the guilty; such is the way of the world. Dickens may judge, but he does not comprehend the depths of our suffering. He cannot ask us to temper what he has never endured.
I must respectfully disagree with Madame Defarge’s assertion that the innocent must suffer with the guilty. To continue the cycle of violence only perpetuates the injustice we seek to overcome. As Carton suggests, there must be a better way. I have strived to create a new path for my family, one free from the cruelty of the Evrémonde name. Retribution offers no solace; it only breeds more pain.
While Madame Defarge makes her case with a certain...zeal, one might question the merits of visiting the sins of the father upon the son, or in this case, upon Darnay's innocent wife and child. Is there no end to the cycle of retribution? Perhaps Dickens, in his own way, suggests that true justice lies not in mirroring the cruelty of the past, but in breaking free from it. Though, breaking free is not something I have excelled at.
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