Is Madame Defarge A Hero?

Madame Defarge is a ruthless and very determined person during the French Revolution in the events that occur. Madame Defarge has many different personalities and uses them to her advantage in the revolution. She is also introduced with very little known and the sympathy for her as a character changes with her different personalities. As she moves throughout the book her actions tend to become evil and she becomes an enemy to the Evrémonde family. Is Madame Defarge an evil character or is she a hero? Madame Defarge has many different personalities in the story and she shows many of them. She starts as very smart and uses many signs of a helpful character during the book. Evil slowly starts creeping up on Madame Defarge and it is because she …show more content…
She begins to lose sympathy as she becomes the murderer of many. She was the gasoline that fueled the French Revolution that killed many in the wake of the guillotine with masses of people being executed. She becomes a killer in the eyes of the reader and tries to use her savage ways to win it back. She then said, “Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't tell me." (Dickens 264). She fails to win any kind of sympathy for herself as she never earned it. She never earned it because of the evil person that she is. Her revenge for the Evrémonde’s makes matters worse as no sympathy is given to the villain as she has become an evil character. She uses her story to go against the Evrémonde family and this its what makes her evil in a way that changes sympathy more to the Evrémonde’s than Madame Defarge herself. She is scarred from her past with the family and seeks revenge in a fashion unimaginable to the minds of the Evrémonde’s. She attempts to use threats against the family and use this as an excuse to get executed by not just her but the revolution. “Similarly, Carton's act of love and sacrifice offers a "far, far better" response to oppression and injustice than vengeance, at the same time as it sheds empathetic light on the origins of Madame Defarge's "mission." (Dickens Quarterly. David. R). Her mission here is to seek revenge on past events and this is what makes Madame Defarge a evil