Lucie And Madame Defarge Analysis

Madame Defarge and Lucie Manette are portrayed differently in the way they handle their families being wronged in the past, because this difference makes them into the character they are in the story. On one hand, when Dr. Manette was released from prison, Lucie wastes no time trying to make up for the lost time with her father. From the moment she sees her father, she is tender, loving, and caring toward him in trying to help him. She shows these feelings toward her father when she says, “O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard, history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to …show more content…
Lucie as a character is loving, caring, and tender toward each person she meets, such as Charles, Sydney, and Mr. Lorry. On the other hand, Madame Defarge took the pain of losing her brother and sister and turned it into a hatred for the aristocrats of the French government. She makes this very clear when she says “Defarge, I was brought up among the fisherman of the sea-shore, and that peasant-family so injured by the two Evrémonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to me!” (Dickens 354). She feels that it is her responsibility to get justice for her family. This dark past of Madame Defarge’s makes her into the evil, blood thirsty, unrelenting character she is. Unlike Lucie who just looks at the future and making up for lost time, Madame Defarge is stuck in the past and getting revenge for the wrong-doings on her