Madame Defarge’s Feline Transformation in A Tale of Two Cities Essay Sample

In ancient Egyptian culture, cats were believed to hold divine, almost sacred energy and power, and were seen as a vessel for gods to inhabit. Killing a cat would result in the capture and execution of that person, therefore giving cats an edge of protection in society. However, even without this advantage, cats turn from blind kittens to mature cats quickly and build the information and abilities they learned to effectively hunt prey, alluding to a lion looking for blood. In Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge goes through the transitions of a feline life as she grows in power and ability in the French Revolutions’ heart, Paris. Madame Defarge is a member of the third estate, a commoner, and the wife of a French shopkeeper who transforms from a follower to a leader through her acts of knitting, violence, and retaliation. It is only at the end of the novel that readers find out that her vengeance is in response to terrible wrongdoing and the wrenching apart of her family when she was younger by the French aristocracy. Madame Defarge shows her intelligence and huntress-like patience for revenge on her wrongdoers through her evolution as a leader and feline. Throughout A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens establishes Madame Defarge with a feline deposition that is first portrayed as a meek female kitten before she changes to a hunting cat that plays with its food, then revealing her true bloodthirsty nature of a tiger and devil-like creature that wreaks havoc on others, bringing attention to how Dickens uses the similar motif of a powerful feline to show the animalistic brutality that civilization shows in the worst of times. 

Madame Defarge is first portrayed as the ideal French commoner’s wife as she knits silently and seems to defer to her husband in a quiet, meek, kittenlike way that shows the feigned innocence of her character and the quiet yet steady beginning of the third estate resisting their oppressors. Madame Defarge is introduced as the simple wife of a wine shopkeeper, instead of the powerful female lead that she actually is. Her sole purpose seems to be to give signals to her husband about what is happening in the wine shop, but she never looks up, solely focusing on knitting (Dickens 55, 240, and 287). Madame Defarge’s symbol of knitting seems to simply be an accepted, feminine hobby, but will later evolve into something more sinister. She becomes characterized with “signs based on knitting [and] roses” (Lloyd 110), both of which are typically feminine and innocent symbols. Madame Defarge first appears to be blind to everything around her, and only focuses on herself, as a newborn kitten would do. Even when Lucie and Dr. Manette leave France, Madame Defarge simply knitted and “saw nothing” (Dickens 77). However, these are acts that Madame Defarge puts on to conceal her true self, using her ‘blindness’ as well as her sex and status to be able to see and hear all. Her act of blindness is what allows her to gain the knowledge and power that she does.

Madame Defarge’s kitten-like demeanor is replaced with the notion of a mature, calculating cat that begins to play with its prey, showing the evolution of Madame Defarge as she becomes more powerful and sinister, parallel to the French Revolution. Madame Defarge first shows that she sees and watches everything after the Marquis runs over an innocent child. The marquis pays the father in a few gold coins for the inconvenience, and an unseen person assumed to be Madame Defarge throws the gold coin back into the carriage. The marquis sweeps over the crowd, trembling with anger at such blatant disrespect, and everyone looks down except for “the woman who stood knitting”, who “looked the Marquis in the face” (Dickens 160). The marquis passes over her and “all the other rats” (Dickens 160). The marquis, a powerful figure in France, seems to think that he is the cat playing with his prey. This perception is later proved blatantly wrong when Madame Defarge supports the people as they tie up and kill Foulon, an aristocrat, and then “let[s] him go - as a cat might have done to a mouse” to the furious commoners, which is a death sentence (Dickens 309). The Marquis and other wealthy figures in France become the prey of the commoners and Madame Defarge after the Revolution begins to attract supporters. The kitten seems to fall away to show a more mature and developed hunting cat with the information she learned while pretending to be a blind newborn kitten.  Monsieur Defarge shows his support for the bloodthirstiness of his wife when he states, “Show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it” (Dickens 241). Once Madame Defarge had her first taste of blood, she began to lust after it, reaching the turning point between a cunning cat and something more violent and deadly. Madame Defarge starts as a feminine kitten and develops into an assertive cat  as more of her character unfolds. Even the ‘feminine hobbies’ that Madame Defarge is characterized by turn dark as we learn that “Madame Defarge … knit[s] in service of violence” (Kucich 101). Madame Defarge’s simple act of knitting ends up being a knitted list of those condemned to die by the hand of the revolutionists, and once a name has been knitted in, it is as if it were placed on a gravestone. Dickens conveys violent act by stating, “[Madame Defarge] tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe” (248). The simple act of knitting, which is associated with Madame Defarge throughout the novel, takes a sinister turn as Madame Defarge evolves into a hunter instead of the prey that she first appears to be.

As Madame Defarge becomes more bloodthirsty and brutal, she transforms into a tiger and a devil that is unleashed amongst its prey, becoming a beast that seems unstoppable in its strength, highlighting the peak ferocity of the French Revolution as it changes from stopping the oppressors to taking innocent lives in frenzied acts of killing to make an effort to right what has been wronged. After Dickens foreshadows the spilling of blood with the drinking of the spilled wine, “those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth” (51). The hungriest of the crowd now possess an animalistic feature and the first mention of a tiger. Although Madame Defarge did not partake in drinking the wine, she oversaw it as the owner of the wineshop as she would later oversee the guillotine and register of those to die in the thick of the French Revolution. Madame Defarge is the embodiment of the most violent, hungry revolutionaries, so this scene not only foreshadows the spilling of blood and the hunger of the people for this blood but also that the worst and most violent of the people will become like a tiger. In this indirect way, Madame Defarge is first compared to a tiger that will drink from the blood of the revolution. As tension builds in the revolutionaries, Monsieur Defarge expresses his impatience about the slow preparation for the action of the revolution. However, Madame Defarge comforts her husband by assuring, “When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained - not shown - yet always ready” (Dickens 249). Madame Defarge refers to herself and the anger of the revolution as a tiger and devil:  hungering, frightening, and damning. She is preparing to pounce on her prey once the chain becomes so taunt that it snaps. She hides herself as a kitten as she prepares the anger against the aristocracy and remains ignored even when she starts to hunt and seek out her prey. However, she is ready to be released when the third estate snap, bringing catastrophic damage and vast amounts of blood. After Madame and Monsieur Defarge shows their truly violent sides at the Storming of the Bastille, there seems to be a “transformation of rational figures like the Defarge couple into maddening beasts” (Kucich 101). There appears to be a release of the tiger and devil that will grow into an even more sickening beast as Madame Defarge gains more power and spills more blood. It is only until later in the story that we discover the beginnings of her rage. It comes from her childhood when her family was destroyed by aristocrats. Madame Defarge prepares to retaliate her entire life, until “opportunity had developed her into a tigress” (Dickens 392). The way that she calculates and plans is described as “an animal-like beauty” (Huttler 10) that is admired yet sickening. Madame Defarge evolves from a cat to a tiger as the third estate begins to release their rage and changed into the terrifying hunter that she truly is.

The notion of the untouchable cat in Egyptian society follows Madame Defarge through her life as people fear yet revere her, allowing her to escape death many times, similar to the supposed 9 lives of a cat. Madame Defarge uses each of these escapes to grow more powerful and cunning, providing her with the ability to transform from a kitten to a tiger. Madame Defarge’s transformation is paralleled by the rise of the French Revolution, showcasing the growing power in the third estate as well as the animalistic features that emerge quickly after wrongdoing and violence and how people bottle up feelings of vengeance, only to release them like a tiger once released.