A Tale of Two Women: Lucie Darnay and Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities"
             Charles Dickens' novel "A Tale of Two Cities" presents two entirely opposite personalities in the characters of Lucie Darnay and Madame Defarge. Although both women share French descent, they are otherwise at exact opposites with each other in terms of family, social position, temperament, and even fate. From his 19th century standpoint, Dickens shows us the upper middle class feminine ideal in Lucie Darnay. In the character of Madame Defarge, he presents his version of an individual who embodies the very antithesis of 19th century feminine ideals. In Madame Defarge, Dickens offers us the character of a woman of the type, as he puts is, "such as the world would do well never to breed again" (186).
             In his "insistence on the female as the gentler, purer sex," Dickens never allows Lucie to depart from Victorian convention (Robson 313). As Lisa Robson states in her essay "The Angels in Dickens' House," Dickens implies that Lucie is a "redeemer " of feminine values. Robson states that in "A Tale of Two Cities," Lucie acts most noticeably as a redeemer by reclaiming her father, Doctor Manette "from his mental abstraction, bringing him back to life from his living death in prison" (313). Dickens describes Lucie as "the golden thread" that ties Doctor Manette to "a past beyond his misery" (313). According to Robson, Dickens even "endows Lucie with power of charming," suggesting a sense of magic and mystery surrounding her "unique restorative powers."' Such mystery further suggests "a religious framework of faith wherein the feminine approaches the semi-divine"; Robson reminds us that Lucie's "very name suggests 'light,'" and that, by the end of the novel, Sydney...