"Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

"golden thread," or blonde hair. Lucie weaves a pattern of love and
light, holding her family together, while Madame Defarge never knits
a sweater, only death.

Occupying relatively little space in the novel, Madame Defarge has
nonetheless been called its most memorable character. She and her
husband have a curiously modern air. Perhaps you can imagine the
Defarges by picturing today's guerrilla fighters in embattled
underdeveloped countries. Madame Defarge is a professional who knows
how to use political indoctrination. On a fieldtrip to Versailles
with the little mender of roads she identifies the dressed-up
nobility as "dolls and birds." She's teaching the mender of roads to
recognize his future prey.

As you read, try seeing Madame Defarge as neither political force nor
mythic figure, but as a human being. Her malignant sense of being
wronged by the St. Evremondes turns her almost--but not quite--into
a machine of vengeance. Dickens inserts details to humanize her:
she is sensitive to cold; when the spy John Barsad enters her shop,
she nods with "a stern kind of coquetry"; at the very end of the
book, making tracks for Lucie's apartment, she strides with "the
supple freedom" of a woman who has grown up on the beach. Do you
think such "personal" touches make Therese Defarge less terrifying,
since she's so clearly human? Or does she seem more nightmarish,
because, violent and vengeful, she's one of us?

A TALE OF TWO CITIES: MONSIEUR DEFARGE

Keeper of the wine shop in Saint Antoine, leader of the attack on the
Bastille, Defarge is a man of divided loyalties. He owes allegiance
to 1. Dr. Manette, his old master; 2. the ideals of the
Revolution; 3. his wife, Therese. A strong, forceful character with
natural authority, Defarge can for a time serve three masters.

There's no conflict of interest between taking in Dr. Manette after
his release from the Bastille and furthering the Revolution. Defarge
actually displays his confused charge to members of the Jacquerie--a
group of radical peasants--as an object lesson in government evil.

Only when Revolutionary fervor surges out of bounds are Defarge's
triple loyalties tested. He refuses to aid Charles Darnay--Dr.
Manette's son-in-law--when Darnay is seized as an aristocrat; by now
the orders are coming from Defarge's bloodthirsty wife. Goaded by
Madame, Defarge ends by denouncing Darnay and providing the evidence
(ironically, in Dr. Manette's name) needed to condemn him. Defarge
stops just short of denouncing Dr. Manette and Lucie, too, but there
are hints from Madame and friends that he'd better start toeing the
line.

Dickens leaves us with the thought that, finally, Defarge is