The Golden Thread

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Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is a classic novel that takes place during the French revolution. Lucie Manette is a key character, and without her the plot could not exist. Lucie is often called the ideal Victorian woman; quiet, loving, and submissive. Dickens develops her character through comparisons to the opposite Madame Defarge.
The novel is about a man named Charles Darnay who is caught in between France and England during the revolution. The peasants of France rebel against the cruel noblemen, and Darnay happens to be a member of a family of noblemen, the Marquis, but before the rebellion he gives up all property in France and moved to England and changed his name so he could rid himself of his cruel heritage. Meanwhile, a man who had been held in the Bastille, a prison in France, for eighteen years for helping victims of the Marquis as a doctor, one of which we later find out to be Madame Defarge’s sister, is released, and his daughter, Lucie, and old friend, Mr. Lorry, come to get him in France from no other than the Defarges. The man, Doctor Manette, is shaken by his experience in the Bastille, and sits alone in a dark room making shoes, but Lucie, his now grown-up, ‘perfect’ daughter helps bring him back to a normal state of mind. They come back to England on the same boat as Charles Darnay.
Five years later, Lucie and Doctor Manette are called to testify in a trial of treason against
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Darnay. They are to testify that they witnessed Darnay exchange papers with a Frenchman before getting on the boat to England, but with a compassionate speech by Lucie, and a trick by Sydney Carton who has an overwhelming resemblance to Darnay, Darnay is found not guilty. Later, both Darnay and Carton fall in love w...

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... Carton is the unsuccessful version of Darnay, and Madame Defarge is the strong, angered version of Lucie.
Dickens describes Lucie as “the golden thread” that binds the story and characters together. She has a huge involvement in the plot, and the other characters lives. Although many describe her as too submissive, and a stereotype of Victorian women, she represents bravery. Through the comparison of her to Madame Defarge, Dickens show us this.

Works Cited
Glancy, Ruth. “Ruth Glancy on Lucie Manette.” Bloom, Harold. Charles’ Dickens’s A Tale of Two
Cities Bloom’s Notes. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996.

Hutter, Albert D. “Nation and Generation.” Bloom, Harold. Modern Critical Interpretations:
Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. U.S.: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2003.

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