How can I compare and contrast the two female characters, Miss Lucie and Madame Defarge?A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Of all the novels that Charles Dickens has
written, A Tale of Two Cities has received the most criticism
regarding characterization. Critics especially remark upon Lucie as the stereotypical
Victorian heroine who is often emotionally reticent and faints under stress. While this
may have been true-to-life for Dickens, critics say, the passage of time has made this
stock character obsolete both as a literary figure and social actuality.  Certainly,
Lucie Manette is a passive character that Dickens has failed to bring to life. For
instance, she inspires love in almost every character around her as "the golden thread,"
but the reader must take this on faith as there is no dialogue or action to point to as
proof of this. So, she is, in a sense, a catalyst for others, inspiring them to
transform themselves.

While Madame Defarge is also in many
ways a stock character as the passionately vengeful revolutionary with an idee
fixe ofdestroying every aristocrat she can, especially the Evremonde family,
she is anything but lifeless like Lucie. In the wine shop, she picks her teeth, raises
her eyebrows, looks suspiciously around, knits relentlessly, ferociously ties coins in
knots, beating them on a table as though they were the necks of the First Estate.  When
her husband has misgivings about including Dr. Manette in the roll of those to be
executed, Madame Defarge interprets his scruple as weakness.  Then, as Ernest Defarge
asks if the revolution will not come too late for them, anyway, Madame Defarge answers
her husband as though she were an element of nature
herself.

“A
long time, I suppose,” said Defarge.

“But when it is ready,
it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always
preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep
it.”

She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled
a foe.

“I tell thee,” said madame, extending her right
hand, for emphasis, “that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and
coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always
advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider
the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the
Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things
last? Bah! I mock
you.”

However, although she
is an elemental force, there is in Madame Defarge some of the makings of a rounder
character as she secretly and cunningly arranges for Darnay's rearrest, a plan which
displays intelligence and malice.  Her knitting indicates, too, her patience and her
intense hatred and desire to retaliate. So bent is she upon the destruction of the
Evremondesthat Madame Defarge intrudes upon the Darnay household, seeking Charles so she
can shoot him and fighting Miss Pross until her death. If Lucie acts as a catalyst who
gives new life--physical or spiritual--Therese Defarge is the paraclete of
death.