Long while back, you answer a question about inspiration for Madame Defarge in the novel "A Tale of Two Cities" and I guess it just stuck in my mind since I was just reading about political cartoonist of the day savaging of Theroigne de Mericourt and Olympe de Gouges and these cartoons may have helped Charles Dickens in his creation of the vengeful tricoteuse Madame Defarge (Thérèse from Theroigne and Defarge from de Gouges), but didn't much more about them?
I'm guessing you're talking about this post.
Theroigne de Mericourt was a leading French revolutionary, who was heavily involved in forming mixed-gender and women's political clubs. She became quite famous when she was arrested by the Austrians and rather violently interrogated as a supposed instigator of the Women's March on Versailles. She returned to France a revolutionary martyr, spent some time trying to recruit women's revolutionary battalions, and then was involved in the Insurrection of August 10th, where republican forces stormed the Tuileries Palace and forced the abolition of the monarchy.
While initially quite close to the Jacobins, Théroigne allied with the Girondins and was assaulted by pro-Jacobin women, requiring Marat's rescue. However, the head injuries she suffered during the attack led to increasing mental issues, and she was institutionalized from 1794 until her death in 1817.
I do find it interesting that, if Dickins did base Defarge on Théroigne, he left out the major (and visually dramatic) aspect of her public persona - her habit of wearing men's clothes, which was a constant theme of both her negative and positive press. (Lots of classical references to Amazons.)
If Théroigne was the street-fighter and orator, De Gouges was the intellectual. A voluminous playwright and pamphleteer and a constant fixture of the leading salons of Paris, De Gouges was probably best known for her "Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen" - which criticized the misogyny and patriarchy of male revolutionaries and called for equal rights for women.
Like Théroigne, De Gouges was a leading member of the Amis de la Verité, the most prominent women's political club in Paris. In addition to her advocacy for women's equality, De Gouges was a leading abolitionist and was accused of having incited the Haitian Revolution with her anti-slavery plays, which is just wild.
However, De Gouges lost a lot of political capital for opposing the execution of the King and preferring constitutional monarchy to repiblicanism. Like Théroigne, De Gouges backed the Girondins and criticized the Montagnards in the press - which led her to being arrested as a royalist, put on trial for sedition and monarchism, and ultimately executed by order of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
I don't think De Gouges is a good fit for Defarge - not only was she firmly bourgeois rather than sans-culotte, and the furthest thing from a Jacobin radical, but there's not a trace of De Gouges' literary and theatrical background in Defarge.
So yeah, if these women were the basis for Dickens' Defarge, he didn't do a very good job of highlighting the things that made them famous in the first place.
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I’ve just been made aware of the most recent shenanigans involving Rosie Darby (this post sums things up pretty well, for those who don’t know what happened). The basic gist is that someone tagged her on a tweet for a Stede Bonnet version of the “gay loser” meme that’s been going around on Twitter, clearly intending it as a joke...but instead of taking it as such, Rosie took the (very obviously Photoshopped) picture seriously, and reacted thusly:
First of all, I am not sure that pun was intended, because going by her previous clashes with the OFMD fandom, I am beginning to think this woman neither possesses any discernible sense of humor nor actually knows what a pun is. Second--and more importantly--it’s very apparent that Rosie seems to see “gay” as an insult, which is distressing at best and very, very gross at worst, especially given Rhys’ role as Stede and the fact that a large majority of his fans are now members of the LGBTQ+ community.
That Rosie’s initial impulse is to defend Rhys’s sexuality and reaffirm her stance as his wife by attacking a 15-year-old queer OFMD fan is appalling but also incredibly telling, and it makes me feel the need to very specifically mention Georgia Tennant.
As my followers know, I am absolutely more than willing to call Georgia out on her occasional bullshit…but in this instance she is completely and totally the anti-Rosie. She has literally referred to Michael as David’s “other wife”:
...And basically has no problem whatsoever being like “YEP, WE’RE POLY. DAVID AND MICHAEL ARE FUCKING. THAT’S TOTALLY COOL” (albeit in a much more subtle, British kind of way).
There is a stark contrast between Rosie’s not-so-mildly homophobic response to that recent tweet and Georgia’s continuous fanning of the flames of speculation about the relationship between Michael and David. She clearly does not have an issue with people thinking there is something between them, or with people thinking David is anything other than 100% straight.
She has also never felt the need to project her own insecurities by defending David’s masculinity or deliberately distancing him from his characters, particularly characters in which fans have found comfort and a sense of identity. Georgia has proven to be an (imperfect, but reliable) ally to the LGBTQ+ community, and is able to step outside of herself and see the larger picture.
So even if Georgia’s reasons are sometimes questionable, she understands what Good Omens and David means to the fans, and I will take that over Rosie’s absolute lunacy and homophobic weirdness any day of the week and twice on Sundays...
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i just finished rereading dr. manette's letter, and i have two thoughts:
1) dickens doesn't know what "abridged" means. in no way was that abridged. my man manette was writing in the dark on a limited supply of scraps of paper with a rusty piece of metal, soot, and his own blood, and managed to scribble out 12 heavily-worded pages (at least in my edition - it could be more).
normally, i'm indifferent to dickens' wordiness, but sir. seriously.
2) i hate the evremonde twins more every time i read this book. odious, insufferable, selfish men. i'm so glad darnay took his mother's name cuz i wouldn't want to be associated with that family either. i get madame defarge. i really do.
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How many times do we have to say:
Create characters with strength of virtue, not strength of skills.
I just finished A Tale of Two Cities with the character Lucie Manette, who "does" nothing but love the people around her and extend compassion toward everyone within her sphere of influence. She makes no "choices" that contemporary audiences would award the stupid badge of "giving her agency" to.
She doesn't make a speech that saves Charles Darnay's life. She doesn't lead the victims of the French Revolution into a counter-revolt. She doesn't fight off the soldiers that come to take her husband, or beat up Madame Defarge when she threatens her child, or even come up with the escape plan to flee Paris.
She makes none of those kinds of choices. (You know who does? Madame Defarge. But the compare-contrast between those two can wait till another day.)
But she makes these kinds of choices:
She'll give her honest testimony in a trial for a potential traitor to the crown, and demonstrate her compassion and grief for a near-stranger, wearing that vulnerability on her sleeve in front of a huge court of people clamoring for blood.
She'll be compassionate toward Sydney Carton, even though he's rude, careless, and brings a bad attitude into her happy home.
She'll spend the energy of her life making that home happy.
She'll stand for two hours in any weather on the bloody streets of the French Revolution so her husband might have a chance of glimpsing her and getting some comfort from the prison window.
She'll trust the older men in her life when they ask her to.
She'll allow an old woman to care for her and go everywhere she goes, and treat her like a child, as long as it makes the old woman in question happy.
And what, WHAT is the consequence of these kinds of decisions, choices, that some ignorant people call "passive?"
That old woman is allowed to love Lucie Manette so much that she defeats the villainess in the climax of the story, holding Madame Defarge back from getting revenge with sheer strength that comes directly from that love.
Her father is allowed to draw strength from the fact that Lucie believes she can depend on him--because she chooses to let her father take the lead and do the work of saving her husband, Dr. Manette is fully "recalled to life;" he doesn't have to identify as a traumatized, mentally unstable victim anymore, because Lucie is treating him like he can be the hero.
Her husband does see her in the street, and does draw strength from that--just that--instead of losing his mind the way her father, starved for a glimpse of his loved ones, did during his own imprisonment.
Lucie's home is so full of the love and kindness that she fills it with that not only does her father return to remembering who he is after his long imprisonment--but Mr. Lorry, a bachelor with no family, can feel at home with a full life, there. Miss Pross, whose family abandoned and bankrupt her, has a home with a full life, there. Charles Darnay, whose life of riches and pleasure as a Marquis was empty, has a home with a full life, there. In Lucie's home, because she spends her life making it the kind of home others can find rest in.
Sydney Carton, a man whose whole life has been characterized by a LACK of "care" for himself or anyone else, suddenly cares about Lucie. When he thought it was impossible to. And he doesn't care about her because she's pretty. Her beauty was just a source of bitterness for him--one more pleasure he could've had but can't. Until he "saw her with her father," and saw her strength of virtue, of pity, of compassion, of self-sacrificial love--then he felt that she "kindled me, a heap of ashes, into fire." He started caring about life again, where it was associated with her, because she brought to life every good thing. Just by being a woman of good virtue. And we know what that inspiration led him to.
Without Lucie's strength of virtue, and the decisions that naturally came from that, none of the "active" choices other characters made would have happened. Sydney would not have been redeemed. Darnay would not have been saved. Her father never would've been recalled to life. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry would've had no light or love in their lives. Even Jerry would've had no occasion to learn from his mistakes and resolve to stop abusing his family.
A character like Dickens' Golden Thread, who does what a woman should do, inspires the choices other characters make. That makes her more powerful, in her own way, than the heroes and any decisions they make. Because she's the cause. She's the inspiration. She's the representation of everything good, right, precious, worth fighting for.
Lucie Manette's not the only character like this. Cinderella. The original Disney Jasmine. The original Disney Ariel. Lady Galadriel. Jane Eyre. Amy March.
"Behind every great man is a great woman," indeed! Absolutely! Bravo!
Hang on! Hang on to those kinds of characters. Those a real "strong female" characters. The muses, the inspirations, the reminders of The Greater Good. The people who make fighting the dragons worth it at all. Who cares about fighting the dragon? That's not so great, without her.
Don't forget those kinds of characters! Reading Dickens just makes me desperate for our generation to keep up the reminder: make characters that the next ten generations can learn from: strength of virtue is much more important than silly little strength of skill.
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