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Character analysis

The Vengeance

in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Vengeance is a minor yet striking revolutionary figure in Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, acting as Madame Defarge's closest aide and most passionate follower among the women of Saint Antoine. Her name—given by the narrator as a title instead of a birth name—captures her role perfectly: she embodies revolutionary vengeance, devoid of personal identity and entirely engulfed by collective rage.

Introduced as a grocer's wife from the faubourg, The Vengeance is seldom seen without Madame Defarge. She dances the Carmagnole with wild delight, calls for aristocratic blood at the guillotine, and keeps an enthusiastic tally of executions. These moments position her as a supporting figure who amplifies and reflects Madame Defarge's radicalism, illustrating how revolutionary ideology can strip ordinary people of their humanity, replacing it with a thirst for destruction.

Her story is one of relentless escalation without any hope of redemption. When Madame Defarge goes to the Manette lodgings to denounce Lucie and her child, The Vengeance is left behind—a detail that highlights how the movement's violence ultimately exceeds even its most devoted followers. After Madame Defarge's death at the hands of Miss Pross, The Vengeance is seen furiously searching for her leader at the guillotine, unable to grasp the loss. This final image depicts her as a being whose entire existence relied on another's hatred.

Key traits: extreme loyalty, bloodlust, collective identity over individuality, and a grotesque cheerfulness in the face of death.

About this character

Form
Novel
Author
Charles Dickens
First published
1859

The person01–03

01·Who they are

Who is The Vengeance?

The Vengeance is one of Dickens's most deliberately depersonalised creations. A grocer's wife from the faubourg Saint Antoine, she is introduced not by a birth name but by a title the narrator bestows on her—a label that announces her function before her character has said a word. This naming choice is a form of literary argument: Dickens signals that whatever individual woman once existed inside this figure has been wholly consumed by revolutionary ideology. She knits alongside Madame Defarge in the wine-shop, dances the Carmagnole in the streets with "ferocious" pleasure, and keeps a gleeful running count of heads taken by the guillotine. Physically, she is energetic, loud, and perpetually in motion—a creature of the crowd rather than of any interior life. Her key traits are extreme loyalty, a grotesque cheerfulness in the presence of death, and an identity that exists only in relation to the movement and, more specifically, to Madame Defarge.

02·Arc & motivation

What is The Vengeance's arc and motivation?

There is no arc in the conventional sense, and that absence is the point. The Vengeance does not grow, reconsider, or suffer any internal conflict. Her trajectory is one of unbroken escalation: from knitting in the wine-shop to marching on the Bastille to presiding over the Terror's executions with undimmed enthusiasm. Her motivation is collective rather than personal—she has absorbed the rage of Saint Antoine wholesale, apparently without the private grievance that at least gives Madame Defarge a comprehensible, if terrible, origin. Where Madame Defarge's hatred is rooted in the Évremonde family's destruction of her kin, The Vengeance seems to thirst for destruction as an end in itself. This makes her, paradoxically, the purer and more frightening emblem of mob violence: ideology untethered from any individual wound.

03·Key moments

What are The Vengeance's key moments?

The storming of the Bastille (Book Two, Chapter Twenty-One) is The Vengeance's most visceral entrance into the action. She rushes through the streets alongside Madame Defarge, part of the human wave that tears the fortress apart—a scene Dickens renders as simultaneously awe-inspiring and horrifying. At the tribunal scenes in Book Three, she is among those cheering Darnay's condemnation, her enthusiasm making visible how thoroughly public justice has been replaced by public bloodlust. Most telling of all is her final appearance: after Madame Defarge has been shot dead by Miss Pross, The Vengeance arrives at the guillotine furiously searching for her leader, outraged that Madame Defarge is not there to witness the executions. She cannot process the loss because she has no self left with which to process it. This closing image—a true believer hunting for a dead idol—is Dickens's bleakest commentary on what revolutionary fervour ultimately produces.

The cast04–05

04·Relationships

What are The Vengeance's most important relationships?

Madame Defarge is the gravitational centre of The Vengeance's existence. Every scene they share confirms the hierarchy: Madame Defarge commands, and The Vengeance amplifies. She echoes denunciations, mirrors gestures, and functions as a living chorus to Madame Defarge's pronouncements. That she is left behind when Madame Defarge makes her fatal solo visit to the Manette lodgings is significant—The Vengeance is indispensable to the public theatre of revolution but excluded from its most private, driven act of hatred.

Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette represent the human cost of The Vengeance's enthusiasm. She cheers Darnay's tribunal with the same energy she brings to everything, embodying the mob that makes individual justice impossible. Her support for denouncing Lucie and the child demonstrates that her appetite for victims is indiscriminate.

Sydney Carton passes under The Vengeance's gaze at the guillotine—she is part of the tricoteuse assembly presiding over the executions—making her one of the last figures of the revolutionary world he consciously rejects through his sacrifice.

Miss Pross, whom The Vengeance never directly faces, is nonetheless her nemesis by proxy: it is Miss Pross's determined love that destroys Madame Defarge, and in doing so obliterates The Vengeance's entire reason for being.

05·Connected characters

How is The Vengeance connected to the other characters?

Madame Defarge

The Vengeance's defining relationship. She is Madame Defarge's shadow, second-in-command, and most devoted follower. She echoes every denunciation, joins every march, and is last seen desperately hunting for Madame Defarge at the guillotine after her death—proof that The Vengeance has no independent existence outside her leader's will.

Ernest Defarge

As a core member of the Saint Antoine revolutionary cell led by the Defarges, The Vengeance operates within Ernest's network, though her allegiance is clearly to Madame Defarge rather than to him personally. She participates in the storming of the Bastille alongside him.

Charles Darnay

Darnay is among the aristocratic targets The Vengeance enthusiastically helps condemn. She cheers his tribunal proceedings and embodies the mob bloodlust that makes his fair trial impossible in revolutionary Paris.

Lucie Manette

The Vengeance supports Madame Defarge's scheme to denounce Lucie and her child, representing the revolutionary threat that hangs over the Manette household throughout the novel's final act.

Miss Pross

Indirectly connected: it is Miss Pross who kills Madame Defarge, thereby destroying the figure around whom The Vengeance's entire identity is organized. The Vengeance never confronts Miss Pross directly, but Miss Pross's act effectively annihilates The Vengeance's purpose.

Sydney Carton

The Vengeance is among the tricoteuses presiding over the executions at the guillotine where Carton ultimately meets his end, embodying the merciless revolutionary machinery he willingly enters to save Darnay.

Study06–07

06·Questions

Questions readers ask about The Vengeance

Who is The Vengeance's closest companion in A Tale of Two Cities?

Madame Defarge is The Vengeance's defining companion and the gravitational center of her existence. The Vengeance acts as Madame Defarge's second-in-command, echoing her denunciations, joining every march, and mirroring her gestures in public. This dependency is so complete that when Madame Defarge is shot dead by Miss Pross, The Vengeance frantically searches for her leader at the guillotine, unable to process the loss of the one person who provided her purpose.

Why does The Vengeance not have a real name in the novel?

Dickens replaces The Vengeance's birth name with a title that announces her function, signaling that any individual woman who once existed inside her has been consumed by revolutionary ideology. The naming serves as a structural argument: she is not a person but a personification of collective rage. This anonymity makes her, paradoxically, a purer and more frightening emblem of mob violence—ideology operating entirely untethered from any individual identity or private wound.

What is The Vengeance's most significant final appearance in the novel?

Her most telling final appearance occurs after Madame Defarge is shot dead by Miss Pross: The Vengeance arrives at the guillotine, searching for her leader, outraged that Madame Defarge is not present to witness the executions. She cannot process the loss because she has no self left with which to do so. Dickens presents this image of a true believer hunting for a dead idol as his bleakest commentary on what revolutionary fervor ultimately produces.

What role does The Vengeance play during the storming of the Bastille?

The Vengeance rushes through the streets alongside Madame Defarge as part of the human wave that tears the Bastille apart in Book Two, Chapter Twenty-One—her most visceral entrance into the novel's action. Dickens depicts the scene as both awe-inspiring and horrifying, with The Vengeance embodying the ferocious energy of the Saint Antoine crowd. She dances the Carmagnole with wild delight and participates in the storming alongside Ernest Defarge and the broader revolutionary cell.

What motivates The Vengeance's bloodlust, and how does it differ from Madame Defarge's?

Unlike Madame Defarge, whose hatred is rooted in the Évremonde family's destruction of her kin, The Vengeance seems to thirst for destruction as an end in itself, driven by collective revolutionary rage rather than personal grievance. She has absorbed the fury of Saint Antoine without a comprehensible private origin to anchor it. This makes her the purer and more frightening emblem of mob violence in the novel—extremism without the tragic justification Dickens grants her leader.

How does The Vengeance threaten Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette?

The Vengeance enthusiastically cheers Darnay's condemnation at the tribunal, embodying the mob bloodlust that prevents a fair trial in revolutionary Paris. She also supports Madame Defarge's scheme to denounce Lucie and her child, showing that her appetite for victims is entirely indiscriminate. Through her cheerful participation in these acts, Dickens illustrates how thoroughly public justice has been replaced by public bloodlust during the Terror.

How is The Vengeance connected to Miss Pross, even though they never meet directly?

Miss Pross is The Vengeance's nemesis by proxy: her fierce, protective love leads her to kill Madame Defarge, obliterating The Vengeance's entire reason for being. Dickens uses this indirect connection to contrast two very different kinds of female loyalty—The Vengeance's collective, destructive devotion to a revolutionary idol versus Miss Pross's private, unconditional devotion to Lucie—suggesting that it is the latter, quieter form of love that ultimately proves more powerful.

07·Essay angles

Use this in your essay

Tool · Essay angles

  • Identity and ideology: Argue that The Vengeance's anonymity—her title replacing her name—is Dickens's structural claim that revolutionary extremism destroys individual selfhood; compare her namelessness with Carton's search for meaningful identity.

  • Foil to Miss Pross: Examine how Dickens contrasts The Vengeance's collective, destructive loyalty with Miss Pross's private, protective devotion, using both characters to interrogate what love and fidelity actually mean.

  • The mob as character: Use The Vengeance to argue that Dickens personifies the Parisian crowd through her, analyzing how her "grotesque cheerfulness" functions rhetorically to make revolution simultaneously seductive and monstrous.

  • Women and violence: Consider how Dickens deploys female characters—Madame Defarge, The Vengeance, the other tricoteuses—to heighten the sense of a world turned upside-down, and what this reveals about Victorian anxieties around gender and political power.

  • Escalation without redemption: Build a thesis on Dickens's refusal to grant The Vengeance any moment of doubt or humanity, arguing that her unchanging nature serves as a warning about ideological possession rather than a realistic portrait of revolutionary psychology.

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