COMPARATIVE PORTRAYAL OF THE MAIN FEMALE CHARACTERS IN A TALE OF TWO CITIES BY CHARLES DICKENS AND MRS. DALLOWAY BY VIRGINIA WOOLF
“The foundation of good fiction is character creating and nothing else…” — Arnold Bennett
Characters are the main element through which the readers are the most connected to in a fictional work this is why famous characters like Lucie Manette and her contrasting character Madam Defarge are still very famous to the modern readers because they could relate to them easily in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Another famous writer who came much later gives characters the same importance as Bennett although with a totally different focus, and had used this quotation in one of her own works as well is Virginia Woolf whose famous creation Mrs. Dalloway in Mrs. Dalloway is still considered one of the well-known characters of her times. The three mentioned characters Lucie Manette, Madam Defarge and Mrs. Dalloway through their portrayal represent the females of their respective society very beautifully. Although there is the question that how these females were presented by their respective authors were they gender biased or not. In this paper the presentation or how these four main characters of Lucie Manette and Madam Defarge by Charles Dickes from A Tale of Two Cities and Mrs. Dalloway and Sally Seton by Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway were portrayed would be analyzed. A Tale of Two Cities was inspired by Thomas Carlyle’s book on French revolution; Dickens incorporated some of the ideas that Carlyle had in his A Tale of Two Cities. He was successful in showing the suppression, insecurity, fear, the destructiveness of the revolution and also the sacrifice of innocent human lives through his characters in the novel. Each character of the novel symbolizes some element of the revolution for example Dr. Manette symbolizes the misuse of aristocratic opower also hope for the prisoners of Bastille, Lucie Manette symbolizes the positive influence of love that sustains through all obstacles, Charles Darney represents the retribution maybe because he had to pay for what his earlier generation did and Madam Defarge represents the rage or the destructiveness due to the aristocratic suppression and exploitation, maybe because of these reasons Gaughan states that “Dickens was a very keen observer, and drew his characters from the life carefully, even minutely… saw beneath the surface of things” (223) it was this reason that he could create such memorable characters.
In this novel the main female protagonist is Lucie Manette, who portrays the perfect symbol of the women in the house. She lives in London and is the daughter of Dr. Manette and wife of Charles Darney , she is perceived by the readers as a very calm, decent, a very homely character; she is shown like the person who binds the family together that is how she is portrayed Dickens wrote that Lucie “was the golden thread that united him to a past beyond his misery, and to a present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always” (2.4.84). Although Dickens draws her in a way that she is the golden past and still is the happy reminder of that past for her father Dr. Manette, he never tried to portray that she fought to save her own family or to keep it united, she was never a rebel character. When Lucie went to see Madam Defarge to seek help for Darney, she was only portrayed as a weak woman asking “mercy as a wife and mother” (3.3.283) not as a woman demanding justice for herself and for an innocent man who did not do anything to deserve punishment. This also showed Lucie’s desire for a patriarchal figure in her life, she was always under the supervision of a male figure in the novel, and the author never showed Lucie to the readers without a male figure and also it looked like she was unaware of the brutality or the political instability that was going around. Her only way to help her husband or present grief for her husband was to wear “the plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses which she and her child wore” (3.5.295).
The readers never saw her conspiring to remove her husband from the Bastille or to save him from getting killed; she patiently stood outside the Bastille for two hours every day, after Dr. Manette told her that Darney visits that window sometimes. The queerest thing was that she did not even have a hand in murdering Madam Defarge who wanted to erase her family so badly and when Miss Pross was fighting her battle as a parental figure she was safely going away from Paris with her family. In a word Dickens presented a character through Lucie Manette that is family oriented, the angel of the house, very soft, is always under a parental figure and who does not know about the larger picture of her surroundings. A character that is comfortable in her territory, whose comfort lies in her family and who does not bother to know the surrounding societies if her own small world is secure. Another main character in the novel A Tale of Two Cities is Madam Defarge, wife of Ernest Defarge, owns a wine shop in Saint Antoine, Paris. In most of the novel she is seen knitting in her wine shop, she knits the names of the person who needs to be killed, knits the name of the persons who are considered to be spies, her knitting symbolizes that she is the link or the person who binds the whole story or the characters together. She is the person who is the main leader or the initiator of the actions taken by Jacques and the brutal element of the revolution. She portrays the revenge on the aristocrats that the French revolution was about and her ultimate desire was to finish the Evermonde family. Madam Defarge is the only character who is very definite in her wants, she knows what she wants and how and to achieve that goal she wants. Also she does not need any help to reach her goal, her husband she initially helped her to act during the revolts but as soon asshe noticed that her husband wanted to forgive Dr. Manettes family, she immediately cut him off from the conspiracies, she said “my husband has his weakness and he is so weak as to relent towards this doctor” (3.14.383).
The readers see that she takes the lead in the Revolution, she was the leader of the females when the Jacques stormed the Bastille and when the Governor of the Bastille was captured she came and step on him and cut off his head which is very cruel and a brutal step for any ordinary female to take at any moment.She conspired to finish the Evermonde family race even when her husband did not want that. She portrayed the suppressed women who wanted revenge against the aristocrats that is why when Lucie Manette asked for forgiveness from her as a mother as a wife, she asked back what would happen to the wife and children of the people in France who waited for so long for justice. She embodied the ruthlessness of the revolutionaries of that time, to exterminate all the aristocrats from their roots that is her goal was “‘The chateau and all the race,’ returned Defarge. “Extermination’” (2.15.183). Madam Defarge was not one of the stereotypical women who were only suppressed and dominated but she took revenge for the brutality that happened to her family by the Evermoonde brothers just like any man of that time. She was not the ideal victorian woman who remained in the house but she knew her surroundings very well and wasaware of what was happening which is why she knows who the spy is and how to trick them, Dr. Manetteduring his imprisonment had written a letter in the North tower which Defarge finds during the storming of Bastille.
Madam Defarge presents herself as a force of nature who will not be commanded to do anything, which is why she said “‘Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,’ returned madame; ‘but don’t tell me’” (3.12.365). Although Charles is already being punished MadamDefarge is not happy, she wants Lucie and her daughter to die also because they are Charles’s sympathizers, her husband asks her to stop taking revenge. In a word Madam Defarges character is a strong and firm character who knows what her destination is. For Dickens the criticism could be that he created a positive female character of Lucie Manette that was soft hearted and selfsacrificing angel of the house but she could not do anything that would protect her husband from being wrongfully punished and her home from being parted. In contrast to that he created a character of Madam Defarge who took her own decisions and took her revenge on the family that tortured and murdered her family members but that role of avenging is portrayed negative by the author. It may mean that Dickens or that the Victorian societies thought that female’s should be soft hearted and always under male supervision if it is not then she is considered to be negative person. A very well-known writer of early twentieth century and an influential person of the renowned Bloomsbury Group was Virginia Woolf. She was famous for her technique called Stream-Of-Consciousness through which she portrayed her characters. Due to this technique she was always on a debate with her contemporary writers Wells, Bennett and Galsworthy, she wrote in “Modern Fiction” that “these three writers are materialists. It is because they are concerned not with the spirit but with the body” (1919). Woolf meant that these writers are more concerned about their characters external parts or figures than their internal feelings or thoughts. These writers describe their characters through describing their faces, their dressing style, their attitude toward others but they never concern on what their characters are thinking about a certain issue, about other characters.
One novel that portrayed Virginia Woolf’s character perfectly is Mrs. Dalloway, it was published in 1925 and perhaps is one of Woolf’s most popular and widely read novels also. In this novel the two main charactersClarissa Dalloway and SeptimusSmith portray the two dimensions of Virginia Woolf’s own personality and together they make Virginia Woolf. Clarissa portrayed the feminity inside Woolf as well as the love that she had for London is reflected through Clarissa’s attitude towards London. While walking on the streets of London she said to Hugh Whitbread “’I love walking in London,’ said Mrs. Dalloway. ‘Really, it’s better than walking in the country.’” (Woolf 3), in the movie The Hoursa paraphrased version of this dialogue is reflected through the character of Virginia Woolf,1when her husband took her to Richmond for staying, she tried to escape from their and told “ If it was a choice between living in Richmond and being dead, I would be rather dead” (Hours 45.31).
Even Clarissa’s attraction towards women, is a reflection of Woolf to an extent Dalarna said “Her sexual preferences are reflected in Clarissa’s, she was married to a man but was equally (or perhaps more) attracted to women” (5). Virginia Woolf in her essay A Room of One’s Own stated that “ It is fatal for writers to ‘think of their sex… to be man and woman pure and simple’ instead they should be ‘woman-manly or manwomanly’” may be this is the reason due to which her characters portray both feminine and male characteristics. In Mrs. Dalloway Clarissa is seen having romantic feelings for Sally Seton with whom she maybe was the most comfortable and who was the most desirable also for Clarissa in her youth, her response for Sally is “Sally it was who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life at Bruton was. She knew nothing about sex — nothing about social problems” (Woolf 33), emotional support from this explanation it could be defined that Clarissa looked up to Sally and she was her in Bruton also the path through which Clarissa understood many aspects of life.Maybe the kiss with Sally was maybe her most exotic experience that is why she feels like a virgin now because she sleeps alone which is why she thinks “she could not dispel a virginity preserved through childbirth which clung to her like a sheet” (59). Another female character in the novel represents male aspects is Sally Seton, the fact that she always neglected her social restrictions and always did whatever she though is right for her. Clarissa mentioned one incident when “she forgot her sponge and ran along the passage naked… indeed she did shock people” (35) she was not portrayed as a proper woman. Even though Clarissa had romantic feelings for Sally, she never approached Sally but Sally did approach Clarissa and kissed her. Even though Woolf did not want the writers gender to mold their characters psychology be influenced by the writers gender, she could not go beyond it, which is why she ultimately showed Sally who was the ultimate portrayal of rebel in the society, as a married woman named Lady Rosseter who was happy because she had five son. In a way this showed the thought that no matter how much different a female is or wants to be from the other females of the society, her ultimate goal is to have a secure future with her husband and children. Woolf also showed that although Clarissa thinks of herself as “invisible; unseen; unknown” (Woolf 9) she still had to perform her duty as a proper hostess and cannot leave everything behind to do or to live like whatever they want. Woolf wanted to empower her female character which is why even after having so many nervous breakdowns or having two contrasting feelings about her life she is still living and quite happily doing her duties in the society and her acknowledgement towards life is shown through Septimus Smith’s death.
The death of Septimus is maybe another reason that Woolf would be considered gender biased because she killed a character which may had the possibility to live but was killed by the author so that another woman could understand the importance and meaning of life. Both the writers Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf had their own approach to create their characters but maybe the difference that came out about the main characters of the novels would be the focus on their internal psyche. For Woolf the main concern or tool to create a character would be their psyche, what the character thinks at a moment her inspiration for creating a character was an “ordinary mind on an ordinary day” ( Woolf Modern Fiction). The characters created by dickens do not reveal their inner thoughts, what triggers their mind or what are they thinking after a particular incident. As readers we do not know what Lucie Manette was thinking after she found her father or her state of mind when her husband was convicted or what Madam Defarge was thinking after her revenge was gained when Darney was convicted or when Lucie was asking for help to save her husband. In contrast to that the readers do get to know what Clarissa Dalloway was thinking when she was walking down the streets of London or her thought about Sally Seton and Peter Walsh. Another aspect of the two writers were that it looked like Dickens created the characters for the sake of the story or the plot but Woolf’s plot or story revolved around the characters. For Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities the story was the main but for Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway the characters were on focus.
