Madame DeFarge and the Effects of Unforgiveness

Theresa DeFarge had reason to be bitter. Against a background of French nobility abusing peasants and treating them like dogs, two marques, the brothers Evremonde, used her sister as a slave of their physical desires, and they murdered her husband, brother and father. Theresa is the only member of the family to survive, and she, in her pain, resolves to exact revenge.

Her situation was tragic, her pain overwhelming, her anger justifiable. Theresa becomes Madame DeFarge when she grows up, and she spends the next several years seething and feeding her bitterness. She bides her time patiently, knitting the names in code of those who will pay. She promises to kill all of the family Evremonde, down to the last of their race, including the innocent children: the three-year-old son and nephew of the Evremonde brothers and the yet to be born daughter of that three year old.

Dickens writes:

"That sister of the mortally wounded boy on the ground was my sister; that husband was my sister's husband; that unborn child was their child; that brother was my brother; that father, my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to me! Then tell the wind and fire to stop, but don't tell me!"

And

"There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now making her way along the streets. Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her.

It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself."

Because Madame DeFarge fed her hurt, anger, bitterness and outrage, she lost her humanity. The two men who wronged her family were both dead- one murdered in his bed, but that was not enough. Charles Darnay, the son and nephew, had decried his family, rejected his family name and title, and tried to find Theresa to make things right. But she would not forgive, and only his death and the death of his baby daughter would appease her wrath.

She had ceased to be human. She was scarred and disfigured by her hate and bitterness. Miss Pross says that she might be the wife of Lucifer himself.

Unforgiveness, bitterness and hate destroy. Forgiveness and reconciliation heal. And, most importantly, Jesus said that to the degree we forgive others, so will God forgive us for our sins. And that is the crucial life & death point.