Celie and Madame Defarge - Fenneuff

                In two different stories written by two different authors, set in two different time periods and written during different times, important characters in the two stories are bound to be vastly different. Surprisingly, however, sometimes these characters can have as much in common as they do not. Celie from The Color Purple and Madame Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities are examples of this phenomenon. Both Celie and Madame Defarge are quiet, and can actually get quite violent (which is surprising in Celie’s case, but not so much in Madame Defarge’s). Despite their similar personalities, however, the women’s ideals are simply different.

                Celie is quiet. She has never been one to speak up or question when she feels uneasy or when something feels wrong. She never tries much to change what happens in her life, and mostly accepts that her life is what it is. She is not an overly-ambitious person, and she will sit back and let things happen only when she is the one being harmed. However, when it comes to the people she loves, she is willing to stand up to whoever is harming the people that matter to her. She is much more passive when it comes to her own health and safety. Madame Defarge is quiet in a different way. She is cunning, watchful, and clever. She is quiet because she doesn’t need to speak: she is aware of what is going on and uses her silence to her advantage. She is always plotting. Madame Defarge has a plan and she must be quiet and watchful in order to execute it and let everything fall into place the way she wants it to. The two are both quiet for their own benefit, but Madame Defarge’s reason for doing so is much darker than Celie’s.

                In both A Tale of Two Cities and The Color Purple there is a social class established, and Madame Defarge and Celie have differing opinions on said social class. In A Tale of Two Cities, it is clear that the aristocrats hold all the power. All of the cards are in their hands and Madame Defarge resents them for it. It doesn’t help, of course, that the deterioration of her family happened due to the actions of the high and mighty aristocrats. Madame Defarge is a ruthless woman and will stop at nothing to overthrow the aristocrats and avenge her family. Celie, on the other hand, is much less vicious. In The Color Purple, the established hierarchy places white people at the top of the social ladder and black people at the bottom. It’s been like this for as long as Celie can remember, and she has no strong desire to change it. Celie doesn’t have any extreme feelings about the racial bias where she lives: she’s accepted it, and her placid personality doesn’t allow her to have any extreme desire to rearrange the social hierarchy.

                With their two very distinct personalities, Celie and Madame Defarge respond very differently to the actions of other people, more specifically, how the treat a person they believe has done them wrong. Both women are initially very violent toward the person who has wronged them: when Celie discovers that Mr. ____ had been hiding her sister’s letters from her, she was filled with immense rage and wished to hurt him, asking herself multiple times “how I’m gon keep from killing him” (150). Likewise, Madame Defarge wishes to kill the son of the man who raped her sister and destroyed her family, despite the fact that the son is innocent of any harm done to her family. The son, Charles, has even gone so far as to change his last name from that of his father’s and rejects his father’s treatment of the poor, but that doesn’t matter to Madame Defarge. In her eyes, he is guilty, and she wants more than anything to see him dead, stating, “the Evrémonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must follow the husband and father”(279). This shows that she truly shows no mercy: she does not care that not everyone in the Evrémonde directly harmed her family; she wants them all dead anyway. Celie, on the other hand, is much more forgiving. After she moves out of Mr. ____’s house, the two don’t see each other for a while, until they begin to talk to one another more often and even become friends. Celie is able to forgive Mr. ____ for the way he treated her all of the years that they were married, and the two reconcile and form a friendship.

                Throughout many different pieces of literature, characters can share traits as well as be polar opposites in some aspects. Celie and Madame Defarge are perfect examples of this. Though they are both quite reserved, they can both be violent and angry if triggered. However, despite their similarities in their personalities, the two have a very different perspective on social hierarchy and forgiveness.