Madame Defarge

Illustration by Fred Barnard of the Wine-Shop in St. Antoine; Madame Defarge is seated with her knitting, her husband Ernest Defarge standing behind her

Madame Thérèse Defarge is a fictional character in the book A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. She is a tricoteuse, a tireless worker for the French Revolution, and the wife of Ernest Defarge.

She is arguably the main villain of the novel, and ruthlessly seeks revenge against the Evrémondes, including Charles Darnay, his wife Lucie Manette and their child, for crimes a prior generation of the Evrémonde family had committed. These crimes include the deaths of her sister, brother, and father. Eventually, her quest for vengeance becomes her own undoing and results in her downfall and death.

Defarge represents one aspect of the Fates. The Moirai (the Fates as represented in Greek mythology) used yarn to measure out the life of a man, and cut it to end it; Defarge knits, and her knitting secretly encodes the names of people to be killed.

Cinematic and Theatrical Portrayals

In the 1935 film A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge is played by Blanche Yurka.

In the 1958 film A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge is played by Rosalie Crutchley.

In the 1980 TV movie A Tale of Two Cities, Madame Defarge is played by Billie Whitelaw.

In the 1981 Mel Brooks film, History of the World, Part I, Madame Defarge (played by Cloris Leachman) is the chief conspirator in the plot to overthrow King Louis XVI. She has become so poor, she has run out of wool, simply rubbing her knitting needles together.

In the 1989 Masterpiece Theater two-part miniseries "A Tale of Two Cities", Madame Defarge is played by Kathy Kriegel.

In the 2008 Broadway musical adaptation of 'A Tale of Two Cities,' Madame Defarge is played by Natalie Toro.