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Madame Thérèse Defarge is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. She is a ringleader of the tricoteuses, a tireless worker for the French Revolution, memorably knitting beside the guillotine during executions. She is the wife of Ernest Defarge.
Some historians have suggested that Dickens based Defarge on revolutionaries Théroigne de Mericourt, who played a key role in street demonstrations, and Olympe de Gouges, known as Fury and founder of apocryphal Club of Knitting Women.[1]
She is one of the main villains of the novel, obsessed with revenge against the Evrémondes. She ruthlessly pursues this goal against Charles Darnay, his wife, Lucie Manette, and their child, for crimes a prior generation of the Evrémonde family had committed. These include the deaths of her nephew, sister, brother, father and brother-in-law. She refuses to accept the reality that Charles Darnay changed his ways by intending to renounce his title to the lands to give them to the peasants who worked on them.
After Charles's arrogant and snobbish uncle becomes the Marquis St. Evrémonde, the marquis's arrogance causes the death of an innocent child, which makes him hated and helps legitimize Defarge's rage. Her consuming need for revenge against the Evrémonde family, including the innocent Darnay and his wife, brings about her death by her own weapon at the hands of Miss Pross.