The two characters mentioned, the Marquis d'Evremonde and
Madame Defarge, are, certainly, the main characters quilty of power as so well explained
in the previous post. Other characters to consider are the Monseigneur and the Jacques
and the Vengeance, characters who are more symbolic than real in Dickens's A
Tale of Two Cities.
-----In Chapter 7 of Book
the Second, Dickens describes the Monseigneur, who
represents the powerful aristocracy that lives in luxury. He has the "truly noble idea
that the world was made for him," and snubs the Marquis d'Evremond at his sumptuous
ball:
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile
there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur
affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth.
There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself
shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no
more.
"I devote you," said this person [the Marquis
d'Evremonde] ...to the
Devil!"
Then, in his "inhuman
abandonment of consideration," the Marquis leaves in the carriage that runs over the
poor child as previously mentioned.
-----Throughout the
novel, the Jacques and the
Vengeance act as the paracletes of revenge against the
aristocracy of France. For instance, they take an aristocrat and force him to eat
grass, then run him across the countryside, and finally execute him. These new
oppressors load the tumbrils with anyone who is suspected of association with the French
aristocracy, even a poor seamstress, who "has done nothing."
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