"Title-page vignette" — second Barnard illustration for "A Tale of Two Cities" (1874)

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Title-page vignette

Fred Barnard

1874

Composite woodblock engraving

Figure 7.1 cm. x 4.5 cm (2 ¾ by 1 ¾ inches)

The figure of a female Jacobin, either the Vengeance or Madame Defarge, who is holding up a blood-dripping dagger, sets the keynote as the wind of violent revolution blows through her hair and garments from left (the past) to right (the future). (Volume 8 in the Household Edition (1871-79). Dickens introduces the symbol of poverty-stricken St. Antonine's female Jacobinism, The Vengeance, in Book the Second, Twenty-Two, "The Sea Still Rises."

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

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Commentary: The Storm Summoned by the Jacobin Rises

Title-page vignette, figure of a female Jacobin, either the Vengeance or Madame Defarge, in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with twenty-five illustrations by F. Barnard. London: Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly. Vol. VIII (1874).

"The Rather Plump Wife of a Starved Grocer" Transformed into a Harpy

A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.

“Patriots!” said Defarge, in a determined voice, “are we ready?”

Instantly Madame Defarge's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women.

The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. [Book II, Chapter XXII, pp. 102-3]

Bibliography

Dickens, Charles. The Dickens Souvenir Book. Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. P. 143.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Illustrated Fred Barnard. The Household Edition. 22 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874. Vol. VIII.

Created 25 November 2019

last modified 5 December 2024