Lucie Manette

In A Tale of Two Cities, Lucie Manette is a young, formerly orphaned girl of seventeen years who has realized that her father may continue to be alive.  She is considerably well-off, able to support herself as well as maintain a chaperone.  Lucie is first introduced in a conspicuous yet not assertive manner that primarily emphasizes appearance and speech.  This reflects the seemingly simple external character set she possesses – evidently noticeable yet quietly introverted.  In all respects, Lucie flashes the prototypical features of the conservative Victorian girl.  Lucie demonstrates graceful elegance, respectfulness in speech and a general air of moral strictness.  Already being “a short, slight, pretty figure” (Dickens 29), she “curtseys to [others]”, “remains standing”, and chooses her actions and speech carefully, always trying “to convey to [others] how much wiser [they] [were] than she” (Dickens 30).  Although these highly formal traits appear completely out of context in modern times, they were easily understandable in the Victorian period when this book was written.  As such, Lucie took on a “perfect girl” status to the contemporary readers of the novel, a figure that the audience could not only relate to, but would gush over.  However, behind this contemporary perfectionism, Lucie conveys a sense of hidden mystery.  She employs a “singular expression” that is “pretty and characteristic”, but which “deepens itself” at the presence of thought (Dickens 30).  Additionally, she appears very collected emotionally, rarely providing reactionary responses even in emotional turmoil, exemplified when she starts instead of responding to the notion of her father’s death.  Often distant and inert, an unattainability naturally winds itself through her character.  As a result, penetration into and clearly understanding her hidden character becomes an exercise of deciphering complex codes.  In addition, her association to memories and histories, as evident in Mr. Lorry’s description that “a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time” on sight of her enriches the complexity within her character (Dickens 29).  Detailed analysis does not yield revealing insights, but instead, new intriguing questions.  Lucie, whose name is derived from the Roman term lucius, meaning light, has an elusiveness that is comparable to that of light.  While for the time being, Lucie’s external character appears simple and naive, her darker internal side boasts of the potential for her development into an extremely complex character both internally and externally.  There is a foreboding atmosphere that she will become the epicenter of a major development through the narrative that will permanently change her through time.