Girls, when I started the Bitch Of The Week column a year ago this March--can you believe the Anniversary is coming up fast on us, loves?-- I kicked things off Vive La France! with those two lovably murderous sisters, the Papins. To kick things off in 2011, I am returning to France again, though by the circuitous route of Britisher Charles Dickens, with one of his most celebrated creations, and one of Literature's Classic Bitches!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The winner of this week's Raving Queen Bitch Of The Week Award is Madame Defarge, made famous in the novel "A Tale Of Two Cities." Which, by the way, girls, happens to be one of the few novels this Dickensian has yet to read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But you just have to LOVE her!!!!!!! How can you not??????? Wouldn't it be fabulous to take a knitting class with her? I am all sure all my girls would know perls one and two, before they were through!!!!! Just love how she has it in for those Evermondes, not to mention Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. And that coda of string, knitting a list of whom is going to be killed, is just sheer Bitch Genius!!!!!!!!
She is one of Fiction's all-time Bitches, which is why it was disgraceful in the aborted Broadway musical of the Dickens work a few years back on Broadway, they could not come up with ONE genuinely showstopping number, for Madame Defarge. I mean, this show SO wanted to be "Les Miz," and thought it would be, but at least Fantine got "I Dreamed A Dream." Poor Madame Defarge got nothing!!!! Nothing worth singing, that is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And don't we just love Blanche Yurka in Selznick's 1935 MGM film. To think this is the same woman who went on to play the spiritual and worldly wise Aunt Bernarde in "The Song Of Bernadette!"
But Madame Defarge is Classic, and kicks things off as 2011's first Bitch Of The Week!!!! Watch out when you are knitting those afghans, girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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