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.
