Dickens also portrays the other women in the novel as either nurturing life or destroying it. Mothers play an especially important role in this sense, as Dickens differentiates between natural and unnatural mothers. Women such as Darnay's mother, Madame Evrémonde, and Lucie's mother, Madame Manette, represented mothers who die young but leave their children with a sense of conscience and love. Madame Evrémonde's exhortations to Darnay to atone for the family's wrongdoing, for instance, motivate him to risk his life in order to help others. Lucie is also a natural mother, nurturing her daughter and protecting her from harm.
The women of Monseigneur's court, however, represent unnatural mothers, who care so little for their children that they push them off on wet nurses and nannies and pretend that the children don't even exist. Similarly, Dickens portrays even the mothers of Saint Antoine who do nurture their children as unnatural in the fact that they can spend the day as part of a vicious mob killing and beheading people and then return home smeared with blood to play with their children. The behaviors of both the aristocratic and the peasant women are destructive in that they either create an environment that lacks love and guidance or they guide the next generation into further anger and violence.
