Evrémonde Play In Our Understanding Of The Aristocracy Within Pre-Revolutionary France?

Marshall DeCosta – A Tale of Two Cities – Representations of the Aristocracy
What significance does the character of Marquis Evrémonde play in our understanding of the aristocracy within Pre-revolutionary France?
Dickens uses the Marquis Evrémonde to provide a portrait of the aristocracy as elitist and ethically reprehensible. While the commendable and earnest characters in A Tale of Two Cities behave according to altruistic and virtuous goals, Marquis Evrémonde acts exclusively to satisfy his egocentric and depraved instincts. The Marquis believes that his nobility and status justifies his malicious abuse of the underprivileged, suggesting that it is the poor’s duty in life to suffer and struggle. Similarly, the Marquis advocates that his nephew’s due position and primary responsibility is to dominate
The Marquis, in his excessive ostentatiousness, malice, and cruelty, scarcely appears a human being or even a realistic character. Intentionally, Dickens portrays the Marquis as an exaggerated personification and symbol of the “inhuman abandonment of consideration,” exhibited by the smug superiority, violence, and contempt that were rampant and pervasive within the French aristocracy during the late eighteenth century. Even more poignantly, the eventual death of the Marquis serves as a presentiment and cautionary example of the violence and carnage stirring within a poor and battered population incapable of any longer enduring the aristocracy’s heartless and ubiquitous oppression. Throughout