In Secret

“There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * *”

This in a way pertains to the argument of whether or not Charles Darnay is being courageous when he returns to France. While it is without a doubt noble of him to be willing to put himself at such great risk to help a servant and friend, he does not take into consideration his other affiliations, namely that to Lucie and Dr. Manette. In this case his upright personality is his greatest character flaw is his fervent yen to help others, as this is only possible to a certain degree. He cannot possibly both help Lucie and their family as well as his old family. In my opinion, his new life with the Manettes should be a far greater concern to him as they are his flesh and blood now. Whereas in the case of Gabelle, he has already renounced his family name (Evremonde) and everything else along with it, therefore Gabelle should not be his prime interest. By placing himself at great risk, it could potentially hurt his (relatively) new family, especially Lucie, since they had already experience the death of a member, and to lose another would probably degrade them into a similar situation to that of the woman at the end of Monsieur the Marquis in the Country (Book the Second), so wracked with grief that she looks forty years older than she is. By his rash decision to return to France, Darnay is in fact revealing some imperfections in his seemingly perfect character.
In this way he could also be seen as a poor father. (This again, pertains to the example handed out during class that regards the chapters Monsieur the Marquis in Town and Monsieur the Marquis in the Country, so I am cheating in a way.) Though he has renounced his aristocratic heritage, Darnay here is showing his unchangeable similarities to the aristocracy, no matter how much he detests their policies. Despite the fact that he does not necessarily view fatherhood as the former French nobility did, Darnay does not show adequate care to his children; by leaving his daughter to Lucie and going off to do his own thing, Darnay reflects the actions of the Second Estate. While he is not necessarily a “bad” person, Darnay does show some subtle carelessness to his family. The only time when he does think of them again is when he gets locked up “secretly” (meaning that he has no opportunity to make known the fact that he has been imprisoned to associates) as he can now do nothing but muse and stare at the ground.