“Thus, the rustling of an Angel’s wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie in a hushed murmur–like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore” (Dickens 203).
The text surrounding this passage describes the worries that Lucie faces in her life: she thinks constantly of the echoes of the people and events that have played roles in her life. In the first six paragraphs of Chapter XXI from Book II, years fly by in Lucie’s life. Without fully concentrating on what is happening, the reader could miss the death of Lucie’s child. Only two paragraphs are devoted to the event, and the narrator never even directly states what happened.
When her child dies, he seemingly ascends into heaven on his deathbed, creating an image of the Darnay family as blessed by God. This holiness is evident in the narrator’s description of Lucie’s son’s death. The “echo” that Lucie hears when her son dies is the “rustling of an Angel’s wings.” The sound is soft, mild, and comforting. The sound is connected with domesticity, as we can imagine the rustling of sheets or a bed. The death of this child contrasts with the rest of those who have thus far died in the novel; there is no violence or horror in his passing. Moreover, the boy leaves earth accompanied by an “Angel,” therefore placing him in a category of a being innocent enough to merit divine accompaniment into heaven. The narrator further promotes this idea of the child’s divinity by stating that his echo had in it a “breath of Heaven.” For Lucie, this is soothing.
The idea that her child’s echo comforts Lucie in her darker moments presents itself in the description of how she hears these echoes. There are no haunting footsteps in the echoes of her son’s death; there are the “Sighs” of wind through a garden with a “little garden-tomb.” These Sighs come from the natural world and the loss of purity. They reflect sadness, but not fear. For Lucie, however, she enjoys the solace of the fact that her child entered into heaven. The divine and comforting sound of the Angel’s wings combine with and the worldly sighs that drift over a tombstone, and they mix to produce the “breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore.”
In conclusion, Lucie is almost in a trance of calmness after her child’s death. Although it might appear that she is not terribly affected by the event, she is in reality torn between her devotion to the divine and her belief in heaven and her own worldly pain from losing her child. She responds to this pain not unlike her father responded when he was locked away: she relies on a rhythmic, ocean motion to rock her back to a place of comfort and security that she would have otherwise lost.
You make a very compelling argument here. Religion is something that’s always (in my experience) been a tentative topic in Dickens’ fiction writing, but your argument gives it an almost startling prevalence here. It also sheds some new light on Victoria’s argument about Lucie as light (pun intended), allowing both of your arguments to sort of come together and start to imagine Lucie as almost an angelic figure, which is something I hadn’t imagined her as before. But if we start to look at her in the context of “being an angel”, her apparent innocence and weakness (most prevalent in the face of Madame DeFarge as she is begging the woman to help her save Charles’s life) starts to make a lot more sense. I know this might not have a ton to do with your post as a whole, but the element of religion brings in an interesting new light to see Lucie in.
I think the argument you make regarding Dicken’s use of religion is very interesting. Honestly, when I read this passage, though I thought it was sweet, I hadn’t realized the significance of the contrast here. The way you describe Lucie’s response, and comfort in her son’s death makes me realize just how much this is contrasted to much of the rest of the novel—particularly in terms of light. I find this passage interesting looking back on the rest of the novel as its airiness and lightness is so starkly the opposite of the dark description of things like Tellson’s Bank.