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Chapter V
The Wine-shop
"A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street.
The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay
on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had
suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street,
pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had
dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men
kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to
sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs
of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others
made small mud- embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and
there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and
lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no
drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there
might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A
shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women, and children--resounded in the street while this wine
game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable
inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to
frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When
the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations
ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in
motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the
pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and
cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on
the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine."
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Most of the prominent themes that are present in the novel titled “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens are
the presence of class struggle between the aristocrats and the peasants, but then the tables turn and the aristocrats are
struggling instead of the peasants. The prominent location of where this theme is ultimately represented is in chapter four
of book one in the novel.
At the beginning of the novel, in chapter one, the aristocrats have control of the country and of the peasants. They all seek pleasure and satisfaction in making the poor peasants suffer by degrading
their characters and making them seem like animals. The chapter titled
“The Wine Shop”, chapter four of book one, and its definitely shows the reader how far this aristocrats come to
degrade someone who is just as humane as they are. An example that can be found
in this chapter is that the aristocrats break bottles of wines from a wine rack into the streets where hungry and thirsty
peasants embrace the wine as if it were gold. They all form a huge crowd in which
they join together to retrieve all of the wine that has fallen on the ground floor.
Some have cups and other have blankets in order to retrieve sufficient juice for them to drink. Their came a point where the wine was being mixed with the soil and dirt in the ground, but this did not
stop the peasants from drinking the wine.
The struggle between the social classes theme can be found
in the novel A Tale of Two Cities. This novel represents the class struggle
because it portrays the wealthy upper class as being superior while degrading the peasants.
The peasants are represented as being underprivileged, “men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs
of mutilated earthenware… which were squeezed dry into infants mouths.”
Here, the reader can visualize the extent of the poverty that corresponds to the characters in the novel. They are so unfortunate that they have to drink wine from the filth of the streets and then poor it into
their children’s mouths. “There was so much drainage to carry off
the wine…but so much got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger hunt in the street…”
this phrase compares the peasants to animals searching the streets for food in order to survive. As the novel progresses the peasants astonishingly acquire power from the aristocrats and become the rulers
of the town seeking revenge on the upper class. Another theme that is widely
represented in Dickens novels is the presence of resurrection.
In the novel, there
are many literal and metaphorical illustrations of the ability to resurrect. Some
examples are Doctor Manette’s ability to escape from prison after having been jailed for eighteen years without being
able to communicate with society. Dr. Manatte was able to escape prison
because his daughter, Lucie Manatte, dug him out. It can be metaphorically
understood that he physically and psychologically resurrected because he is now living a new life in a different type of society,
“he was recalled to life” and has now become a sane caring man, “you have brought me that these remembrances
arise, and pass between us and the moon…”
It is sad to say but some mothers were drenching their blankets into the muddy wine in order for their infants and
small children to be able to drink something, because God knows how long these poor individuals have not drank nor eaten anything. The episode of retrieving the wine from the ground floor lasted a long time because
the whole street was whipped clean, there was no longer any presence of wine. The
tables eventually turn hen the peasants are in control of the land that the aristocrats once owned. They aristocrats are now suffering the same way these poor peasants did.
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