Book I - Chapter V. The Wine-shop Practice Quiz — A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Book I - Chapter V. The Wine-shop
What event opens Book I, Chapter 5?
A large cask of red wine falls from a cart and shatters in the street outside the Defarges' wine-shop in the Saint Antoine district of Paris. The starving residents rush to drink the spilled wine.
What does the tall joker (Gaspard) scrawl on the wall, and how does Defarge respond?
Gaspard dips his finger in the muddy wine-lees and writes the word BLOOD on a wall. Defarge crosses the road, picks up a handful of mud, and smears it over the writing, warning Gaspard not to write such words in public.
Who are the "three Jacques" and what are they doing at the top of the staircase?
They are three revolutionary conspirators who use the code name "Jacques." When Lorry, Lucie, and Defarge reach the garret floor, the three men are found peering through crevices in the wall, spying on Dr. Manette inside.
What is Dr. Manette doing when the garret door is opened at the end of the chapter?
He is sitting on a low bench with his back to the door, stooping forward in the dim light of a dormer window, making shoes. He is described as a white-haired man.
Why does Defarge make loud noises with the key and door before entering the garret?
He deliberately makes noise—striking the door, drawing the key across it several times—to avoid startling Dr. Manette, who has been in solitary confinement for eighteen years and would be frightened by a sudden intrusion.
How is Monsieur Defarge physically described?
He is a bull-necked, martial-looking man of about thirty with crisply-curling short dark hair, brown bare arms, rolled-up shirtsleeves, and "good eyes and a good bold breadth between them." He wears no coat despite the cold, carrying one slung over his shoulder.
What is Madame Defarge doing when she is first introduced, and what are her distinguishing traits?
She is sitting behind the counter picking her teeth with a toothpick, with her knitting laid down before her. She is described as having "a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything," a large heavily-ringed hand, strong features, and great composure.
How does Madame Defarge communicate with her husband without speaking?
She uses a system of minimal signals: a single grain of cough and a slight raising of her eyebrows. Each time the name "Jacques" is exchanged between the men, she coughs and raises her eyebrows another line, alerting Defarge to significant information.
What transformation comes over Defarge when he learns the identity of his visitors?
He had been good-humoured and open, but upon learning that Lorry and Lucie have come about Dr. Manette, he becomes "a secret, angry, dangerous man" with no good-humour or openness left in his face.
What relationship did Monsieur Defarge have with Dr. Manette before the imprisonment?
Defarge was Dr. Manette's servant. When Manette was released from prison, Defarge took him in and has been keeping him in the garret above the wine-shop.
What does the spilled red wine symbolize?
It symbolizes the blood that will be shed during the French Revolution. The wine stains hands, faces, and feet red, and the narrator prophesies: "The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there."
What do the street lamps hanging from ropes and pulleys foreshadow?
Dickens writes that the time would come when the "gaunt scarecrows" of Saint Antoine would conceive the idea of "hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition"—foreshadowing the revolutionary hangings from lampposts.
What does the dark garret symbolize?
The nearly lightless garret symbolizes Dr. Manette's mental state after eighteen years of solitary confinement in the Bastille. The dim, enclosed space mirrors his psychological imprisonment—he remains "locked up" in mind even after physical release.
How does Dickens personify Hunger in this chapter?
Dickens capitalises "Hunger" and gives it agency as a pervasive, almost demonic presence: "Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses," "Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys," "Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts." It becomes the defining force of Saint Antoine.
What does Dickens suggest about the relationship between oppression and revolution in this chapter?
Through the prophetic refrain "The time was to come," Dickens argues that sustained poverty and dehumanisation inevitably breed violent revolution. The same ropes that hoist lamps will hoist men; the same streets stained with wine will be stained with blood.
How does the chapter introduce the theme of surveillance?
Madame Defarge watches everything while appearing to watch nothing. The three Jacques peer through wall crevices to spy on Manette. Defarge controls who sees the doctor. The chapter establishes a world where everyone is watching—and being watched—foreshadowing the revolutionary tribunals.
What literary device is Dickens using with the repeated phrase "The time was to come"?
This is prolepsis (flash-forward) and foreshadowing. The narrator steps outside the fictional present to prophesy the Revolution, creating dramatic irony since the reader senses the inevitable violence while the characters cannot yet see it.
Identify the allusion in Gaspard's act of writing BLOOD on the wall.
It alludes to the Biblical story of Belshazzar's feast (Daniel 5), in which a disembodied hand writes on the wall to prophesy the fall of the Babylonian empire. Similarly, Gaspard's writing prophesies the fall of the French aristocracy.
When and where is this chapter set?
It is set in 1775, in the Saint Antoine district of Paris—a desperately poor suburb. The French Revolution will not begin for another fourteen years (1789), but the conditions that will cause it are already entrenched.
What is the historical significance of the name "Jacques" used by the revolutionaries?
The name comes from the Jacquerie, a major French peasant revolt of 1358. The nobility dismissively called all peasants "Jacques Bonhomme" (Jack Goodfellow). Revolutionary groups adopted the name to signal solidarity and conceal individual identities.