The Drinking Den (Penguin Classics)

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She doesn't have much of a chance in the environment where she spends her life, however. A poor woman, and a mother. What could she have done to change her condition?

So: Gervaise is hardworking laundress whose life is blown to smithereens by rotten good-for-nothing beer-sodden bastard men. Men are responsible for taking her life and flushing it down the sad Parisian cludgie, along with a family of unfeeling guttersnipe witches who make you want to pound their faces in with soldering irons. Oh, poor Gervaise! It has always amused me that readers often lambast Balzac for his generalisations, while praising Emile - an author whose Les Rougon-Macquart series of books are built on stereotypes and cliches and sweeping statements about entire classes of people - for his sensitivity and verisimilitude. Every character in L'Assommoir is negative in some way, is weak or a drunkard or a miser or brutal or slutty or stupid etc. Not one or two, but all. That is how he saw the Parisian working class, and the whole of the working class, in fact. And the thing is, he was in sympathy with them, he was saying that the conditions that they were forced to endure made them the way that they were, but it's the sort of patronising sympathy you might have for an animal that eats its own young. Poor thing, it doesn't know any better. In Zola's world, or imagination, the working class aren't people, they are mistreated animals with the potential to be people. That doesn't sit right with me. It's a horrible bourgeois attitude. Per due volte tornò a piazzarsi davanti alla vetrina, incollandovi di nuovo l’occhio, esasperata nel vedere al riparo quei maledetti ubriaconi che continuavano a bere e a strillare. I fasci di luce che uscivano dall’Assommoir si riflettevano nelle pozzanghere che coprivano il selciato, e su cui la pioggia rimbalzava in mille piccole bollicine. Quando la porta si apriva e si richiudeva con il sinistro cigolio delle sue lastre di rame, era costretta a scansarsi e finiva nel fango. Alla fine si diede della stupida; spinse la porta e andò difilato verso il tavolino di Coupeau.La frase anterior define muy acertadamente a La taberna de Émile Zola, una novela que no te permite seguir siendo el mismo que eras antes de leerla. Una historia que te golpea, y que te sigue golpeando incluso cuando ya estás más que derribado; esta es la historia de Gervaise Macquart, una mujer que pasa de tener sueños y aspiraciones en la vida, a verse en la necesidad de desterrarlos debido a sus circunstancias.

Robin Buss's translation renders Zola's street argot into clear, contemporary English. This edition also includes an introduction discussing Zola's Naturalistic method, with maps of Paris, Zola's preface responding to his critics, notes, a chronology and further reading.

Reprinted with corrections and new title. Originally published: L'assommoir = The dram shop. Penguin Books, 2000 Her children will take their childhood with them into their respective adult lives, and they will be marked by their mother's struggle for a spot to call her own. The drinking ban of 2008 was more a case of tweaking the existing rules and throwing a ton of publicity at it to make it sound like something new was happening.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and the GFDL; additional terms may apply. See Terms of Use for details.Gervaise es toda una heroína dentro de su propia historia, si bien cada quien podría juzgar sus decisiones y acciones de manera diferente; es posible que algunas veces se quisiera ser su apoyo, darle un abrazo para decirle que todo estará bien, y otras solamente ser un simple observador, pero más certeramente, uno desearía que los hechos siguieran un rumbo distinto, o al menos que no fueran tan radicales. Al final, Gervaise es de esos personajes que te marcan, y que al menos en mi caso, será muy difícil expulsar de mi mente. One fine evening, Gervaise hosts a dinner fit for royalty. At this point in the novel, she has put forth great effort to live a life that is a kind of oasis of virtue, industriousness and cleanliness amid the city’s poor. This lavish dinner, complete with fine white linen tablecloth and expertly folded linen napkins, set up in the main room of her very own laundry shop is one of the highpoints of her social life. All those invited voraciously down wine and bread, goose and cake, and then each person takes their turn singing a song. Ah, music, the universal art; no need for instruments or special training -- simply singing songs. And through the singing we are given a glimpse into the soul of each of these poor men and women, quite a moving experience for us as readers.