Story summary
Краткое содержание: Кабак
- Чтение: 8 мин.
- 10 parts
- Аудио скоро
A laundress in a Paris slum fights with buckets, saves for a shop and dreams of a quiet bed of her own.
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Кабак — кратко о книге
Краткое содержание: 8 min на чтение
- Время чтения
- Около 10 h 10 min8 h 5 min fast, 12 h 10 min slow
- Длительность
- Слов: 145 600
- Уровень в библиотеке
- Средний longer sentences, everyday words
- Первая публикация
- 1877by Эмиль Золя
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Сколько времени нужно на чтение классики · Обновлено
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Кабак in short
The Dram Shop follows Gervaise from the window of a shabby hotel to the top floor of a vast tenement. She is abandoned by one man, marries another, builds a shop with hard work and a loan, and enjoys one glorious feast. Then the past returns, and each easy choice carries her further from her small dream.
What Кабак is about
A woman stands at a hotel window in Paris, waiting for the man who has not come home. Before the day ends, he has left her for good, taking the trunk and the pawn tickets, and she is fighting another woman with buckets and wooden beaters in a public washhouse.
Émile Zola published The Dram Shop in 1877 as part of his series about the Rougon-Macquart family. He wanted to show, without softening anything, how working people in Paris lived, worked, drank and fell. His heroine is Gervaise, a laundress with a limp and a very small dream. She wants steady work, bread, a clean bed and no beatings.
Для кого. You will love this book if you enjoy richly detailed novels about ordinary families, vivid city settings, big set pieces like feasts, and characters whose hopes and losses you feel as your own.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A woman is left alone at her window
The story opens at dawn in the Hotel Boncoeur. Gervaise, twenty-two years old, has waited all night for her partner Lantier. She thinks she saw him enter a dance hall with a young metal polisher named Adele. Now she watches the workers pour through the city gate and wonders whether he lies dead in a corner.
The room behind her tells the story of their money. A chest of drawers has lost a drawer, and a bundle of pink pawn tickets sits on the mantelpiece. Her sons, Claude and Etienne, sleep side by side. Lantier comes home sulking, and when Gervaise names Adele, he shakes her and sends her off to pawn the last rags they own.
At the washhouse, Claude arrives with the room key and a message that Papa has gone away with the trunk. She returns to an empty room with one sou in her pocket. She fears her life will be fixed right there. This fall begins with a woman abandoned and children who still need feeding.
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A washhouse fight shows her fierce side
Virginie, Adele's tall sister, walks into the washhouse and takes a tub five places away.
- 3Начните читать бесплатно
Coupeau courts her with patience and cheer
Three weeks later Coupeau treats Gervaise to a plum in brandy at Père Colombe's drinking house, called l'Assommoir.
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A rainy wedding day goes comically wrong
Gervaise does not want a party, but Coupeau insists on a dinner at the Silver Windmill.
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Four good years end with a fall
For four years Gervaise and Coupeau work hard and are admired.
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The shop and the great goose feast
The Coupeaus take the shop in the huge tenement.
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Lantier moves in and the shop starts to sink
Lantier turns into a friend of the family.
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Drink is the poison that eats the family
The title names the place where the harm is done.
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Small dreams, harsh neighbors and a lost daughter
Gervaise never wants much.
- 10Начните читать бесплатно
A tenement, a crowd and a voice that watches
Zola tells the story in the third person, but he often slides into Gervaise's own thoughts and the gossip of her neighbors.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Gervaise Macquart A gentle, hardworking laundress with a limp who wants only steady work, a clean home and a bed to die in.
- Coupeau A cheerful zinc worker who courts Gervaise with patience and swears he will never drink, until an accident changes him.
- Lantier Gervaise's first lover, a vain hatter from the south who abandons her and later returns as a charming guest.
- Goujet A strong, shy blacksmith with a golden beard who lends Gervaise money and loves her quietly.
- Nana Gervaise's daughter, a restless girl who loves ribbons and attention and longs to escape the family's cramped rooms.
- Madame Lorilleux Coupeau's sister, a chainmaker who is stingy, jealous and always ready to criticize Gervaise.
- Virginie A tall dark-haired woman beaten by Gervaise in the washhouse, who later returns to the neighborhood with a policeman husband.
How it ends (spoiler)
Gervaise loses everything. Coupeau dies in the Sainte-Anne asylum after a final fit of delirium. Lantier drifts on from Virginie's failing shop, and Nana vanishes into the streets. Gervaise, starved and ragged, takes over the tiny hole under the stairs where old Père Bru once lay. There she dies of misery, alone for days. Bazouge, the drunken undertaker's helper who once offered to carry her off, finally lifts her into the coffin.
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Вопросы о книге Кабак
What is The Dram Shop about?
It follows Gervaise, a Paris laundress, who is abandoned by her lover, marries a zinc worker, builds a shop of her own and watches her hopes wear away under debt and drink in a crowded working-class neighborhood.
What does L'Assommoir mean?
It is the name of the drinking house run by Père Colombe. The word suggests something that knocks a person senseless, and the copper still at the back makes it a symbol of the drink that harms the whole neighborhood.
Is The Dram Shop a true story?
It is fiction, published by Zola in 1877 as part of his Rougon-Macquart series. He based its streets, trades and speech on careful study of working-class Paris, so the setting feels real even though the characters are invented.
Who are Gervaise, Coupeau and Lantier?
Gervaise is the laundress at the center of the book. Coupeau is the zinc worker she marries, and Lantier is her first lover, who abandons her with two sons but returns later as a family friend.
Is The Dram Shop easy to read?
The story moves through vivid scenes such as a washhouse fight, a rainy wedding and a goose feast. Zola writes in plain, lively language, and characters are easy to follow because each is drawn with clear habits and speech.
Как сослаться на это издание
Zola, Émile. The Dram Shop. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-dram-shop.
Zola, É. (2026). The dram shop. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-dram-shop (Original work published 1877)
Zola, Émile. The Dram Shop. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-dram-shop.
@book{zola2026dram,
author = {Zola, Émile},
title = {The Dram Shop},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-dram-shop},
note = {First published 1877}
}
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