The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag
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The short passage opening us as readers to France is quite interesting. Wine could represent the class divide between poor and wealthy. The poor struggle over each other to get a sip of wine (or symbolically wealth). No one can quite get enough. Yet, everyone still returns back to their daily lives. Dickens could be commenting on the inequality of classes, possibly even violence since the wine was red. Could this really be another commentary on the bloodiness of the French Revolution? The fact that it is left on everyone displays the impact of the violence; no one comes out clean. When war or death is invovled, everone is involved. Very neat.
