The wash-house
Zola, as a representative of naturalism in literature, pays a lot of attention to details and his works are filled with images of every kind of things. One of the most frequently used is an image of professional belonging. In the novel L’Assommoir the image of a wash-house occurs very often, as the protagonist of the novel - Gervaise - is a laundress, and with time she opens her own wash-house. The author uses poetic metaphors to describe the atmosphere inside such an establishment: “Pale rays of light passed through the hot steam, which remained suspended like a milky fog”, and “Smoke arose from certain corners, spreading about and covering the recesses with a bluish veil”, or “A heavy moisture hung around, impregnated with a soapy odor, a damp insipid smell, continuous though at moments overpowered by the more potent fumes of the chemicals”. In such a place worked “rows of women, with bare arms and necks, and skirts tucked up, showing colored stockings and heavy lace-up shoes”. These women were “beating furiously, laughing, leaning back to call out a word in the midst of the din”, their job was not easy, but the tragedy is that these women were “brutal, ungainly, foul of speech”. Zola is a master of giving images which appeal to the reader’s imagination and help to visualize a situation.
The bar
The bar, which the novel is titled after, is a place where the workers gather after a hard day to have a drink or two. They usually gathered in a large room, which “was decorated with casks painted a gay yellow, bright with varnish, and gleaming with copper taps and hoops”. On the shelves above the bar were “liquor bottles, jars of fruit preserved in brandy, and flasks of all shapes”. The bottles “completely covered the wall and were reflected in the mirror behind the bar as colorful spots of apple green, pale gold, and soft brown”. The image of the bar and its decorations is given in much details, the author does it with a purpose of involving a reader into the Paris of the 19th century. So quickly urbanized, the city had many places of the kind. The bar “L’Assommoir” is one of these, but it had a special appeal – the distilling apparatus, and the “customers could watch its functioning, long-necked still-pots, copper worms disappearing underground, a devil's kitchen alluring to drink-sodden work men in search of pleasant dreams”. The bar “L’Assommoir” was surely a meaningful place, if only because many poor souls have lost their sanity within its area.
