"Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew"
About this Quote
“Bottled lightning” is Dickens at his most mischievous: a metaphor that turns alcohol into spectacle, danger, and instant weather. It’s not just a cute nickname for spirits; it’s a miniature thesis about Victorian appetite. Drink is framed as an engineered thrill, a way to purchase speed and heat in a world otherwise governed by propriety and soot. The phrase crackles with showman energy, suggesting that intoxication is less a lapse than a consumer good - packaged volatility, sold with a wink.
Then he tightens the scene with props: a clean tumbler, a corkscrew. The cleanliness matters. Dickens loved the friction between respectability and indulgence, and “clean” signals a ritualized, almost hygienic version of vice. We’re not talking about gutter gin; we’re talking about the parlor’s sanctioned flirtation with excess. The corkscrew is the quiet technology that makes the transgression orderly. Pleasure arrives by instrument, not by chaos.
Contextually, Dickens wrote in a culture obsessed with moral reform and terrified of its own cravings - temperance movements rising alongside a booming market for drink, leisure, and domestic goods. The line reads like stage direction, brisk and practical, which is part of its slyness: it normalizes the act even as the metaphor hints at its consequences. You can hear the room forming around it - conviviality, performance, a little doom - as if the weather is about to change indoors.
Then he tightens the scene with props: a clean tumbler, a corkscrew. The cleanliness matters. Dickens loved the friction between respectability and indulgence, and “clean” signals a ritualized, almost hygienic version of vice. We’re not talking about gutter gin; we’re talking about the parlor’s sanctioned flirtation with excess. The corkscrew is the quiet technology that makes the transgression orderly. Pleasure arrives by instrument, not by chaos.
Contextually, Dickens wrote in a culture obsessed with moral reform and terrified of its own cravings - temperance movements rising alongside a booming market for drink, leisure, and domestic goods. The line reads like stage direction, brisk and practical, which is part of its slyness: it normalizes the act even as the metaphor hints at its consequences. You can hear the room forming around it - conviviality, performance, a little doom - as if the weather is about to change indoors.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wine |
|---|
More Quotes by Charles
Add to List
