The surname of the wine-shop owners in A Tale of Two Cities is Defarge.
Ernest Defarge owns a wine shop in the Saint Antoine district of Paris, while his wife is Madame Thérèse Defarge. Their establishment is more than a place to drink: it serves as a meeting point where revolutionaries exchange news, grievances and plans during the upheaval that becomes the French Revolution.
At the beginning of the novel, Defarge is sheltering his former employer, Dr Alexandre Manette, after Manette's release from eighteen years of secret imprisonment in the Bastille. Defarge respects Manette, but also displays him to revolutionary sympathisers as living evidence of aristocratic injustice.
The couple's political roles differ sharply. Ernest is generally decent and conflicted, while Madame Defarge pursues vengeance against the Evrémonde family with relentless determination. Their connection to the wine shop helps Dickens move from private suffering to public rebellion. The names Lorry, Carton and Cruncher are associated with other major characters, not the Parisian shopkeepers.