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    Thérèse Raquin
    Thérèse Raquin
    Thérèse Raquin
    Livre électronique306 pages4 heures

    Thérèse Raquin

    Par Émile Zola

    4/5

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    Lire l'aperçu
    LangueFrançais
    ÉditeurArchive Classics
    Date de sortie1 janv. 1962
    Thérèse Raquin
    Auteur

    Émile Zola

    Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.

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    Avis sur Thérèse Raquin

    4/5

    632 notations39 avis

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    • 3/5
      It had been a while since I read a French novel and I'd been wanting to dive back into Zola. I think this is his first one and has some of the same themes as the other two I've read (Nana and L'assommoir) - What I find most fascinating about his stories are the details of middle class life in 19th century Paris. He'll talk about money and boredom and mediocrity and personalities that can't survive the things they've done.
    • 3/5
      Zola was exhaustive in his efforts to establish his thesis of debilitating compunction. Unfortunately the reader is left bruised and likewise knackered as well. Old morality raises its invisible hand and thwarts the adulterers. It isn't that simple, but such is the thrust. The details of the waterborne episode are especially chilling.
    • 1/5
      Another very dark, negative, tale from Zola--which is to be expected, since all he wrote was like that. Not one character has any redeeming quality, on the contrary. You are left to deal with the almost-scum of the earth. I had to read French Realism in high school and forgot how dry, gloomy and negative it all is. Pass this one and go straight to Proust. He was not an optimist, but at least his writing will raise you to heights you will find in no other writer.
    • 4/5
      Excellent novel studying the different impacts that murdering someone has on different personalities.
    • 5/5
      This is such a seriously Gothic story, IMO. The anger, the hatred, the lust, the disgust and the paranoia. Such a delicious mixture so well written is totally sick! I have read this story more than once and enjoy it more each time discovering new things and new interpretations every time I do. Zola is a master craftsman in the genre and I encourage anyone to read this book. You will discover the roots of many modern television and cinema themes paying homage to this book. I bet Hitchcock read this story more than once!
    • 4/5
      fantastic book, depressing story
    • 4/5
      Excellent novel studying the different impacts that murdering someone has on different personalities.
    • 2/5
      So disappointed with this book. Horrible repetitive writing. No characterization. It's like a poor knockoff of "Crime and punishment". I may have chosen a poor translation as I didn't do my usual research but that only bears so much responsibility.
    • 5/5
      An absorbing novel, an early version of a noir. It is a naturalistic "study" of a loveless couple, an affair, a murder, and a descent into madness that, as you might guess, ends badly.

      The novel generally has a very tight economy, with four main characters, four supporting characters, very few other walk-on parts, and the majority set in one location. It was considered shocking at the time due to its relatively open depictions of sexuality, crime, and punishment. It still is somewhat "shocking," to the degree that anything is, most notably as the lovers taunt the stroke-ridden mother of their victim--who is unable to communicate their confession to her visitors.

      Zola's preface describes the book in quasi-scientific terms, as a scientific observation that takes an inevitable course that he did not decide. He places himself at odds with the romantics, but the novel itself shares many of the same dramas and conventions--and is thus considerably more interesting than the naturalistic description it claims to be.
    • 4/5
      A weak woman marries a weak cousin at the request of her strong Aunt. She has a long affair with the husband's friend, the husband dies, the lovers quarrel and plot to kill the other, have remorse and commit suicide before the Aunt who enjoys the spectacle as punishment for the woman who was responsible for her son's sad life. Hoo, boy!
    • 5/5
      19th Century naturalist fiction at its best from a master of the genre.
    • 4/5
      I really love Zola's writing and was interested to try this early novel that predates his Rougon-Macquart series. Though [Therese Raquin] is not quite as developed as his later writing, it is a good novel and really shows where he'll go with his focus on the middle and lower economic classes and his extreme realism.The eponymous character is raised with her Aunt and cousin when she is orphaned. They treat her as one of the family, but raise her in their sheltered life. Her cousin, Camille, is a sickly young man, and though they are raised as brother and sister, they are expected to marry. As expected, when they move to the city and a handsome young artist joins their social circle, Therese's sexuality is awakened. She and Laurent start a torrid affair and begin to plan how they can rid themselves of Camille. The ramifications of their decision form the rest of the novel. This is a good novel by a great writer.
    • 3/5
      Started off as a decent enough family drama. Went for some doom and gloom, which is not all that bad. After awhile this started to feel like a film made under the MPAA Production Code: crime cannot pay.

      This is very unsatisfying, because the titular character is given a fairly raw deal. The murder of a man who the narrative admits should have died long ago, unsavory as it is, is a sort of payback. To devote roughly 2/3 of the novel to the guilt produced in its aftermath feels more like moralizing than a character study. And what do you know, the afterword (in the Gutenberg edition) confirms this: Zola took a story straight from the newspapers, deciding to replace legal justice with divine justice.
    • 2/5
      This starts off as a great story, but from about half-way in, it gets repetitive and unnecessarily drawn-out. The final scene was as much a relief for me reading it as it was for the main characters
    • 4/5
      An early Zola, and similar in ethos to Crime and Punishment. I can't say more for fear of spoiling the plot. Many of the hallmarks of Zola's writing are present here - the fascination with art and the artistic life; the sense of place, specifically Paris; the difference between love and lust; and the more terrible urges of the human psyche.
    • 5/5
      This book is alive. From the first to the last I saw the story came to life and I was drawn so completely in. It made my heart beat a little faster, and even now I have put the book down, slept and lived through another day, it is still in my head and my heart.On one hand the story is utterly modern: and it is timeless. It would be so easy to reset in in any period since it was published, and equally easy to take it back through the centuries.Because this is a story of humanity. Of what people may do to get what they want, and of how they may be destroyed if they reach too far, if they cross certain lines.A story of emptiness, passion, horror, despair, guilt, revenge …Thérèse was the daughter of a French sailor and a native woman. Her father took his sister, a haberdasher, to raise with her son. Camille, a bright but sickly child. It was expected that Thérèse and Camille would marry, and marry they did. Not because either one had feelings for the another, but because it didn’t occur to either of them to do anything else, or that life could offer anything more than they already knew.Zola painted a picture of dark and dull lives, and yet he held me. Somehow, I don’t know how, he planted the idea that something would happen, that it was imperative that I continued to turn the pages.When Camille tried to pull away from his protective mother life changed. Thérèse met Laurent, a friend of her husband who was everything that her husband was not. A passionate, obsessive relationship grew between them. Their feelings were tangible.They feared discovery. They knew what they wanted, and they were oblivious to anything else. And so they acted.That act is stunning. Shocking. A flash of light in a dark story, and it is executed quite brilliantly.It may sound like an end, but it came early in the story.The knowledge of what they had done, the consequences of what they had done, were corrosive. For Thérèse. For Laurent. And for their relationship.For a while it isn’t clear where the story will go. The pair seem trapped, in lives overtaken by guilt, horror and despair. But then something snaps. A downward spiral leads to a devastating conclusion.Zola handles all of this magnificently.The bleak street, the house, where Thérèse and her family lived and worked was described so vividly, the atmosphere was so claustrophic, it was utterly real.And he deployed his cast – four principals, four supporting players, and a cat – so cleverly. Each was essential. Each had more than one role to play. Their story has broad strokes, and it has small details too, and they all work together beautifully.The story is desperately dark, but it is honest and never gratuitous. And the story is paramount; everything else is there to support the story, and it is woven in so well that it is never a distraction. You could stop to observe if you chose, or you could be quite naturally swept along by events.It’s greatest strength is its creator’s understanding of humanity. That allowed him to bring flawed, fallible, utterly real human beings to life on the page. To lay bare their hearts and souls. And to make the evolution of their lives, the extraordinary things that happen, completely understandable.And so it was that the skill of the author, and the understanding of the author, make this book compelling, horrific, and desperately sad.
    • 5/5
      this is my first zola...and omg! for such a simple plot, zola's prose had me hooked from start to finish!i loved it so much that i started looking around for reviews of this book to see if they share my experience. most of them mentioned that zola was exploring the naturalistic nature of his characters. that is, that the characters in the book could not help acting the way they did, their inner natures just responding to the events happening around them, and so they were simply helplessly watching their personal hells play out.there is no doubt this kind of atmosphere through out the book...i felt sorry for the characters (especially therese and madam raquin), but i could not fully blame any one...but i disagree that they were totally powerless...their situations were the sum of choices they have made in their lives up to that point, after all. from that point of view, i think therese arguably had it worst, as she had the least capability to choose growing up...in any case, a superb book and definitely will not be my last zola. and kate winslet's performance is magnificent!
    • 3/5
      I picked this up because Kate Winslet is a fantastic narrator. I have listened to several books she has done, and they were full of fabulous, so as soon as I saw this one, I snapped it up. And I am trying to read more classics and more translations. Speaking of translations, I have no idea who did this one - I have looked and looked but cannot discover who the translator was for this edition, so if any of you know please speak up. I wish Audible would do a better job of crediting the translators - I feel like I always have to go looking for it in other sources. Anyway, it's awful. The story is awful and the people in it are awful, and yet I could not look away. It's about lust and greed and murder and paranoia, and the best character is not the title character but instead Madame Raquin, who is the aunt and MIL of Thérèse. The story loses a full star for me because of what happens to the cat near the end of the story - it is horrible and completely gratuitous. What Zola did do well was to create psychological tension that slowly builds into madness, and even though you know how it has to end you have to watch it play out. It's like an Alfred Hitchcock movie without the comic relief or the character that you root for.
    • 4/5
      Thérèse Raquin swims in a vast ocean of guilt and sorrow. Initially trapped in a loveless and boring marriage arranged and planned for Madame Raquin’s interest, Thérèse an orphan, without a taste of independence as a mind of her own, not so much their consideration for her own opinion, rebel in the most repugnant of ways. What starts off as small doses of freedom and pleasure becomes a gnawing hunger for an unrepentant and reckless solution. And as this slips easily in that small, tight interstice between murder and ardour its most appalling and perverse plot device is not with the offense committed but the inflicted psychological torture that heightens page after page. It traps in a cellar of nausea. Complicity becomes ugly resistance.Zola’s acerbic and riveting prose where the plot is seamlessly ingrained is certain to shock and horrify to this day. However, as some twists and turns can be infeasible and absurd they mildly take away the pounding suspense and excruciating punishment of a passionate love turned hatred. It also includes some of the medical, often in psychology, beliefs at that time which are both interesting and ridiculous (hysteria as the only malady of women, anyone?) A novel easily not for the faint-hearted; short and scalding.
    • 4/5
      It's easy to see why Thérèse Raquin launched Zola's career, with its affecting imagery and dramatic scenes. It's also easy to see that this is early Zola, when the author was still figuring out pacing and how to blend his moralizing and his storytelling together. Overall, this is a good book, but a bit unbalanced.

      First off, the good- even in this early book, Zola can set a great scene. He deftly establishes the character of Thérèse as a free spirit boxed in by circumstances and forced to watch her life slip away. When she is surrounded by her husband's friends at the weekly dinner party and imagines herself "buried at the bottom of the tomb, in company with mechanical corpses," you understand and sympathize with her. This is without Zola adding any malicious characters or making Thérèse into a victim: the novel emphasizes that the husband Thérèse hates so much is not evil, just as later on the book emphasizes that Thérèse and Laurent aren't cruel. The characters are what they are, all brutes (a term that Zola overuses throughout this work), but not monsters. The great scenes continue throughout the book- Thérèse and Laurent's early romance, where a stolen kiss is like a "blinding flash of lightning in a leaden sky." Later, the murder of Camille oozes with tension, and after he is gone the nearly-paralyzed Madame Raquin attempting to reveal his murder at a dinner party is a great piece of suspense. The killing of the cat by Laurent and the accompanying visuals are memorable, as is the final scene of the book, not to mention the famous morgue scene. In short, the writing hits many high notes, and, while they devolve a bit in the second half of the book, for the most part the characters avoid falling into tired archetypes.

      Unfortunately, the story is not consistently great throughout. Zola has the affair escalate to murder rather quickly, so that I was told of the infatuation between Thérèse and Laurent but didn't have time to feel it. Then, once the murder occurs, Zola has the perpetrators wallow in their guilt for far too long, to the extent that the later half of the book tended to drag at times. There's nothing wrong with depicting the murder as having ruined the relationship, or with exploring the descent into vice and fear of betrayal that haunts both the characters, but the endless mention of Camille's drowned corpse occupying their lives and the sleepless nights of Thérèse and Laurent went on for so long that it dulled the impact of their grief and regret. The emphasis on how terrible the two felt after the murder made it eventually seem as though Zola wasn't so much telling a story as he was moralizing on the sin of murder, even though Zola insterestingly depicts Thérèse and Laurent as having in some ways been reborn through the act of murder (Thérèse with her adventure novels and Laurent with his art).

      This is a short novel, so even shaving off twenty pages from the wallowing section and adding twenty more to the affair section could have significantly rebalanced the book and, in my opinion, made it noticeably better. Still, though, because the impressive imagery and individual scenes this story was well done overall. Not as good as Germinal, to be sure, but there's enough good stuff here that I'm excited to read La Bête Humaine, wherein Zola tackles similar subject matter with a more experienced hand. I give this book 3.5 stars, rounding up to 4.
    • 4/5
      If you think serious depravity is a theme confined to 20th century literature or later, you need to read Therese Raquin. This book paints a brutal and unrelenting story of two amoral people who will even fake the appearance of guilt and remorse. At first I was put off by the repetition. In the beginning it was the grungy arcade, shop and claustrophobic rooms where Therese and family spend most of their lives. Then it was the description of that life and what led to present circumstances. Each section of forward progress is really over-the-top and repetitive, but once Zola is done and moves beyond, it’s pretty much left in the past. Which is good because the sheer emotional turmoil is enough to cope with from one time frame to the next.It’s that emotional turmoil that had me at the breaking point for believability. No, I’ve never been a murderer or an adulteress, so I don’t know what that kind of guilt can do to a person, but it seemed like drama for drama’s sake. Either in the narrative style, or in the intent and motivations of the characters. Whichever it was, it felt alien, like it did in Crime and Punishment. All the murderers in these tales have many a justification for their crimes ahead of time. Their victims deserve to be killed. The killers have the right to do away with their victims because justice is on their side. But after the killing is done, all fall prey to their own twisted psyches which feed on escalating guilt if not exactly remorse.For Therese and Laurent, they wait so long to engineer their eventual marriage, that any passion they manufactured for each other (out of propinquity and ennui) is gone; burned out by the act of violence they committed and has gone unpunished and undetected. Camille’s death was and will forever be an accident to the world and what is more natural than to bring Camille’s widow and best friend together in a union to honor the drowned man. By the time they connive their way into their legitimate relationship, all they have left is fear, guilt, self-pity, and hatred for each other. Zola describes it well in one short sentence - “Waiting had extinguished the flame that had formerly fired them.”Some say that Therese is portrayed as a more base creature than Laurent and is the victim of the writer’s misogyny and chauvinism, but I didn’t feel it was unbalanced. Laurent is described as not caring if he hurt Camille or his mother. He’s brutish, lazy and delusional about his right to live a completely idle life on the money Therese will inherit from Madame Raquin. His “love” for Therese is brought on by the fact that he cannot have her, not from anything genuine. I found the use of the word sweehearts to describe what they are to each other to be the height of irony and I don’t know whether to attribute it to Zola or the translation. Either way it is the perfect antithesis of their true nature. As bad as Laurent is, Therese is a perfect match for him. She manipulates Laurent to violence and uses this to engineer some sort of pardon in her own mind. She abases herself before Madame Raquin and though the old woman is beyond speech, determines that she does in fact forgive Therese for killing her son. With these ideas twisting in her brain, she attempts to live a life outside of her household and tries on loose living and drink for a while. So does Laurent. It doesn’t work to relieve them of their hallucinations of the dead man and they are inexorably drawn back together in a spiral of increasing violence and hate.The gothic heights of perverted morality and atmosphere are pretty thick toward the end and the Poe vibe is even stronger. Their impending madness is always in the forefront of the narrative and it doesn’t take much to see where this will end up. With Madame Raquin’s paralysis a la Noirtier being the absolute capper on the whole situation, the tension escalates to the inevitable conclusion which, really, is the only way it could end and it satisfies. Therese and Laurent deserved each other and were true to their natures to the bitter end.
    • 4/5
      Kate Winslet reads Zola’s proto-noir tale of adultery and murder in the tone that I would have imagined Zola using: detached and disgusted. She brought the characters, male and female, to life in their short bursts of dialogue: angry, unhinged Therese; loud, brutish Laurent; the fools whose great goal in life is playing dominoes with what they imagine is a perfect family.
    • 4/5
      The story is of a young girl, daughter of the brother of Madame Raquin and a woman from Algeria who is brought to Madame Raquin to raise after the mother dies. Madame Raquin has one son Camille Raquin who is sickly and spoiled. Madame Raquin marries her son and Therese to each other. Therese later becomes involved an an affair. The story is about the affair and murder. The author’s purpose in writing the novel is to “study temperaments” Therefore there is a detached and scientific approach to the story and the work is considered an example of Naturalism. Themes include punishment and imprisonment, temperaments and the interaction of these temperaments. Therese is melancholic, Laurent is sanguine, Camille is phlegmatic. It was made into film, TV and theatrical adaptations. What I liked; it was a story easy to follow, the characters were such that it was hard to like any of them. You want to feel sorry for Therese and Laurent is detestable. Madame and Camille Raquin have little to evoke any sympathy. Still the story is good. The narration by Winslet is very good. Her voice is clear and easy to listen. I give it 3.5 stars. It would have been higher except for its detachment. The author studies adultery and murder and the devastating effects it has on those that make that choice. Of the three temperaments, Camille’s was the easiest to find merit. He was rather spoiled but he had a desire to work and work he found and work he did. More than what can be said for Laurent.
    • 4/5
      Thérèse Raquin is one of Zola's early works published when he was 27 years old. The writing style is very energetic, in fact Zola tries too hard. But it's still a powerful story, despite extended overly-emotional passages that turn his characters into amateur drama students. Zola existed in that middle ground between Romanticism and Modernism - there is overwrought sentimental emotion of Romanticism combined with the realism and symbolism of Modernism. This is my 8th Zola novel. I don't know what it is about Zola and smell but once again I came away feeling like I had sniffed the dirty undergarments of unsavory Paris. And once again I thought the first third of the novel was the best as he paints character and scenery portraits - when it goes internal and Zola relies on outdated notions of human behavior it becomes wearisome.
    • 3/5
      Zola’s first major novel suffers mainly from him trying too hard, presumably because he was a young writer. The premise is straightforward: Therese Raquin is trapped in a marriage of convenience to her sickly cousin, Camille, and under the watchful eye of his mother. Along comes her husband’s friend Laurent, and sparks fly. To describe how it plays out from there would be to spoil the plot, which is pretty thin, and plods along.Zola is guilty scientifically of believing in the theory of the day that people could be categorized by their temperaments (bilious, sanguine, nervous, and lymphatic), and artistically of explaining his characters actions per his theories, as opposed to letting the reader observe and draw their own conclusions. In addition, the description of animal passion, haunting guilt, and the device of a bite on Laurent’s neck are all overwrought. However, there were a few redeeming aspects of the book: (1) the description of the public viewing of the morgue for unidentified bodies in 19th century Paris, which was shocking and true, (2) the torturous fate of Madame Raquin, and (3) the minor character Grivet, who Zola skillfully has playing the oaf on all occasions. These aren’t enough to pull the rating up higher than a three though, and I would recommend Germinal or Nana from the more mature Zola instead.
    • 4/5
      The shortest and most readable books from the 20-vol Rougon-Macquart cycle but perhaps not the best one to start with. 'Germinal' more gives the full heavy, 19th C saga-with-issues flavour of Zola.
    • 4/5
      Therese Raquin is a harrowing story of lust, murder, terror, and madness.A French officer brings his black-haired love child, the daughter of his North African mistress, to his sister in France, a Mme Raquin. He returns to Africa where he is soon reported killed. Mme Raquin, a widow, is only too happy to raise her orphaned niece as a companion to her sickly son Camille. Young Thérèse, full of healthful vitality, is forced to endure the claustrophobic life of her sick cousin. Seeing nothing of the world, she becomes a silent introvert, suppressing her natural desires. When she reaches adulthood, Thérèse apathetically complies when Mme Raquin insists that she marry Camille so she can continue to be his caretaker. Thérèse gradually comes to loathe her banal, sickly husband, but continues to repress her feelings and desires. This comes to an end when she meets Laurent, Camille's virile, self-indulgent friend. The two begin a passionate affair behind the backs of the unsuspecting mother and husband. When circumstances make it impossible for them to continue their clandestine meetings, sexual frustration drives them to plot to murder Camille so they can eventually marry. The plot is successful, but each is tormented by the fear of detection, and instead of the bliss they expected, their lives become a living hell.The novel created a sensation when it was first published in 1867, for its violence, its sexual candor, and most of all for its amorality. This is a tale devoid of religious content or social message. Zola's defended his novel, saying his purpose was "to study temperament, not character." He contrasts the sanguine nature of Laurent with the nervous constitution of Thérèse, and treats their romance and its tragic end as something as inevitable as a chemical reaction. Zola's psychological analysis may seem primitive and simplistic, but it was a bold venture for its time. The characters and their mental states are always believable even though modern psychologists would explain them in more sophisticated terms.Therese Raquin has none of the social criticism for which Zola's later novels are known. Instead it bears a strong resemblance to some of the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, whose writings probably influenced Zola. It does, however, convey a sense of the lives, institutions, and surroundings of mid-19th century Paris. It is an intense and memorable novel, highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      While none of the characters in this novel are very nice, Zola manages to make them human and thus understandable. Immensely readable, this tale of lust and murder focuses on the psychological toll of committing murder. I am glad that I read it (well, actually mostly listened to the audiobook edition) but doubt I would ever reread this.
    • 5/5
      An absorbing novel, an early version of a noir. It is a naturalistic "study" of a loveless couple, an affair, a murder, and a descent into madness that, as you might guess, ends badly.The novel generally has a very tight economy, with four main characters, four supporting characters, very few other walk-on parts, and the majority set in one location. It was considered shocking at the time due to its relatively open depictions of sexuality, crime, and punishment. It still is somewhat "shocking," to the degree that anything is, most notably as the lovers taunt the stroke-ridden mother of their victim--who is unable to communicate their confession to her visitors.Zola's preface describes the book in quasi-scientific terms, as a scientific observation that takes an inevitable course that he did not decide. He places himself at odds with the romantics, but the novel itself shares many of the same dramas and conventions--and is thus considerably more interesting than the naturalistic description it claims to be.
    • 4/5
      Nature and circumstances seemed to have made this man for this woman, and to have driven them towards one another. Together, the woman, nervous and dissembling, the man, lustful, living like an animal, they made a strongly united couple. They complemented one another, they protected one another. In the evening, at table, in the pale light of the lamp, you could feel the strength of the bond between them, seeing Laurent’s heavy, smiling face and the silent, impenetrable mask of Therese. – from Therese Raquin, page 43 -Therese Raquin is an unhappy, somber woman who has married her cousin, Camille – a sickly man who repulses her. They live together with Camille’s mother Mme Raquin in a dingy apartment in Paris and the joyless days crawl past, with the only interruption being a weekly Thursday night domino game with visitors. So when Camille’s co-worker and friend Laurent arrives one evening, it is not surprising that his ruddy good looks and easy-going nature gain Therese’s attention. Soon the two are engaged in an unseemly affair right beneath the noses of Camille and his mother. The affair becomes more and more passionate, and the two lovers hatch a scheme to rid themselves of Camille so that they can marry each other.Therese Raquin is a psychological thriller of sorts which explores the psyche of the criminal mind and seeks to examine the repercussions of a criminal act. The plot is simple and the novel takes place primarily in the dreary apartment of the Raquin’s. To fully understand the novel, the reader should understand some of the science of the time. Zola, at only twenty-seven years old when he published Therese Raquin, was interested in a theory of human psychology which was well-accepted in the mid-nineteenth century…namely that of human temperament being the key to understanding human behavior. Simply put, human temperament could be divided into four basic categories: bilious, sanguine, nervous and lymphatic. At the time of the writing of this novel, doctors believed a person’s temperament could be altered by circumstance. It is this idea which motivated Zola to write Therese Raquin. Faced with fierce criticism that the novel was pornographic and “putrid,” Zola added a preface to the second edition of the book where he writes:In Therese Raquin I set out to study temperament, not character. That sums up the whole book. I chose protagonists who were supremely dominated by their nerves and their blood, deprived of free will and drawn into every action of their lives by the predetermined lot of their flesh. – from the Preface of Therese Raquin, page 4 -Zola assigns Therese a nervous temperament which becomes inflamed when her love for Laurent is awakened.With the first kiss, she revealed the instincts of a courtesan. Her thirsting body gave itself wildly up to lust. It was as though she were awakening from a dream and being born to passion. She went from the feeble arms of Camille to the vigorous arms of Laurent, and the approach of a potent man gave her a shake that woke her flesh from its slumber. All the instincts of a highly-strung woman burst forth with exceptional violence. – from Therese Raquin, page 35-36 -Laurent, on the other hand, demonstrates a sanguine temperament.Underneath, he was lazy, with strong appetites and a well-defined urge to seek easy, lasting pleasures. His great, powerful body asked for nothing better than to lie idle, wallowing in constant indolence and gratification. – from Therese Raquin, page 28 -Zola uses the temperaments of the characters to demonstrate what happens when two people with these temperaments come together to commit a crime for their own personal gain. It is heady stuff.At its core, however, Therese Raquin is a classic tragedy. It is also a moral tale – examining the consequences of adultery and murder. Both Therese and Laurent are narcissists who fail to regret the evil of their actions. In pursuing their own selfish desires, they not only inflict cruelty on Mme Raquin (who loves and trust them), but they ruin their own lives in the process.Emile Zola’s writing is surprisingly accessible and modern given the time in history the story was penned. Zola quickly pulls the reader into the dark and despairing lives of his characters. This is far from an uplifting story – in fact, it is a rather depressing read. Despite that, I enjoyed getting inside the heads of these characters who are admittedly grotesque. Although psychology today does not agree with psychology in Zola’s time, some things do remain the same…namely that immoral behavior rarely results in happiness and violent crime is almost always punished, if only by the impact it has on the perpetrators’ psyche.Readers who enjoy classic literature, psychology, and crime novels will undoubtedly want to add Therese Raquin to their list of potential reads.Recommended.

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    Thérèse Raquin - Émile Zola

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