Therese Raquin is a novel by Emile Zola that was first published in 1867. The novel tells the story of Therese, a young woman who is trapped in a loveless and unhappy marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille Raquin.
Therese and Camille live in Paris with Therese's aunt, Madame Raquin, who runs a small shop. Therese is bored and unhappy in her marriage, and she longs for excitement and passion. One day, she meets Laurent, a handsome artist who is a regular at the shop. Therese and Laurent are immediately attracted to each other, and they begin an affair.
As the affair continues, Therese and Laurent become more and more obsessed with each other. They decide to kill Camille in order to be together, and they carry out the murder in a fit of passion. However, the guilt of their crime weighs heavily on them, and they are haunted by the memory of Camille's death.
As the novel progresses, Therese and Laurent's relationship becomes strained and volatile. They are constantly at odds with each other, and Therese begins to regret the murder and the choices she has made. Eventually, the guilt and the strain of living with the secret of the murder drive Therese to madness, and she drowns herself in the Seine River.
Therese Raquin is a poignant and powerful story of love, guilt, and the destructive power of obsession. It is a haunting tale that explores the dark depths of human desire and the consequences of giving into temptation.
Thérèse Raquin
She already trusts him and sees him as a son, so she consents. They finally marry but they're haunted by the memory of the murder; Laurent's bite scar serves as a constant reminder for them both. At this point her strength gives out and the words are interpreted as "Thérèse and Laurent look after me very well". Paris: Livre de Poche, 1997. He goes to Michaud and Olivier first, wanting to appear innocent and forthcoming to the two policemen. Thérèse's husband, Camille, is sickly and egocentric and when the opportunity arises, Thérèse enters into a turbulent and sordidly passionate affair with one of Camille's friends, Laurent.
Each decides to kill the other: She has a sharpened kitchen knife, he has prussic acid. Under the eyes of Madame Raquin, the cat, and the regular Thursday-evening domino party, Thérèse and Laurent hide their guilt and for fifteen months resume their routines, without ever being alone together. Thérèse comes up with the idea of killing Camille, and they become infatuated with the idea of being able to be together permanently while being married. Madam Raquin at the end became completely paralyzed, lying as the living dead. As he talks about the nude models he used to paint, he makes direct eye contact with Thérèse. As a young man, he worked in a publishing house where he, later on, became a journalist. The lusty Laurent and the unsatisfied Thérèse are soon involved in a highly charged affair.
Thérèse visits his tiny room one evening. As he paints, he can feel Thérèse smoldering with desire behind him. Camille will take her to Paris and hand her over to another aunt, but Laurent climbs onto the train and, his temper overcoming him, pushes Camille out in the dark at full speed. Therese spends her days confined behind the counter of a small shop and her evenings watching Madame play dominoes with an eclectic group. The plot is based around Madam Raquin, who opened a small shop in a poor neighborhood, after moving from a little place called Verone, with her nephew, Therese and her son Camille. He spends his time painting, but soon realizes that every face he paints looks like Camille, so he stops. At the center of the drama lies the triangle of Thérèse, Camille, and Laurent.
Another virtue of the first chapter is that it strikes the mood of disappointment that Zola returns to so often. Laurent keeps visiting the haberdashery and attending the Thursday evening gatherings, even after he and Thérèse stop seeing each other. They eventually drown him during a boat trip, though in defending himself Camille succeeds in biting Laurent on the neck. Madame Raquin loves the idea. The two must wait before they can marry without arousing suspicion; they are both increasingly haunted by memories of Camille and visions of his corpse. Laurent lifts Camille and prepares to toss him, but right before he does, Camille bites him in the neck, tearing out a chunk of flesh. Camille finds a job and Madame Raquin helps Thérèse run the shop.
During an evening game of dominoes with friends, Madame Raquin manages to move her finger with an extreme effort of will to trace words on the table: " Thérèse et Laurent ont. Vocabulary used by Zola is based on different terms significant for psychology, and he got inspired for writing this novel after reading "The Venus from Gourd", in which a wife tries killing her husband, and they both end up in a trial. It didn't take long for her to sink in immorality, going deeper every day, led by the dark and powerful forces of her body. It involves a classically limited cast of characters such as that used by French dramatists Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. He wrote about the social problems and tried to show his moral through his books. Soon, their want to be together always takes over their lives, which means Thérèse getting out of her marriage to Camille.
From that time, we have his unfinished works like "Les Trois Villes", "Les Quatre Evangiles". In his preface, Zola explains that his goal in this novel was to "study temperaments and not characters". No longer in the immediate throes of desire, then, Laurent is able to think a little more levelheadedly—though not levelheadedly enough to decide against murdering Camille altogether. Every once in a while, Camille takes Thérèse on an excursion to Saint-Ouen on the outskirts of Paris. When they are old enough, Thérèse and Camille marry. Their affair continues for months, until Laurent risks losing his job if he takes off any more time from work. Finally, Thérèse and Laurent decide to kill each other.
He was sentenced, and he ran away to England. They vacillate between trying desperately to rekindle their passion to get rid of the corpse hallucinations and trying to 'heal' the bite scar , and despising each other. Starting with the wedding night, Thérèse and Laurent have a horrible marriage. Distressed, they begin to resent each other. Because his lust has been reawakened, Laurent asks Thérèse if they can sleep together, but she refuses, saying they have to be careful.
In a dark, grimy alley in Paris there is an old haberdashery. None of these methods succeed. One Thursday evening Camille brought to the dinner his former school friend, Laurent, who immediately spotted Therese, finding her easy to seduce. He grabs her and plants a ferocious kiss on her lips. He was famous for causing many discussions about his work because he got accused of being immoral, having a lack of taste and over exaggerating. They must also tend Madame Raquin, who suffered a stroke after Camille's death.
He says Camille was joking around and dancing in the boat and ended up tipping it over, and though none of the rowers actually saw what happened, they all insist that they witnessed exactly what Laurent describes. Nevertheless, the pair is bound together by hatred, distrust, and a growing fear that the other one will report the crime to the authorities. When Thérèse's mother died, Mme Raquin's brother left his daughter in his sister's care, and died in Africa some years later. Laurent was enchanted with Therese, her lust, and passion who were hidden deep in this woman who appeared so empty before. Then, after a moment, they embrace each other and sob. When Laurent worries about getting caught, Thérèse tells him not to worry—Madame Raquin and Camille are oblivious. Therese spent her boring childhood with Camille, aligning herself with his needs and possibilities, trying to tame her strength and vivacious spirit.
