Thérèse Raquin

Thérèse Raquin

The author, only 27 years old, indicates in the preface that it is above all a question of a scientific analysis whose starting point is “the study of the temperament and the profound modifications of the organism under the pressure environments and circumstances”. Indeed the novel is totally different from other novels of the time soaked in romantic sentimentality. This novel of extreme darkness hides between its pages a powerful drama of passion. Thérèse is an orphan taken in by her aunt, Madame Raquin, and married to her sickly cousin, Camille. If Thérèse doesn’t particularly like this man, she accepts his fate, resigned, dragging her boredom behind the counter of a sordid business, frequented by boring characters. But the irruption of Laurent, a failed painter living in total idleness, in the regulated life of the Raquin family, sows trouble.