Characters Discussed
Madame Raquin
Madame Raquin (rah-KA[N]), a plump, sixty-year-old, doting mother who centers her life on her son, Camille, and gratifies his every whim. When he decides to go to Paris to look for a new position, she leaves her comfortable country retirement at Vernon and uses a portion of her savings to rent a miserable little haberdashery on a wretched Left Bank alley. Camille, his mother, and his wife, Thérèse, live a life of unbroken plainness and regularity until they are enlivened by Camille’s vivacious coworker and friend, Laurent. After the seemingly accidental death of Camille, Madame Raquin’s sorrow eventually is tempered by her apparently devoted daughter-in-law, Thérèse, and the thoughtful Laurent. She is maneuvered into suggesting their marriage. At first, they guard the secret of their culpability for Camille’s death and hide their psychological torment from her. After Madame Raquin suffers a progressively debilitating paralysis, which leaves her unable to move or speak, Laurent, in one of his regular anguished and angry bouts with Thérèse, lets the truth slip out in front of the invalid. Unable to communicate the awful truth to the members of the Thursday night gatherings, Madame Raquin festers in her hatred, relishing the destructive behavior of Thérèse and Laurent. She has the ultimate satisfaction of witnessing their double suicide.
Thérèse Raquin
Thérèse Raquin (tay-REHZ), the twenty-eight-year-old daughter of Madame Raquin’s brother, Captain Degans. He left Thérèse to her aunt’s care after the death of the toddler’s Algerian mother. Thérèse, a strong and lissome person, has fine features, with dark hair and eyes. Madame Raquin decides that her niece and ward should marry her son, Camille. Although she is deeply repelled by Camille’s sickly smell and touch, the passive Thérèse acquiesces. Without protest, she gives up the life in the country, which she loved, for the dismal shop and apartment in Paris. She molders away until her passionate nature is brought to life and unleashed by the advances of Laurent. When their secret but tempestuous affair is threatened by lack of opportunity, it is she who suggests the murder of her husband. After Camille’s death, their ardor cools, and in its place grows guilt. They hope that their marriage will bring peace; instead, it brings greater guilt and psychological anguish. They cannot stand to touch each other, and the two engage in protracted bouts of hateful recrimination. Unable to find peace in dissipation, Thérèse, in despair, decides to escape Laurent and her own demons by killing him. Laurent, overwrought by guilt and haunted by the specter of Camille, has decided to poison her at precisely the same time. When they discover their mutual intent, they embrace. Thérèse takes the glass of poisoned water, drinks half, and hands it to Laurent, who consumes the remainder.
Camille Raquin
Camille Raquin (kah-MEEL ), a thirty-year-old clerk. Camille is Madame Raquin’s only son, whom she has overprotected because of his frail health. He is a slight, pale, and listless creature with colorless hair and an almost beardless but blotchy face, a mentally dull person devoid of imagination and passion. His only ambition is fulfilled when he obtains a clerical post with the Orleans Railway. He admires the elemental and vivacious Laurent, whom he introduces to his wife and mother. Completely unaware that Laurent has seduced Thérèse, Camille continues to bring him into his household. He does not suspect the fate that is in store for him when he suggests a walk in the country. He allows himself, despite his terror of water, to be shamed into a skiff on the Seine. As Laurent wrestles him...
(This entire section contains 1082 words.)
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out of the boat, Camille takes a deep bite out of his attacker’s neck, thus leaving a lasting reminder of the deed.
Laurent
Laurent (loh-RAH[N]), the tall, square-shouldered, and earthy son of a peasant, who attended school at Vernon with Camille and Thérèse. He went to Paris to study law but concentrated instead on his own ease and enjoyment until his father cut off his subsidies. Attracted by the bohemian lifestyle, he tried his hand at art. His lack of talent forces him to take a job at the office of the Orleans Railway. When he meets Thérèse, he regards her as an easy and insignificant conquest. Her unleashed animality, however, captivates him and awakens in him a latent sensitivity. After drowning Camille, Laurent goes daily to the morgue to look for his body. When the body finally is discovered and displayed, the bloated, decomposing horror of the corpse is deeply etched on Laurent’s mind, and the recurring memory consumes him with guilt.
Michaud
Michaud (mee-SHOH), a retired police superintendent, an old friend of Madame Raquin. He had retired to Paris after having been stationed in Vernon. After a chance meeting with Madame Raquin, the pasty and blotched-faced Michaud becomes a regular guest at her apartment on Thursday evenings, when the Raquins and their guests share tea, conversation, and dominoes. After the murder of Camille, Laurent goes immediately to Michaud, ostensibly for assistance in breaking the news to Madame Raquin. Michaud, whose primary concern is to continue his comfortable Thursday evenings, suspects nothing and gives his support to Laurent’s version of the tragedy. He is manipulated into suggesting to Madame Raquin that the apparently pining Thérèse should marry and that the obvious choice is Laurent.
Grivet
Grivet (gree-VAY), an old employee of the Orleans Railway, Camille’s supervisor, and a regular at the Thursday night gatherings. Grivet has narrow features and thin lips but round eyes. The inner turmoil and growing loathing of Thérèse and Laurent for each other remains hidden from him and from the others. His lack of perception and self-centeredness are especially evident when he presumes, always erroneously, to be able to understand the unspoken wishes of Madame Raquin after her paralysis.
Olivier
Olivier (oh-lee-VYAY), Michaud’s son, another habitual participant at the Thursday night gatherings. A thirty-year-old, tall, lean, angular, arrogant, and egotistical chief clerk in the prefecture of police’s Department of Public Order and Safety, Olivier unwittingly helps to deflect any possible suspicion from the murderers.
Suzanne
Suzanne, Olivier’s small and flabby-faced wife, also a Thursday night regular. An intellectually dull and physically frail person of unattractive appearance, she idolizes Thérèse’s vivacity.
The Characters
At the center of this novel is the smoldering, frustrated Thérèse. Her arranged marriage to her cousin, Camille, teams her with a sickly, dull husband, and the stage is set for the entry of the third member of the “love” triangle. Laurent allows his appetite for the easy life and sexual gratification to lead him into Thérèse’s embraces. Like a surgeon working on a corpse, as he comments in his preface to the second edition of Thérèse Raquin, Zola traces with his “analytical method” the actions and reactions of the “human animals” in his experimental scene. Adultery leads to murder, and murder to what passes for remorse, or at least to a breakdown of the overburdened nervous systems of the participants. Zola then dispassionately records in their interior monologues the detailed workings of their passions, instincts, and mental processes, culminating in their double suicide.
Watching this breakdown is the speechless figure of Madame, who contributes greatly to the tension between Thérèse and Laurent. She sets the cycle in motion and presides horrified over what it becomes. Brooding also over the couple are the gothic elements of Laurent’s portrait of Camille and the tiger cat, Francois, which Laurent hurls out of the upstairs window and flattens on the opposite wall of the alley.
The damp, dismal, penny-pinching setting also plays an important role in the drama. Rendered almost exclusively in pervasive shades of gray or black or depressing greens, the oppressive environment functions like another character, ever present in the minute, carefully labeled details of the realistic artist. Thérèse’s name is written ominously in red across one of the panes of the shop door. Each character works exquisitely on the sensibilities of the others in a manner not far removed from that of Jean-Paul Sartre’s protagonists in Huis-clos (1944; No Exit, 1946).