Résumé
Résumé de Thérèse Raquin
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
This book will please readers who like crime stories told from the inside, close studies of nerves and desire, and moody city settings. It suits anyone curious about how guilt, appetite and fear shape two people's lives.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Thérèse Raquin is a novel by Émile Zola, a French writer who died in 1902. It tells of a murder and what follows it. Zola wrote it as a close study of two bodies and two nervous systems under pressure, and he wanted to watch what passion and guilt do to ordinary people.
The story begins in a dark, damp shopping passage in Paris, the Arcade of the Pont Neuf. There a young woman named Thérèse sits behind the counter of a small haberdashery with her sickly husband Camille and his doting mother. Their quiet, airless life is broken when Camille brings home an old school friend, a big, lazy, appetite-driven man named Laurent.
What you get here is the whole shape of the book. You meet the people, see the places that press on them, and follow the choices that lead from boredom to desire and from desire to crime. You also learn how Zola builds his scenes and what he wants you to notice in them. Let us start where the novel starts, in the arcade itself, a place that seems made to shape the people who live there.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A gloomy arcade shapes a familyFree
- 2Thérèse is raised in a sickroom
- 3A friend arrives and a portrait begins
- 4Secret meetings and a daring comedy
- 5One word in an attic starts a murder
- 6A boat on the Seine and a clean report
- 7The Morgue and a staged proposal
- 8A wedding night and a house of ghosts
- 9What the story says about guilt and appetite
- 10How Zola tells the story
Point clé 1 sur 10
A gloomy arcade shapes a family
The novel opens with a long look at the Arcade of the Pont Neuf in Paris. It is a narrow passage, about thirty paces long, paved with worn tiles and roofed with glass black from grime. Nobody strolls there. People hurry through as a shortcut, and the shopkeepers watch in alarm if anyone stops at a window.
On the left side stands a mercery, a shop for needles, wool, buttons and linen caps. Its goods are yellow with age and dust, and its windows are lined with blue paper. Behind the caps, on summer days, a visitor can see the pale, still profile of a young woman with a long nose, thin lips and a large black eye. Her name is painted in red on the door. It reads Thérèse Raquin.
At night the family sits in the shop. There is Madame Raquin, an old woman of about sixty who dozes with a smile. There is her son Camille, a short, frail man of thirty with fair hair, a thin beard and a blotchy face. There is the big tabby cat François, who watches everything from a corner of the counter. Upstairs are three rooms, a stove, a round table and a bedroom with a second door onto a back staircase.
The place feels like a tomb, and Zola wants you to feel it before you meet anyone. The reader soon sees that the arcade is more than a backdrop. It presses on the people inside it.
One evening each week, on Thursday, the Raquins receive guests. Old Michaud is a retired police commissioner. His son Olivier is a stiff clerk at the Prefecture of Police, and Olivier's pale wife Suzanne comes with him. Grivet is a clerk at the railway office where Camille works. They drink tea, play dominoes and call it a wild evening. Thérèse sits among them with the cat on her lap and sees only puppets with nodding heads.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
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Who’s who
- Thérèse Raquin
- Thérèse is Madame Raquin’s niece, raised alongside her sickly cousin Camille, whom she has married.
- Laurent
- Laurent is Camille’s childhood acquaintance and fellow clerk, welcomed into the Raquin household as a friend.
- Camille Raquin
- Camille is Madame Raquin’s sheltered son and Thérèse’s husband, working as a clerk in Paris.
- Madame Raquin
- Madame Raquin is Camille’s devoted mother and Thérèse’s aunt, keeping a haberdashery and presiding over their household.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 71,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 4 h 45 min
- Listening time7 h 55 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about Thérèse Raquin
What is Thérèse Raquin about?
It tells of a young woman in a damp Paris arcade who begins an affair with her husband's friend Laurent. The two plan a murder, and the novel follows how fear and guilt wear them down afterward.
Is Thérèse Raquin a true story?
No, it is a work of fiction by Émile Zola, published in the nineteenth century. Zola wanted it to read like a case study of temperament and nerves, so it feels close to a report even though it is invented.
What does the scar on Laurent's neck mean?
The scar is a bite Camille leaves on Laurent during the struggle. It turns red whenever Laurent is afraid or guilty, so it stands for the physical memory of his crime that he cannot escape.
Why is the Arcade of the Pont Neuf so important?
The dark, damp passage sets the mood of the whole book. Zola describes it as a tomb, and its gloom shapes how Thérèse and the others feel, so it works almost as another character.
Is Thérèse Raquin easy to read?
The chapters are short, the plot is clear, and the scenes are vivid and concrete. Zola's plain sentences and strong images make it easy to follow, and the story moves steadily from one event to the next.