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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Thérèse Raquin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Passion and Pleasure
Consequences and Delusion
Dependency and Resentment
Money, Greed, and Class
Summary
Analysis
Thérèse experiences the same kind of night terrors as Laurent, feeling a strange mixture of lust for Laurent and horror about Camille’s murder. She and Laurent are now linked forever, as if they’re one person who feels the same “pleasure and pain.” They’ve spent more than a year ignoring the bond between them and leading casual, somewhat carefree lives. Now that they’ve committed themselves to each other once again, though, the intensity of their connection comes raining down on them.
Thérèse and Laurent know they can’t simply announce their marriage. Instead, they have to make the people in their lives—people like Madame Raquin and her weekly visitors—think the union is their idea, not the couple’s. Unfortunately, this means showing some patience, which neither Thérèse nor Laurent are happy about, since they’re both tortured each night by visions of Camille’s corpse. Their fear is so overwhelming that they dread nightfall; Laurent even avoids going home one night, taking refuge under a bridge and freezing in the rain. Every time he falls asleep, he goes from imagining himself cradled in Thérèse’s arms to feeling the cold, damp embrace of Camille’s corpse.
The two murderers look forward to the day they can finally get married, but not because they love each other and can’t wait to openly express their passion. Rather, they want to get married because they think doing so will help them be less afraid at night, when thoughts of Camille run wild in their heads. But it’s naïve of them to think that being with each other will keep them from thinking about Camille, since they clearly remind each other of what they did. All the same, they rely on the idea that they’ll provide each other with comfort, which is the only thought that helps them withstand the terror they experience every night.
Themes
The burning desire to be with each other returns for both Laurent and Thérèse, only now there’s a new, strange element to their relationship. They each feel like they’ve peered into each other’s true “natures,” which terrify them and draw them closer all the while. For Thérèse, she wants to get married to banish her night terrors, and also because she desires Laurent’s touch. Laurent wants to get married for those reasons, too, but also because of something more practical: he needs the money. He doesn’t know when his father will die and leave him his inheritance, nor whether the old man will leave him money when he does die. And since one of the reasons Laurent killed Camille was to secure his friend’s savings for himself, he’s determined to do exactly that.
Laurent and Thérèse are both motivated to get married as a way of coping with their terrifying thoughts about Camille. For Laurent, though, there’s an added incentive: the fact that marrying Thérèse will give him access to Madame Raquin’s money, thus ensuring that he’ll be able to live the “idle” life he has always wanted to live. Needless to say, none of these reasons are particularly good ones to get married, indicating that Laurent and Thérèse are in for a difficult, tumultuous marriage.
Themes
