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Chapter 21
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
The nights only get worse for Laurent and Thérèse. Their qualities don’t mix well together, especially since Laurent feels as if he has taken on Thérèse’s nervous, restless nature. He used to be calm and self-assured, but now everything in his life feels shrouded in fear. And yet, any “remorse” he feels for killing Camille only has to do with his physical constitution—his nerves are overworked, but his conscience has nothing to do with his misery. He doesn’t regret murdering Camille and sometimes even thinks about how he would do it again if it seemed like it would benefit him.
The novel makes an interesting distinction between what Laurent experiences in the aftermath of killing Camille and what real guilt looks like. The implication is that Laurent’s reaction is merely physiological, suggesting that his body is the only thing that registers any kind of “remorse” for having done something so awful. Such an idea aligns with the fact that the novel’s author, Émile Zola, was interested in examining his characters in a vaguely scientific way, as if observing an experiment. For Zola, Laurent is emotionally incapable of feeling true guilt because of his “temperament,” or his natural disposition. However, Laurent still suffers as a result of his immoral deed, so it’s tricky to claim that he doesn’t feel any guilt at all.
Themes
Thérèse is also in a bad way, feeling as if her predisposition toward anxiety has only been heightened. Unlike Laurent, though, she does have some regrets about killing Camille. In moments of terror, she even addresses Camille’s ghost in her mind and begs for forgiveness. Laurent can sense when she does this and resents her all the more for it, which is why he takes his anger out on her by mistreating her in such moments.
Thérèse isn’t quite as self-centered as Laurent, who doesn’t fully regret killing Camille because he knows that he did so in order to benefit himself. Thérèse, on the other hand, is more capable of considering the immorality of the situation, which is why she has a harder time accepting what they’ve done—a dynamic that only leads to further resentment in her and Laurent’s relationship.
Themes
The newlyweds avoid lying in bed for the first several nights of their marriage. Finally, because they’re so tired, they manage to lie down, but they can’t get close to each other because they feel as if Camille’s corpse is lying between them. All the same, they sometimes try to become physically intimate, just as an experiment. But it never works—they always feel as if their lips are cold like death, which makes them feel disgusting and ill. Strangely enough, they never talk to each other about how they’re feeling, never wanting to bring up the fear and torment they’ve experienced in the aftermath of Camille’s murder.
Thérèse and Laurent don’t turn to each other for comfort. Instead, they keep their emotions bottled up, unwilling to reach out to one another in an attempt to establish a dynamic of emotional support. They originally decided to get married precisely so they could soothe each other, but now they find it impossible to do so, since they just remind each other of what they’ve done, making it that much harder for them to move on from killing Camille.
Themes
