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Chapter 23
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
Each day, Laurent goes to work feeling exhausted. His only idea about how to improve his life is to quit his job and rent a studio, where he can paint and—more importantly—get away from Thérèse. Similarly, Thérèse only feels like life is bearable when Laurent isn’t around. She starts distracting herself with everyday chores, constantly rushing off to cook or clean the apartment. When she’s sitting in the haberdashery, she drifts in and out of sleep in a pleasant way. Upon waking up, she sometimes feels like she’s in a communal grave—a feeling that she finds satisfying, since the idea of no longer feeling pain sounds quite nice to her.
Madame Raquin’s presence becomes a great comfort in Thérèse and Laurent’s life. They stay up late with her, putting off going to bed by listening to her ramble on. Even the Thursday night gatherings bring them some solace, despite the fact that they used to hate sitting around and listening to Grivet or Michaud go on and on about inane subjects. These days, the idle conversation helps distract them from their thoughts about Camille and delays the moment when they have to go to bed and face their nightly horrors.
Before murdering Camille, neither Thérèse nor Laurent took much interest in Madame Raquin and her boring friends. Now, though, the mundanity of life in the Raquin household feels comforting because it distracts them from their inner turmoil. What’s interesting, though, is that Madame Raquin’s presence doesn’t unnerve them—she is, after all, the mother of the man they killed. And yet, they actively seek her out and see her as someone who can make them feel better about having killed Camille, suggesting that they really don’t feel very guilty. Rather, they just want to take their minds off of their night terrors.
Themes
Because Madame Raquin provides them with such a good distraction from their woes, Thérèse and Laurent take extremely good care of her. They consult with doctors to make sure they do everything in their power to keep her in good health. Madame Raquin interprets their concern as a form of love and is deeply pleased—she never thought she’d have such good caretakers in the aftermath of Camille’s death. Meanwhile, all of the family friends think Thérèse and Laurent are the perfect couple. Whenever they show up to the Thursday night gatherings with bags under their eyes from not sleeping, Grivet jokes about how hard they must be working to have a child.
One of the great ironies of Thérèse Raquin is that the couple becomes so miserable even as everything around them goes extremely well. They were originally afraid of getting caught, but nobody suspects them of foul play. To the contrary, Madame Raquin is grateful to them for taking care of her, and people like Grivet see them as a model couple. But the fact that everything works out for them only highlights their internal agony, suggesting that, although it’s possible to commit murder without getting caught, it’s much harder to escape emotional torment in the aftermath of such immoral behavior.
Themes
