Dependency and Resentment Theme Analysis

Thérèse Raquin explores the things that—for better or worse—bind people together. In Thérèse and Laurent’s case, an intense physical intimacy draws them together, as they each depend on the other to give them something they need. For Thérèse, Laurent helps her feel free from the oppressive, depressing life she has been forced to live with Camille. Laurent, on the other hand, looks to Thérèse as someone who can satisfy his sexual desires. As their relationship develops, though, the ways in which they depend on each other become more complex. After they murder Camille, for instance, they turn to each other for emotional support. But because they’re both haunted by murdering Camille, they end up tormenting each other instead of offering solace or consolation. Because they remind each other of what they’ve done, a strong feeling of resentment takes hold of their relationship, infusing it with bitterness and—eventually—outright hatred. Locked in a loveless relationship that only exacerbates their struggle to move on, they experience feelings of helplessness, as if they can’t escape the past—or, for that matter, their relationship. In a strange way, the tortured existence they share actually binds them together in a kind of intimacy that, although distorted by hatred, actually resembles the intensity of their initial sexual connection. By the end of the novel, their hatred for one another is so strong that it’s almost unifying, as if their original romantic bond has simply transformed into something more sinister. Consequently, the novel indicates that people can come to depend on each other in unexpected and even destructive ways, suggesting that it’s just as possible for people to be bound by hatred and resentment as it is for them to be bound by love.

Thérèse and Laurent’s relationship is somewhat transactional—it’s not about a mutual feeling of love, but about satisfying certain needs. Laurent, for example, is mainly interested in fulfilling his sexual desires. Having lived the life of a freewheeling artist for a brief time, he has become accustomed to sexual pleasures that have left him with “compelling needs of the flesh.” The word “needs” is crucial here, as it highlights the fact that Laurent pursues an affair not just because he thinks it might be enjoyable, but because he has come to depend on a certain level of sexual gratification in his life. To fulfill his sexual needs, he has been paying sex workers to sleep with him. Once it becomes clear that Thérèse would eagerly take him as a lover, though, he realizes that he could stop paying sex workers if he and Thérèse were to start an affair. It’s evident, then, that he doesn’t gravitate toward Thérèse because he loves her, but because he sees her as a convenient way to satisfy his needs. And Thérèse, for her part, views Laurent as a perfect way to escape the crushing boredom and monotony of her life with Camille. Just looking at Laurent gives her a thrill, lending her life a sense of vibrancy and excitement that she’s never experienced before. In turn, the two lovers embark on a relationship based not on purely romantic feelings but on the fact that they have mutual needs.

To that end, Thérèse Raquin is less about a romantic relationship than it is about a fierce, all-consuming dependency between two people. When his boss tells him he’ll get fired if he keeps sneaking away from work, Laurent is distraught because his and Thérèse’s affair grinds to a halt. The ensuing months are full of agony and despair, as if the two lovers are addicted to a drug they can no longer take. But their dependency on one another isn’t necessarily tied to feelings of love, as evidenced by the fact that they continue to depend on each other even after hatred and resentment overtake their relationship. At the beginning of their relationship, they’re connected because of the ways in which their sexual bond fulfills their needs—later, though, they’re connected by the horrifying fact that they worked together to kill Camille. Because they both shoulder the burden of this secret, a new kind of dependency takes hold of them. They come to resent each other, but they also still need each other. For instance, because they experience night terrors that keep them from sleeping, they count on having scathing, violent arguments each night, knowing these brawls are the only way to tire themselves out enough to finally fall asleep. The novel therefore illustrates the enduring strength of certain forms of dependency, which are often capable of existing in even the most troubled, spiteful relationships (or perhaps especially in such relationships).

A downside of developing such a strong dependency on another person, the novel suggests, is that it can trap people in terrible situations. Although Thérèse and Laurent are never discovered by law enforcement and thrown in jail, they still experience a feeling of imprisonment. After all, their dependency on one another keeps them trapped in their toxic, violent relationship. The novel actually explores this feeling of being trapped in terrible situations in a variety of ways. Take, for instance, the fact that Thérèse is forced as a helpless baby to depend on Madame Raquin to house her and raise her, eventually making her feel trapped in a mundane, joyless life. Furthermore, after becoming paralyzed and learning that Thérèse and Laurent killed Camille, Madame Raquin has to depend on her son’s murderers to feed, clothe, and carry her—a terrible form of psychological torture. In all of these cases, overreliance on another person leads to fierce resentment, and though the novel shies away from making an explicit argument about the downsides of human dependency, it certainly highlights the potential dangers of needing other people.