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 and Laurent spend another two months in complete agony. They now deeply hate each other and start fighting every night. On some level, they understand that their bleak marriage is a form of “punishment” for having murdered Camille, but they’re unwilling to admit as much. It now seems inevitable to them that something terrible will happen at some point. They argue and fight so much that it becomes an actual physical “need”—after going at each other so intensely, they’re finally able to get a little sleep.
Whereas Thérèse and Laurent first shared a connection based on mutual desire and passion, they now share a connection based on mutual suffering. Their passion, then, remains intact, except it has become something much more sinister. Along with their connection, they’ve developed a dependency on one another, relying on their tumultuous relationship to help them burn off their nervous energy, thus allowing them to sleep. Needless to say, they have a miserable arrangement, but they have seemingly no other choice but to stay together and fight—after all, they already know that being alone is emotionally torturous, too.
Themes
As Thérèse and Laurent take out their anger on each other, Madame Raquin is forced to listen to them rehash her son’s murder. They often try to push the blame on each other, especially when Thérèse tries to claim that she didn’t want to go through with murdering Camille—a claim that torments Laurent, who hits Thérèse and tells her to own up to her “share of the blame.” They also try to insist that Camille doesn’t bother them at night, each one pretending like they’re more emotionally stable than the other. And though listening to the couple talk about Camille’s death is pure torture for Madame Raquin, her eyes shine in happiness whenever Laurent hits Thérèse.
Things begin to escalate in Thérèse and Laurent’s relationship, as Laurent starts resorting to violence. Thérèse seems to intentionally provoke him by claiming that she had less to do with Camille’s murder than he did, thus trying to make him feel alone with his guilt. While it’s not necessarily fair of her to ignore her own culpability, it is the case that she seemed more hesitant to kill Camille than Laurent did—she even hesitated to get in the rowboat after he told her what he planned to do to Camille. All the same, though, she knowingly went along with the plan, so even if she wasn’t the one to throw Camille in the river, she certainly isn’t as innocent as she’d like to seem when trying to unnerve Laurent.
Themes
