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 Raquins start hosting a social gathering every Thursday. It begins when Madame Raquin runs into an old friend, Michaud, who worked for the police outside of Paris and then moved to the city in retirement. Michaud starts coming once a week with his son, Olivier, who works at a police station in Paris and earns 300 francs per month—something that fills Camille, who makes just 100 francs per month, with jealousy and admiration. Olivier brings along his quiet, unintelligent wife, Suzanne, and Camille invites an older coworker at the Orleans Railway named Grivet. Camille knows that Grivet earns 2,100 francs per month, so he treats him with the utmost respect.
In keeping with his superficial obsession with social class and status, Camille is very conscious of how much money other people make. He himself has just started earning money, so he cozies up to people like Grivet because they earn what he thinks are respectable salaries. He seems to believe that anyone who earns a good salary is worthy of admiration, emphasizing just how much he invests himself in the importance of money and what it supposedly says about people.
Themes
Thérèse strongly dislikes all of Camille and Madame Raquin’s friends, but she goes along with their weekly social engagement anyway. Sometimes, though, she pretends to feel sick so she can skip the socializing, which always involves sitting around the small table in the apartment above the shop and playing dominoes while Michaud, Grivet, and Olivier make inane jokes and idle conversation. She finds their company revolting, thinking they’re all “sinister creatures” with whom she’s been imprisoned each Thursday evening.
Thérèse’s unhappiness is quite glaring, but nobody in her life seems to notice. She hates spending time with the people who Camille and Madame Raquin worship so dearly, suggesting that she—unlike her husband and aunt—is unimpressed by superficial things like money and social status. And yet, she doesn’t seek out a more enjoyable, pleasing life, instead resigning herself to her current existence and, at the most, pretending to be sick so as to avoid the drudgery of the Thursday evening gatherings.
Themes
