11.05.07
Émile Zola: Thérèse Raquin
Emile Zola was, frankly, not a writer I ever had the urge to read. I think I always confused him with Honoré de Balzac, whom I also never had the urge to read. I was reluctant to reveal to myself the level of my ignorance - or even worse, reduce it - by actually reading them. Until a trusted friend recommended Thérèse Raquin to me and it then became a book group read, and so you see I had really no choice.
Anyone - like me - approaching this book with a dreaded expectation of difficult 19th century literature in translation will be disappointed - and relieved. It is, for the first half anyway, a compelling and vivid tale of adultery and murder (the blurb goes this far, so I don’t think it counts as a spoiler) with a nicely mean line in narrative. We know what we’re in for from the start, which places the action mostly above a shop in an alleyway in Paris, under a “glass roof black with grime,” all “sticky flags” and “vile and murky darkness.”
Thérèse herself is a child at the beginning of the story, orphaned and left to live with her aunt Madame Raquin and her cousin Camille. Madame Raquin decides that Thérèse will be the perfect wife for her sickly son Camille, clearly never having taken on the Wuthering Heights warning of the dangers of relationships between people brought up together. Thérèse, inured to boredom already, does not complain but
living amidst the damp and gloom in an oppressive, dismal silence, saw life stretching out pointlessly ahead of her, with every evening bringing the same cold bed and every morning the same empty day ahead.
Cue Laurent, a “handsome, full blooded” regular visitor to the Raquin family home, whose “well developed, bulging muscles, and the firm, solid flesh of his body” make Thérèse feel that “she had never seen a real man before.” When Laurent looks upon her, his gaze makes her feel “almost unwell.” But not quite: she is well enough to get to know that Laurent has a taste for “brutish pleasures” which “had left him with compelling needs of the flesh,” all of which makes her husband Camille, “this weakling, whose soft and puny body had never once felt a tremor of desire” look like a right drip.
And so. You can guess the next step (clue: “When [Laurent] left her he was tottering like a drunkard”), but the tale goes deeper than that. Zola’s self-stated wish is to show his characters as ‘animals’ who are subject to their brutish urges. There follows a striking reenactment of elements of Macbeth, though oddly it is at this most intense and dramatic point where the story grinds down in speed and begins to disappoint, and ends up feeling much longer than its 200 pages.
For all Zola’s claims to “Naturalism” and “an exact and meticulous copying of real life,” there are implausibilities aplenty, not least in the course which Madame Raquin’s life takes toward the end of the book. Although the central characters are considered by Zola ‘brutish’ and like animals, in fact there is a tiresome amount of introspection and angst between them, particularly after the central act-which-I-cannot-reveal. It is true though that Zola treats his characters as less than human, with a positively misanthropic glee as miscarriages are induced and cats are tortured. Often it seems that the characters, rather than real people, are precast types which Zola has picked off the shelf to suit his purpose.
Nonetheless Zola’s story has a gripping grittiness for the first half, and his depiction of frank sexuality was sufficiently ahead of its time to be the source of scandal on publication. Zola provides a preface about this for the second edition, railing against the book’s “hostile and indignant reception” from those who lacked the “little intelligence” needed to appreciate his novel. We’ll allow him this little Partridgean self-indulgence: after all, he was only 28.
Nick said,
Monday, 5 November 2007 at 11:43 pm
Therese Raquin is one of my favourite books, I’ve read it several times and I think the way Zola depicts the growing sense of evil and horror and people getting their come-uppance for foul deeds is masterly. I don’t think it flags at all, for me the suspense and deepening creepiness is maintained right to the end. I suppose what happens to Madame R is a bit implausible but it still adds to the accumulating horror. And it had a much greater impact on me than Crime and Punishment.
Candy Schultz said,
Tuesday, 6 November 2007 at 6:15 am
Since you are brave enough to reveal your ignorance I feel I can say I felt EXACTLY the same about both those authors. Now I believe I shall be able to relieve my ignorance of one at least. Thanks.
John Self said,
Tuesday, 6 November 2007 at 4:17 pm
SPOILERS FOLLOW
Nothing like a healthy disagreement, eh Nick! As I said, the book came recommended by a trusted source, so I was surprised not to like the whole of it as much as I did the half of it. I think the whole descent of Therese and Laurent from shock to coldness to hatred to borderline insanity was just too protracted for me, and I didn’t really believe that they would have the same nightmares as one another, or indeed that either would never feel any relief from the guilt of their act, but that it would continue indefinitely, which supported the road to the ending but not Zola’s claim to Naturalism.
Nonetheless as I said earlier it was a lot livelier than I expected for a 150-year-old novel in translation, and I did enjoy the misanthropy to begin with (being a big fan of bleak-lit in general, from Yates to Heller’s Something Happened). I’ve eyed a couple of his later books, like Germinal, Nana and La Bete Humaine, which seem to be the big ones that come up again and again. Any recommendations?
Candy, your secret is safe with me - and the other readers of this blog!
Nick said,
Tuesday, 6 November 2007 at 6:38 pm
The only other one I’ve read is Germinal which I also liked, but that was a while ago and I can’t remember the details now. But I recall it was a brilliant book about political idealism and the way it’s savagely repressed by frightened governments. It was based on first-hand research including witnessing a real-life miners’ strike. I must read it again.
Re TR - I once had the same dream as a girl friend, so anything’s possible! And I’m sure it’s very common for guilt to be a life-long curse, the same as grief.
Daniel said,
Thursday, 10 January 2008 at 7:08 am
My friend and I read L’Assommoir about 6 months ago and got hooked on Zola. We’re reading our 8th book of his now and are still going strong. L’Assommoir remains our favorite but The Ladies Paradise and Germinal were also excellent.
Zola’s not a difficult read, but he has a tendency to give detailed lists of things that can be interesting but can also be easily skimmed. I suggest the Oxford World Classics editions, which have excellent introductions and notes.
Not too many people talk about Zola these days, but the situations and characters in his novels remain relevant.
John Self said,
Thursday, 10 January 2008 at 10:03 pm
Thank you Daniel; I will make sure that when I return to Zola, L’Assommoir is the first one I try! Oxford World’s Classics are getting a redesign later this year, so that will be all the more reason for me to go for that edition…