An Exploration of How Fire is Used To Depict Thérèse’s Inward Nature — IB English Literature (2015)

Reflective Statement

Before the Interactive Oral, I was not so convinced that Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin shares as many similarities with our modern culture as my classmates and I ended up agreeing it does. For example, one of my peers highlighted the fact that given the central character, Thérèse, was not consulted about the drastic moving of houses arranged by her husband, Camille and foster mother, Madame Raquin, indicates the powerlessness of women in this patriarchal society.

In our discussion, the significance of time and place was explored at length. Despite the novel operating in a reality of its own, we were able to draw a number of parallels with the life of Zola himself together with the events and places he had experienced in his own life, with the events that unfold and places that feature in the novel. The Zola family started off in Paris but then moved into the Aixen-Province where Emile’s father, a civil engineer, worked on building what is now called the Canal Zola. Once his father died, both Emile and his mother returned to Paris where Emile hoped he would have good fortune but instead suffered many years of disappointment, much like one of Zola’s character, Camille. Initially, Camille is prideful as a bureaucrat and as a result treats his wife, Thérèse, with contempt. In the central chapters of the novel, however, Camille is downtrodden and has everything taken away from him, which Zola captures in a realist and mechanical style to highlight his perpetrators’ remorselessness.

Being a recurring motif in the novel, rivers were also discussed for their symbolic role. One river that features in the novel is the River Seine. Instead of representing the high society, finance, politics and business Paris that we normally associate, or the more deprived parts of the underprivileged class of the central characters (they all share lower-middle class occupations), the River Seine represents the peculiar part of Paris where the more privileged do everything they can to avoid it for not appealing to their aesthetics, but still have to pass by as it is en route to their higher-class destinations. Furthermore, it is along this river that Camille reveals his unfounded bourgeois sensibilities as he attempts to make it a routine to walk along it with Thérèse every Sunday afternoon.

An Exploration of How Fire Is Used To Depict Thérèse’s Inward Nature

It is fire’s sheer wildness and associations with freedom and beauty that makes it such a powerful natural element that one can be captivated by, but there is also a danger in it. It is for this reason that in Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, fire is used as a motif to depict the inward nature of Thérèse, and the setting in which the action of the novel takes place together with the other characters are crafted in marked contrast with the qualities normally associated with fire. An image of fire is used firstly to depict Thérèse’s initial state of lethargy and aloofness towards the other characters, and then it is used to depict the passionate love shared between her and Laurent, and finally the dwindling and eventual extinguishment of their love for one another.

In the opening chapters, Zola presents Thérèse as deeply apathetic towards her burdensome duties as a wife and shopkeeper through the image of the sun:

“The cloistered life she led, the debilitating regime […] she went to the window, and contemplated the opposite houses on which the sun threw sheets of gold.”

Here, Thérèse’s despondency is typified through her staring expectantly into the sun which is used to draw attention to the outside world that she has been “cloistered” from. The appreciative tone with which the author compares the sun and an object as valuable as gold, implies that the sun’s rays or “sheets of gold” mesmerise her. She longs to escape from her “debilitating regime” and the domesticity of her role as a housewife and to be able to express her “slumbering passions” that she has had to suppress. The sun’s exuberant and exotic effect on the adjacent homes complements the earlier description of Thérèse’s “feline suppleness”. The use of cat imagery and animal symbolism introduces her wild nature as well as establishes the idea that she possesses a mysterious, latent sexual prowess that is associated with cat-like antics, and the warmth of the sun. Thérèse similarly regards the fire that burns in her own fireplace and is said to have “remained crouching over…watching the flames…without lowering her eyelids”. Here, the material process verb “crouching” together with her prolonged and fixated gaze at the fire both highlight the extent to which the character is drawn to the light and warmth emitted by the fire, which is contrasted by the “cold” and “damp” air attributed to the streets outside once the sun has gone down. Through Zola’s description of Thérèse’s obsession with light, it is clear that she uses sources of fire or fire-like entities (the sun, for example) as a form of escape from her domestic duties and unfulfilling marriage as they mirror the “marvelous […] strength” and “energy” of her inner nature.

Another way in which Thérèse’s inward nature is expressed through the image of fire can be observed during her interaction with the unwelcome guests that visit her residence regularly and the chronic irritation they cause her:

“These Thursday evenings were a torture to her…she watched the guests of her aunt and husband through a sort of yellow, smoky mist coming from the lamp […] these faces exasperated her. She looked from one to the other in profound disgust and secret irritation.”

Here, the “smoky mist” being produced by the gas lamp functions as a “lens” through which the central character examines her intruders. The “mist” alludes to a kind of mental warfare Thérèse is struggling with: she is battling against her natural prejudices towards her guests, which is symbolised by the vaporous impression left by the steaming lamp and is a sort of manifestation of her “profound disgust” for them. This results with her simply putting her “elbow on the table” as a gesture of boredom. It would seem that anything that does not quite possess Thérèse’s strikingly wild nature, namely Camille and her unwelcome guests bores her and the use of olfactory and visual imagery when describing her antipathy through the image of a “mist” produced by the gas lamp reinforces her “exasperation” for them.

Zola evokes a sense of claustrophobia through the detailed description of the Passage du Pont-Neuf where the family resides as another way to demonstrate how Thérèse’s surroundings are, unlike fire, restrictive and dark. The grimy Paris street is defined by “cut-throat” geometrically shaped spaces, which heighten the oppressive quality of the setting given the feeling of entrapment that is suggested by its confining alleys. There is also a sense of darkness evoked by the description of their home which is “indistinctly lit-up by three funeral lamps”. Both the dull characters and confined dark setting serve as a foil to Thérèse’s attraction to the sun and fire, albeit suppressed, which would explain why she later takes such a liking for Laurent who, like fire, is marked with profound wildness and recklessness.

In the central chapters once Thérèse and Laurent have murdered Camille, the couple display great sexual passion for one another and Zola makes several allusions to fire when describing their violent lovemaking:

“These two hands […] burning […] these fists […] boiling”

“flames were leaping from her flesh […] hot waves of passion”.

Here, an image of fire is evoked as their lovemaking is delineated with “burning” and “boiling” movements that vividly convey the vigorous and relentless passion the two share. The “flames” are personified as “leaping from her flesh”, which evokes a mood of intense “passion”, and the dynamic verb “leaping” emphasises the ferocity of Thérèse’s actions. It seems that the same energetic and wild qualities that Thérèse sought in the sources of fire she had been previously captivated by have been transferred to Laurent, making fire an extended metaphor employed by Zola to project Thérèse’s infatuation with its enthralling properties. Furthermore, the atmosphere created by the fire burning at the fireplace is said to “serve as a nest for young, fresh love”, making it a suitable environment for the two to engage in intimacy.

Towards the end of the novel, both Thérèse and Laurent can barely utter a word to one another let alone engage in passionate congress, and what is most striking about the use of the image of fire is the retributive quality Zola ascribes to it:

“The yellow gleams of light from the fire continued to dance on ceiling and walls […] the crackling of the wood broke the silence with short, sharp reports”

Here, the “danc[ing]” of the fire can be perceived through personification as a taunt of some sort which torments its guilty victims, and the “crackling of the wood”, which echoes “short, sharp reports” at the couple, present the fire as condemning towards them. The sibilance of “short” and “sharp” when describing these “reports” mirror the frustrating hissing sound of a serpent, which reinforces this hellish image. More of this hellish imagery can be found in subsequent descriptions as the two continue to be tortured by the heat of the fire: “…the heat of the room had become stifling”, it is interesting here that what was once a “nest for young, fresh love” has morphed into a sort of purgatory for the murderers: possessing a “stifling” and thus debilitating effect on the pair. Additionally, the fire’s punitive nature is further illustrated by Thérèse’s desire to “cast herself into the fire” as she believes that the “flames would have purified her flesh, and delivered her from her woe”, lending to the notion that the fire burning on the hearth is requiting the murderers for their crimes to the extent that Thérèse desperately seeks purification from it.

Ultimately, on a symbolic level fire acts as a gauge with which the reader can use to measure the central character’s psyche. In Thérèse’s periods of intense latency, the ferocity of the fire that she stares into in an almost hypnotic fashion seems to somewhat free her and is suggestive of her hidden brute, whereas at the advent of Laurent together with their joint effort in disposing her husband, Camille, the fading fire at her fireplace casts spells of accusation that in the spirit of Zola’s naturalist and mechanical style psychologically blights her.