SECOND READING: 20

Thérèse Raquin By Emile Zola (1867)MADAME RAQUIN had devoted her life to keeping her sickly son, Camille, alive. From birth it was a struggle; just when it seemed he would surely die, she always saved him, writes Eileen Battersby.

"For fifteen years Madame Raquin had waged war against this succession of terrible ills trying to snatch her boy from her. And she beat them all by patience, loving care and adoration."

Not only did she tend her boy from infancy to manhood and beyond Madame Raquin also raised her soldier brother's child, a strange little girl, Thérèse, who was entrusted to her by him when the child's mother, a beautiful Algerian exotic, died.

In this his first major novel, the young Zola, created an intense family unit. Madame Raquin treated Thérèse as another invalid. When her husband died, she gave up her haberdashery, and moved to a pleasant house on the Seine. Camille grows up and threatens to move to Paris. In order to keep her boy, the mother, acquires a shop with accommodation in a grim little corridor of shops in Paris.

Written in snatches when he was in his mid 20's, this is the work, condemned by some critics as pornographic, which introduced Zola, who was born in 1840, a decade after the death of Balzac, as a daring pioneer of French Naturalism.

In contrast with the indulged Camille, Thérèse is "coldly apathetic." Having shared a bed with her cousin Camille since childhood, she had in accordance with Madame Raquin's plans, become his wife. Their marriage is farcical; Camille has no sexual interest in Thérèse while she merely exists, expressionless.

Thérèse, who quietly enjoyed living in the house by the river, is shocked by the dirty Paris laneway. She helps run the shop. Madame Raquin begins holding evening gatherings. One of Camille's work mates, Laurent, formerly one of his schoolmates, joins the Raquin social circle. He is the son of a farmer who disinherited him because he had no interest in the land. So Laurent having already tried his mediocre hand at painting and experienced the easy sexuality of studio-life, is now working in an office. Zola claws to the very souls of his characters, Laurent is charming, lazy, selfish and confident he can seduce his friend's sullen wife. But does he want to? His first sexual advance is welcomed with raw hunger. Thérèse immediately discovers she is her mother's daughter.

Their obsessive passion takes over. Laurent's employers notice the amount of time he spends out of the office. The threat to their daily encounters in her bed above the shop inspires desperation. Camille must die. The murder is staged as a boating accident. Zola conducts the narrative as if it were an opera. The couple feign heartbreak at Camille's death, the friends, keen on sustaining the weekly gatherings, sympathise while the mother laments. Laurent frequents the city morgue until he sees Camille's decaying body on a slab. .

Time passes. Their passion is dead. It is pointless now for them to marry. But they do. They can no longer endure each other. Camille's ghostly presence prevails. Neither can sleep. Eventually the heartbroken old mother, crushed by grief and a stroke, becomes the silent witness to their guilt, accusations and mutual destruction. Henry James would explore a similar, if far less hysterical, situation in his chilling novel, The Wings of the Dove (1902). The triumph of Zola's devastating portrait of sexual passion, which became a bestseller on publication, is the transformation of Laurent's character. This once indolent loafer absorbs and replicates not only the intensity of Thérèse, but also her passionate frenzy and remorse. In 1877, Zola, the supreme chronicler of 19th century Parisian street life would publish his masterpiece, L'Assommoir.

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This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon