Therese Raquin - Emile Zola [110]
despite the horror of the spectacle and the customary respect of the people of Paris for death, it is not unusual to find a more or less solid crowd in the Morgue of men, women and children from the lower ranks of society. When the newspapers announce the discovery of some crime, curious people arrive in large numbers, making a queue from morning until evening that sometimes reaches the number of between 1,000 and 1,500 persons.
2 like a necklace of shadow: Several writers have commented on the similarity of this description of the hanged girl to Manet’s painting Olympia (where the girl is wearing a black velvet choker around her neck).
CHAPTER XVI
1 her temperament: At the start, Thérèse appears to be passive by nature. Her affair with Laurent has brought out her repressed, passionate nature, while the aftermath of Camille’s death is accentuating the nervous element in her.
2 the Salon: The official exhibition of painting and sculpture (see Introduction, p. xix).
3 Bacchante: A female follower of the god Bacchus, whose devotees were driven mad by wine. This theme from classical mythology would be a typical motif for a painting at the Salon.
CHAPTER XVIII
1 her organism demanded Laurent’s violent embrace: Thérèse, with her nervous temperament, needs the complement of Laurent’s animal and sanguine one.
CHAPTER XX
1 Belleville: A working-class district in the north-east of Paris.
2 the Code: Weddings in France may consist in a religious service, but must include a civil ceremony, conducted by the Mayor of the commune or arrondissement in which they take place. As part of the ceremony, the Mayor reads out the sections of the Civil Code relating to marriage.
CHAPTER XXI
1 looking pale: Zola continues to insist on Thérèse’s pale colouring, characteristic of a person of nervous temperament.
CHAPTER XXII
1 nervous erethism: A medical term meaning a state of nervous hysteria or overexcitement. The use of such medical vocabulary shows Zola trying to back up his study of character with the latest scientific understanding of human psychology. As he shows here, temperament was not thought to be fixed: after the shock of Camille’s murder, Laurent’s sanguine nature is becoming more nervous, like Thérèse’s, while she is moving into a state of hysterical hyper-nervousness.
2 a time of perfect living: The ideal situation for an individual was to achieve a balance between the temperaments, especially between the nervous and sanguine elements in his or her nature.
3 His remorse was purely physical: Zola, who was a non-believer, was keen to emphasize that the Christian idea of conscience had no part to play in the story: the awful terrors experienced by Laurent and Thérèse are not a result of Christian remorse, but a physiological reaction to circumstances, including fear of the consequences of their crime.
4 hysteria: Another medical term, to describe an affliction that was particularly associated at the time with women. Thérèse has communicated her feminine disease to Laurent and he has become more of a ‘woman’ now that his sanguine temperament has been altered to a nervous one.
CHAPTER XXV
1 . a tasteful pallor: Another sign of the change in Laurent’s temperament is that he has lost his ruddy, sanguine complexion, as well as his fleshy face and coarse manner.
2 neurosis: Zola subscribed to the belief that art came from a kind of disorder of the nervous system.
CHAPTER XXVI
1 dumb and immobile: Mme Raquin recalls the paralysed M. Noirtier in Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-5), who also plays a key role in the mechanics of the plot of that novel, even though he cannot move or speak. In Noirtier