In 1867, Émile Zola decided it would be a spanking great idea to write a novella about man as an animal, purely motivated by animal instincts. He was 27 years old. Think about 27 year old guys. Yeah. Pretty terrible, right? Now make them a French author who's decided man is a series of impulses. Ugh. I know. The WORST.
Thus was born the novel Thérèse Raquin. I'm gonna spoil the hell out of it for you, because I don't think you should read it, but the story's kinda fun. It's about a bourgeois woman in a marriage of convenience (convenient to everyone but her) who has an affair, and she and the guy she's affairing with kill her husband, and then it just kinda goes downhill from there.
While other French literary luminaries like Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo felt and expressed sympathy with all of humanity, albeit in their different ways (Balzac with realism and Hugo with romanticism), Zola's just a pessimistic, critical sonuvabitch. He was born 40 years aft…
Thus was born the novel Thérèse Raquin. I'm gonna spoil the hell out of it for you, because I don't think you should read it, but the story's kinda fun. It's about a bourgeois woman in a marriage of convenience (convenient to everyone but her) who has an affair, and she and the guy she's affairing with kill her husband, and then it just kinda goes downhill from there.
While other French literary luminaries like Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo felt and expressed sympathy with all of humanity, albeit in their different ways (Balzac with realism and Hugo with romanticism), Zola's just a pessimistic, critical sonuvabitch. He was born 40 years aft…