Troy Terwilliger’s Reviews > Thérèse Raquin > Status Update

“They exchanged not a word.”

Look at how Zola describes him the moment Camille brings him home from the railway office. He is a peasant's son with massive square shoulders, a thick neck, full cheeks, and a low forehead. He is strong, healthy, and absolutely overflowing with blood—what Zola calls a "sanguine" temperament.

Before the story moves to Paris in Chapter 3, the early life of Thérèse and Camille takes place in Vernon, a small, quiet commune in the Normandy region of northern France, situated along the Seine.
Zola deliberately moves them from the open air of the countryside into the damp, dark, roofed-in alleyway of Paris to make the setting feel as suffocating as a prison cell.