Thérèse Raquin was published in 1867 shortly after Charles Darwin’s Origin of the species was published in 1859 and translated into French in 1862. Darwin’s book looked at the theory of natural selection and its effects on the animal kingdom. It looked into ideas such as natural selection, the struggle for existence, inherited traits and survival of the fittest, all of these subjects can also been found in Émile Zola’s ‘Thérès Raquin’, Zola applied these theories not just to society as a whole but to a specific family. Zola is thought to be one of the greatest naturalist writers. He was keen on the idea that fictional writing could be much like a science that could be used to study human passions and psychology and hoped to develop a ‘scientific literature’, one that could be seen by looking at science through a microscope.

The preface to the second edition is used by Zola to speak to the reader directly and to give them some guidance and understanding about the intention of the book. He states ‘In a word, I wanted only one thing: given a powerful man and a dissatisfied women, to search out the beast in them, and nothing but the beast, plunge them into a violent drama and meticulously note the feelings and actions of these two beings’. Here he clearly says that humans are much like animals, with their predatory instincts and he puts this couple together, almost like an experiment to see how they react together and what happens next. Zola seemed to be captivated by physiology, which is a form of science aiming to understand the mechanisms of living and understand how they work. ‘My aim has been above all scientific. When I created my two protagonists, Thérèse and Laurent, I chose to set myself certain problems and to solve them. Thus I tried to explain the strange union that can take place between two different temperaments, showing the profound disturbances of a sanguine nature when it comes into contact with a nervous one. Those who read the novel carefully will see that each chapter is the study of a curious case of physiology’

Zola explains that his main aim of the book was to study temperament, which is the aspects of an individual’s personality, often regarded as something that is not learned. So he looks at each of the characters in his book as scientific objects, ones who he can experiment and test on, rather than actual human beings with thoughts, feelings and souls. This thought of experimentation is continued by ‘ I have merely performed on two living bodies the analytical work that surgeons carry out on dead ones’.

The ideals of naturalism is extended throughout the book and especially highlighted in chapter 8 ‘Nature and circumstance seemed to have made this man for this woman, and to have driven them towards one another. Together, the woman, nervous and dissembling, the man, lustful, living like an animal, they made a strongly united couple. They complemented one another, they protected one another.’ This quote shows the effects of inheritance and the effects that the environment plays individuals personality and temperament also the natural instinct that a man has to protect his women.

To conclude Emile Zola uses his book to get across to the reader the ideas that Darwin presented in his book ‘origin of the species’.