How Mauriac Succeeds in Making Us Feel Pity Towards Therese at the Start of the Novel Anonymous 11th Grade

Francois Mauriac presents Therese Desqueroux in a somewhat ambivalent, ambiguous way. She is a woman who has committed a crime against her husband, Bernard, but cannot fathom what compelled her to do so. In this light, the reader is presented with a complex case where you have to grapple with moments where we are supposed to condemn her crime, and moments where we feel intense pity and empathy for this troubled woman. In a society that was very much founded on the principals that the family profile must be upheld and men had control over the women and their choices, we are meant to sympathise with the women in the novel to an extent, and thus Therese.

Mauriac initially expresses his own pity and empathy for what Therese is suffering or struggling to deal with, by saying in the introduction “Therese, beaucoup diront que tu n’existe pas. Mais je sais que tu existe” (“Therese, many will say that you do not exist. But I know that you exist”). By expressing an understanding of who she is and how she is feeling when others cannot comprehend what she is going through, it is a powerful way for Mauriac to link him to his protagonist, evoking a pity from the reader as the author, who is constructing this image, is sympathetic of her. The...