SOURCE: "Mauriac's Thérèse: An Androgynous Heroine," in Writing in a Modern Temper: Essays on French Literature and Thought in Honor of Henri Peyre, edited by Mary Ann Caws, ANMA Libri, 1984, pp. 174-87.

Festa-McCormick is an American educator and critic. In the following essay on Thérèse Desqueyroux, she traces Therese's motivation for murder to her unrequited passion for Anne.

Thérèse is a strange heroine. Her story is that of a quest and the quest is, ostensibly, for a conscience, for a confrontation with a crime that defies her understanding. Although she would like to lay bare the mechanism within her that set her on the path to murder and made it urgent to eliminate an undesired presence, Thérèse does not pursue her quest to the end, her search remains unfulfilled, and her questions unanswered. What I propose to do in the...