SOURCE: "Sexual Ambiguity in Mauriac's Thérèse Desqueyroux," in Romance Notes, Vol. XXVI, Spring, 1986, pp. 215-21.

In the following essay, Gallagher argues that Mauriac is purposefully ambiguous regarding the sexual orientation of Thérèse Desqueyroux—much more so than is conveyed by the standard English translations of the novel, which tend to attribute gender to verb forms that in the original French are neutral.

To the reader of François Mauriac's 1927 novel Thérèse Desqueyroux the complexity of the title character's personality and motivations is readily apparent. Critics have, in fact, suggested affinities between her and such towering fictional women as Racine's ill-facted Phèdre and Flaubert's insatiable dreamer Emma Bovary.

It is for this reason then all the more surprising to encounter in an otherwise sensitive and astute critical reading of Mauriac's novel this simplistic sexual labelling of his heroine:

So it is that...