L’imaginaire du feu et de l’eau dans Thérèse Desqueyroux de François Mauriac

Fire and water are very recurrent symbolic images in Thérèse Desqueyroux. The character’s reverie and the narrator’s voice, if we start from from these material elements, construct an imaginary universe that reveals some kind of anxiety before the devastating passions of the human heart and society’s repression of the individual and his freedom. With the help of a thematic study, this article understands the symbolic value of these images better.