Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Argelouse
Much of Argelouse is falling into a state of disrepair. However, it is a heavily forested region, and resin from its pine trees becomes the source of Thérèse’s income. In her late years, Thérèse learns that most of Argelouse’s pine trees have been cut down and that the town has become an even more desolate place.
Argelouse becomes Thérèse’s “prison” after she is acquitted in her trial for attempting to kill Bernard, who confines her to her room for years. Bernard’s main interest in the place derives from its being a good place for duck hunting. He returns there only for duck-hunting season.
Saint-Clair (sah[n]-klehr). Market town six miles from Argelouse, In her younger days, Thérèse often travels between the two towns, which are connected by a neglected road on which nothing more modern than a wagon can travel. However, Saint-Clair is an important stop on the railway and has a station that anyone going to Argelouse finds necessary to traverse. It serves as a milestone in the book.
Because there is no church in Argelouse, Thérèse attends Sunday Mass in Saint-Clair, which she finds a welcome respite. However, Bernard decides that Mass has no meaning for Thérèse, whom he forbids from going to Saint-Clair, which eventually becomes the site of Thérèse’s death.
*Paris. Capital of France in which Thérèse lives after Bernard permits her to leave Argelouse. Alone in the great city, Thérèse tries to make a new life for herself, but without success. The sense of sin she carries with her perverts all of her attempts to find happiness. As the years pass, she retreats more and more into herself.
During her first years in Paris, she lives on Ile Saint-Louis, a small island in the Seine River. In her declining years, Thérèse lives in an apartment in an old house on the rue du Bac, on the Left Bank of the Seine that crosses the larger boulevard Saint-Germain, where Thérèse feels a temporary relief from the oppression that is usually her lot.