The Accursed House by Emile Gaboriau

About the Author: 

Émile Gaboriau, (born November 9, 1832/33/35, Saujon, France—died c. October 1, 1873, Paris), French novelist who is best known as the father of the roman policier (detective novel). He has been described as the Edgar Allan Poe of France.

Gaboriau’s prolific imagination and acute observation generated 21 novels (originally published in serial form) in 13 years. He made his reputation with the publication in 1866 of L’Affaire Lerouge (The Widow Lerouge) after having published several other books and miscellaneous writings. His later books, many of them classics of their kind, include Le Crime d’Orcival (1867; The Mystery of Orcival), Monsieur Lecoq (1868), Les Esclaves de Paris (1868; The Slaves of Paris), La Vie infernale (1870; The Count’s Millions), and L’Argent des autres (1874; Other People’s Money). Gaboriau created the fictional detectives Père Tabaret and Monsieur Lecoq; the latter was a fictional precursor of Sherlock Holmes. 

(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emile-Gaboriau)

CLICK HERE to read the full text of the short story The Accursed House. 

Here is the presentation of this story. It might be helpful for the examination.

Critical Interpretation: 

The story is quite simple. However, the title might be distracting from the concern of the story. It has a sarcastic tone on society as well as shallow and poor thinking of people. For human beings, if things are right they will easily accept but if things will be right in a more easy way for them, they probably create doubt, passing and coloring their judgments without doing a fact check. The main concern is evoked from the story while we go through the dialogues between tenants. They triggered him and made several speculations as a criminal, some sinful things he did and tried to hide his crime for that reason he made fack sympathy towards them. Slowly as a reader, we come to know that Victome is not strange but the author made the other characters as strange as Bernard feel quite anxious which reflects all tenants' anxiety about their proprietor. For Victome, money is not an important thing to achieve in his lifetime but people's (tenants) blessings. He said,

 When one bears a great name like mine, one should not lend himself to such plundering. I will begin to-morrow to lower my rents, and my tenants will bless me."

Around us, we can find lots of people who really want to do something without any returns or pay. On the other hand, we can find another number of people who distrust others' beliefs and emotions. The purpose of human beings should be to sympathize serve and show compassion towards others.