Kamouraska by Anne Hébert

First published: 1970 (English translation, 1973)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: 1838-1839

Locale: Sorel, Kamouraska, Quebec City, and Montreal, Canada

Principal characters

• Elisabeth d’Aulnières, a young woman
• Marie-Louise d’Aulnières, her teenage mother
• Antoine Tassy, Elisabeth’s first husband
• Caroline Tassy, his mother
• Jérôme Rolland, Elisabeth’s second husband
• George Nelson, Elisabeth’s lover
• Adélaïde, ,
• Luce-Gertrude, and
• Angélique, Elisabeth’s aunts
• Aurélie Caron, a servant and prostitute

The Story:

Elisabeth d’Aulnières, the only child of Marie-Louise d’Aulnières, a widowed teenager, has been reared by three unmarried aunts, whose imaginations are formed by romance reading and by piety. The household of Elisabeth’s childhood has been a feminine abode, notable by its absence of men. Shielded from the raw facts of life, Elisabeth has been taught that babies are dumped into the beds of ladies by “Indians.” In her daydreams, marriage is a swirling collage: the marriage at Cana of Galilee in the Gospels, the bride of Lammermoor in Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 novel, and the romantic French folk song “À la claire fontaine.”

Elisabeth’s aunts prepare their niece lovingly for the governor’s ball, where her beauty attracts the eye of Antoine Tassy, the squire of Kamouraska, a picturesque village four hundred miles from Elisabeth’s home in Sorel. Antoine’s mother, Caroline, asks Madame d’Aulnières for the hand of Elisabeth, and the proposed match is considered advantageous, despite the young squire’s admitted bad reputation.

The two are married.

Madame Tassy counsels her new daughter-in-law to ignore the drunkenness and debauchery of the squire, whom she pronounces basically “a good man.” Despite the affluence of the Tassys, their home is austere, dominated by the mother-in-law, a harsh woman with a club foot who insists on simple meals, rough clothing, and a Puritanical simplicity of residence. She dismisses all emotional displays.

After the birth of two sons, Elisabeth can no longer endure her husband’s drunkenness, carousing, and brutality. She retreats to her former home in Sorel and the protection of her three adoring aunts. There she meets George Nelson, an American physician practicing in Sorel. Nelson is from a royalist family that has converted to Catholicism so thoroughly that his brother is now a Jesuit priest, while his sister is an Ursuline nun. Nelson, however, soon undergoes a religious crisis when his sister appears to lose her faith on her deathbed. Consequently, he chooses to devote his life to science and to the alleviation of suffering in his vocation as a doctor.

Nelson is called to treat the ailing Elisabeth, whose nerves are frazzled by the violence of her husband and whose body is depleted by the birth of two children so closely. A forbidden love between these two lonely individuals develops quickly. Because only death can end a marriage, escape for Elisabeth means that Antoine must die. Nelson convinces himself that Antoine’s eradication is as necessary as the destruction of a sickness in one of his patients. When Elisabeth gives birth to a third child, which she attends with special love, she is certain that he is the son of Nelson.

Although they daydream of a duel in which the lover Nelson will overcome the husband Antoine, Elisabeth and Nelson realize this would be too risky and too scandalous. Still, Antoine must be killed. Nelson, a physician vowed to preserve life, hesitates to commit the act himself. Promising a rich reward, the lovers first send the disreputable Aurélie Caron with poison to lure Antoine to his death. Overcoming her initial fears of divine vengeance, Aurélie sets forth. In Kamouraska, Antoine joins her for what he anticipates will be a night of drunken revelry. The poisoning, however, is incomplete, and only makes him ill. Aurélie returns to Sorel, her mission unaccomplished.

Nelson finally recognizes that the deed must be his. He leaves for Kamouraska in his easily recognizable American sleigh, moving his horse too quickly through the winter ice and snow, sometimes losing his way and being redirected by the locals along the road. After murdering Antoine, he leaves a heavy trail of blood, particularly noted in the wayside inn where he and his horse pass the night. The innkeeper and his wife do not believe his explanation that he was forced to lodge his horse and carriage the previous night in a slaughterhouse. They conclude that he is a murderer.

Though Nelson returns to Sorel having accomplished the deed, he can no longer accept his reward. His act of violence, in deviance of his oath as a physician, has turned him against the woman who inspired the deed. Now he laments to his assistant that he ever met “the damned woman who has ruined me.” Instead of returning to the arms of Elisabeth, he flees across the border into the United States. Despite attempts by Canadian authorities, he escapes extradition and is never heard of again.

Elisabeth is briefly imprisoned in Montreal and faces a trial. With only the perjured testimony of her aunts and with the hesitancy of the Quebec courts to convict well-born women of capital crimes, she is exonerated. Still, she is “soiled goods.” She eventually is rescued from disgrace by Jérôme Rolland, notary of Quebec City, who marries her even while reminding her that he is her savior. Elisabeth perseveres through eighteen loveless years of respectability as Madame Rolland. Always a dutiful wife, she gives birth to eight children. Now, as Jérôme lies dying, she faithfully assists his nurse, Florida, and keeps vigil at his bedside, all the while remembering Dr. Nelson, the only man she has ever loved.

Bibliography

Kroller, Eva-Marie, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Canadian Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Hébert’s work is not covered in detail, but these essays provide necessary context for understanding her contribution to both Québécois literature and that of Canada as a whole.

Pallister, Janis L., ed. The Art and Genius of Anne Hébert: Essays on Her Works. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. A collection of essays in both English and French, concentrating on the complexities of Hébert’s work. A substantial book with an extensive bibliography.

Russell, Delbert W. Anne Hébert. Boston: Twayne, 1983. A volume in the notable Twayne author’s series. Although there are few biographical facts—Hébert was always reclusive—the thorough analyses of her fiction and poetry published before 1983 are helpful.

Skallerup, Lee, ed. Anne Hébert: Essays on Her Works. Toronto, Ont.: Guernica Editions, 2009. One of the relatively few English-language critical examinations of Hébert’s work, from a variety of twenty-first century viewpoints.

Wilson, Edmund. O, Canada: An American’s Notes on Canadian Culture. 1965. Reprint. New York: Octagon Books, 1976. The first internationally recognized literary critic to seriously evaluate Canadian writing within a world context. Wilson’s observations remain pertinent.