Kamouraska is especially suited to begin an analysis of twentieth-century gothic fiction in Canada, since in form and content it provides the reader with a double perspective, a Janus-like look both towards past and present types of gothicism. Looking one way we can see it as a continuation of the traditional black romance, with many of the gothic features and motifs of its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century predecessors. Looking another way we see it has characteristics which are undeniably contemporary and which place it in the mainstream of modern gothic writing.

Kamouraska is really a story within a story, and it is this feature in particular which lends the book to a consideration and comparison of traditional and modern gothicism. (p. 53)

[The] story clearly provides many of the ingredients of the traditional gothic romance: here are violence and bloody murder, flight, escape and imprisonment, sadism and sexuality, secrecy, trickery, and betrayal—and overall an atmosphere of fear, suspense, and explosive passion. Moreover,… the story is based on an actual historical event while quickly moving into imaginative and more symbolic territory. It uses history as a starting point rather than constant reference, and makes a highly selective use of background details which are chosen for their contribution to the atmosphere or emotional impression…. The events and details which are given invariably seem to suggest the darker side of life. There is not a drop of sentiment anywhere. Even … brief scenes of childhood happiness have foreboding hints. (pp. 53-4)

Although the events of the inner story are similar to countless black romances of the last two centuries, the presence of an outer frame gives the recounting a distinctly modern cast…. [The] whole novel is given as a first-person narrative, using a stream-of-consciousness technique that puts an emphasis on inner thoughts and the reaction to events as much as on the events themselves. The technique permits the inner anxieties and conflicting impulses which motivate Elisabeth to come to the fore; there is obviously a far greater attempt to get beneath the skin and perceive the psychology of the character than is found in traditional gothic romances. (p. 54)

Despite the intermingling of past and present throughout Kamouraska, a distinction can be made between the focus in the traditionally gothic, inner story and the more modern, psychological emphasis of the outer frame, a distinction which allows us to see more clearly a difference between the two varieties…. Even though the story is formally distanced by the device of retrospective recounting, there is still a great deal of external action which gives the tale its own momentum. The story sweeps in rapid succession from one incident to the next and from town to town, bypassing months and years as it builds in suspense to the climactic murder.

By contrast the story of Elisabeth Rolland has no really dramatic events. In fact there is little external action at all. The focus is narrowed to the world of the house on Rue du Parloir and to the small details of the domestic scene, where time is measured out as painstakingly as the drops of medicine on the lump of sugar. (pp. 54-5)

Despite the difference in focus between large, melodramatic events and domestic commonplaces, Hébert cleverly interrelates the two stories by common images. The view from the window is used to emphasize Elisabeth's situation both as the young and the older woman. Moreover, it is symbolically important, since it accentuates the distinction between social conventions, as represented by life inside the house, and the personal freedom which beckons from outside its confines. This variation of a rather common gothic image, similar to the window treatment in Wuthering Heights, is a recurring motif in French-Canadian literature…. (p. 55)

In both stories in the novel, the demands of society are set against the demands of the irrational, passionate, or instinctive side of human nature. Although each side of the conflict has its attraction, the novel pointedly stresses the threatening or negative side of both…. In most of the nineteenth-century gothic romances, certain individuals represent by behaviour or attitude one or another of the conflicting sides…. In Kamouraska, however, the double menace becomes internalized, so that within the psyche there are conflicting forces. Anne Hébert's characterization of Elisabeth places her firmly in the modern psychological pattern. (pp. 55-6)

In Elisabeth's personality, the old conflict between civilized society and natural man may be seen in Freudian terms as conflicting claims of superego and id, a conflict in which both sides carry the threat of doom. The young Elisabeth obviously allows the id to rule over the demands of the superego, that is, she chooses the way of passion rather than of respectability…. Anne Hébert is no D. H. Lawrence, who looks on the id's sexual energy as a source of joy and creative beneficence. Rather she is one of those modern, gothic writers who 'believe that man carries in his unconscious mind not merely willfulness or the need to indulge himself, but a deep bestiality and dark irrationality.' Although Elisabeth herself chooses 'madness' and passion over boredom, she is always aware of the dark side of the id, aware that violence and cruelty are ready to burst out at any time as 'the underside of all that sweetness.'… To Elisabeth, the murderous and consuming love affair becomes one more sign that 'beyond all saintliness the wily innocence of beasts and madmen reigns supreme.'

As we turn from the younger to the older Elisabeth, it is clear that the superego carries a new psychological weight. The mores and values of society are uppermost in her mind as she desperately tries to preserve the image of respectability provided by her second marriage…. Just as the supremacy of the id resulted in her physical imprisonment, so the supremacy of the superego results in an intangible but equally binding form of imprisonment; she is chained by the values and expectations of her society. Thus the marriage to Jérôme Rolland, which Elisabeth quickly acceded to as a badge of social honour and respectability, comes to be felt as a trap in which both husband and wife are caught. (pp. 56-7)

Significantly, it is at the time of her first marriage that Elisabeth senses a division in herself between her conventional actions or appearance and her instinctive feelings—a conflict between superego and id forces which begins a build-up of psychic tension…. (p. 57)

The idea of the doppelgänger or double is of course not new with twentieth-century fiction, as anyone familiar with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde knows…. Nevertheless, the revelation of Elisabeth's growing psychic estrangement, of the widening gulf between her secret desires and the conformist, socially conscious role she tries to assume, is more obviously modern in the kind of psychological detail it provides. (p. 58)

As the novel proceeds, psychic tension between the two sides of Elisabeth's personality builds to a point where mental collapse seems imminent…. She cannot escape a growing sense of darkness or doom by unconsciously accepting either the demands of the superego or of the id…. [At] the end of the novel, the maddening, nightmare forces of the id burst through again, and the guilt it occasions reaches its furious climax with Elisabeth imagining herself alone and ostracized as 'wicked Elisabeth! Damnable woman!'…

Despite the religious image of damnation which recurs through-out the novel, there is no clear religious or moral order underlying Kamouraska. Rather the novel seems to project the common, contemporary feeling of despair or spiritual meaninglessness. (p. 59)

The persistent use of animal imagery to describe humans provides a further indication of a savage, meaningless world…. Descriptions of humans as animals, although evident from earliest times, have been a repeated characteristic of modern gothic and grotesque writing…. In twentieth-century literature, such imagery most often suggests the grotesque, spiritual pointlessness of human existence…. In Kamouraska, as Elisabeth's narration begins, she reveals that she is stared at 'like some strange beast.'…

In a world without lasting human values, the animal law of survival of the fittest prevails. Kamouraska traces a pattern of predators and victims in which survival is equated with mental rather than physical dominance. Elisabeth survives because of her strong will, and as in many other Canadian gothic works …, the power of her will is one of the more chilling features of the book. At times the three men in her life seem but a 'triptych' to be manipulated…. (p. 60)

Although Elisabeth's will allows her to dominate the people around her, she cannot control as completely the vagaries of her mind and the conflict between the opposing parts of her own psyche. Her heightened psychological tension parallels the unresolved conflict between primitivism and civilized society that we have seen in many of the nineteenth-century gothic romances. Elisabeth survives on a physical level, but psychologically she is clearly the victim also. One of the most affecting features of Kamouraska's gothicism, like that of other modern gothic novels, is its revelation that mental horrors are as terrorizing as any external menace. Although its tale of the young lovers has the physical, violent quality of traditional black romances, the psychological thrust of Kamouraska's outer frame reveals a contemporary attitude—that the dark wilderness of the mind can be haunted by as fearful presences as ever stalked the forests and castles of old. (pp. 60-1)