France in the Seven Years' War, control of Canada passed from the French to the British in 1763. The colonial population of Canada had two main features that reinforced its ethnic self-determination: the French language, and the adherence to the Roman Catholic Church. Often throughout history when a people are defeated, their identity as a group is paradoxically strengthened and they feel themselves greater in defeat than the enemy who triumphed over them. InMaria Chapdelaine, the title character turns down a chance to marry a man who loves her and to move to the U.S. with him. Despite the hardships of life in rural northern Quebec, she prefers to remain there because of the indissoluble link she feels between herself and her fellow Quebecois. Hemon expresses the spirit of French Canada in his description of its people: Ces gens sont d'un race qui ne sait pas mourir. "These people are of a race that does not know how to die."

In her seminal 1972 book of literary criticism, Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature, distinguished Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood argues that the main themes of Canadian literature are victimhood and survival. Louis Hémon's 1913 novel, Maria Chapdelaine, conforms to Atwood's model, with its main characters being victims of the Canadian winter, who either endure and survive or who die in their efforts to carve a homeland out of the unforgiving environment of the Canadian Shield.

The theme of survival is particularly apparent in the choices of the protagonist Maria Chapdelaine. She and her family struggle to clear the land for their farm and accumulate enough supplies to survive the long winter. Although this means that Maria is well acquainted with the hardships of pioneer life, she falls in love with a frontiersman, Francois Paradis. Before they can marry, he dies in a winter storm. She has two other suitors, one who promises an easier life south of the border, in the urban United States, and one who will farm in Quebec like her parents. After recovering from a depression occasioned by the death of Francois, and suffering the loss of her mother, Maria chooses Eutrope Gagnon, the farmer, as her future husband, in the knowledge that her own strength and ability to survive are in a sense her destiny, and that with Eutrope she can best fulfill her potential. 

Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine was written with a clear practical purpose: to persuade French citizens to emigrate to Québec. One might, therefore, expect the message to be that life in Canada is wonderful, and filled with opportunity. In fact, Hémon depicts peasant life in Québec in realistic terms, as harsh, tedious, and involving long hours of very hard work, which many readers have found almost as arduous as the characters do. The message is that life is hard in Québec, but that sufficiently virtuous settlers will cope with its hardness.

It is difficult to imagine many French readers being persuaded to leave the comforts of Europe by Hémon's detailed account of the life of a Canadian peasant farmer. Although Maria and her family are Catholic, the tone of the story is similar to that of the seventeenth-century Puritan accounts of New England. Life is harsh and barren, and the only comforts are those of religion, though the religion in question is not a very comforting one. Maria herself is deeply religious, and attendance at church provides one of the few legitimate reasons for the women to leave the house or the men to leave the fields. Even the church is too far from the farm to be anything more than a rare treat. Maria Chapdelaine is read today principally as an account of Québécois life in the early twentieth century, and probably only ever appealed to readers who had a very pious and austere religious outlook.

The primary message of Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine may be summed up by a variation of an old saying: “The grass is not always greener on the other side.”

Maria Chapdelaine is a young French-Canadian woman who has worked hard with her family and lived a simple life. A visit to some relatives in town gives her a taste of something new, and after she returns she meets a young man named Francois Paradis. The two fall in love and secretly agree to marry. Then Francois goes off to the lumber camp. Unfortunately, he doesn't survive the harsh winter, and Maria is devastated.

There are, however, two more suitors waiting in the wings. One of them, Lorenzo Surprenant, has left French Canada for life in a Massachusetts city. He works in a factory and dazzles Maria with tales of all the wonderful things she can experience in the city that she would never find in the Canadian countryside. The other suitor, Eutrope Gagnon, is a quiet, steady man who freely admits that he can offer Maria only a variation of the life she already has. He wants to farm and raise a family right in their own community.

For a while, Maria leans toward accepting Lorenzo's proposal. She is intrigued by the idea of a different life, something new and exciting. She thinks that the grass will be greener on the other side, so to speak. But after her mother's death, Maria realizes that this isn't true. She reexamines her values and decides that the grass is not greener on the other side. She loves her family; she loves her home; and she decides that she loves Eutrope and will marry him.

Louis Hémon's novel Maria Chapdelaine concerns the life and loves of a young woman who lives with her parents in Péribonka, Québec. Maria is engaged to marry François Paradis, when he dies on his journey home from the logging camp where he has been working. She then has to choose between two rival suitors, one of whom, Lorenzo, wants to take her away to the city, while the other, Eutrope, a quiet, humble man, aims only to stay in Péribonka and work the land. Maria chooses Lorenzo but changes her mind when Eutrope undertakes a long journey to the bone-setter to save her mother's life. Although her mother dies, she decides to stay in Péribonka, near her father, and marry Eutrope.

None of the characters in the novel are particularly highly developed. Maria is a dutiful, pious young woman with a strong Catholic faith. Lorenzo and Eutrope are more representatives of different lifestyles than individuals. Much of the book is taken up with descriptions of the hard physical labor in which the characters spend most of their time. The main idea is that hard work and religious piety create a good, rewarding life, though the author's description of peasant farming in Québec is unlikely to attract anyone who was not already determined to live in this way. The book was written at least partly to persuade people in France to emigrate to Québec.