Love In Kamouraska, And Alice Munro's Progress Of Love

There are thousands of meanings that the word “love” carries. There are different significances, different ways of expressing it and different ways it can be interpreted throughout various countries. For example, it could mean a feeling of deep affection, it could mean a deep or sexual attachment to someone, and it could also mean to have a great interest in something. These variations surrounding this single word can be apparent in Anne Hebert’s Kamouraska, and Alice Munro’s Progress of Love. Both of these authors take this one word, “love,” and describe it in ways that are significant to them, their lives, and the place in which they are from. Every single person perceives love as something different, which is why there are thousands of meanings

When speaking with her mother she asks, “Tell me, is it love? Is it really love that’s troubling me so? Making me feel as if I’m about to drown…” (65). At this point in the story, Hebert is pondering what love is supposed to feel like and contrasting it with how emotionally broken she feels. This shift in the interpretations of what “love” is from knowing exactly what it is and loving the way it made her feel, into questioning it and wondering why it would make her feel like she was drowning, shows the progression of the different interpretations of this word that the author is having as the story proceeds. In the last example provided among many more not mentioned, where the author describes what love meant to her, is when she described what having love while also having freedom, came to mean. She says, “Love and freedom, bought at their terrible price. Their blood –price paid in coins of gold, heavy and gleaming, piled on the chair by the bed” (215-16). As I previously mentioned, Hebert’s descriptions of love throughout her novel wouldn’t exactly fall under the category of “normal” when people express what love means to them. This description of love by the author shows that she associated this word to something emotionless, something physical and ultimately something that could be bought. This description is a stark contrast to how she previously interpreted love in the story, which further shows that as the story progresses; Hebert herself is also feeling and experiencing these thousands of different meanings that this word