Maria Chapdelaine

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.

The following Sunday, Eutrope Gagnon, having heard of Lorenzo Suprenant’s visit, arrives to make his own confession of love. Where François arrived confidently “in the full tide of summer” (67), Eutrope is sheepish, aware that he “[bears] little in his hands wherewith to tempt her” (67). He promises that he will work tirelessly to make his farm profitable if she is willing to wait for him, proposing that they marry the following year.

Maria imagines life with Eutrope, “[living] just as she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm” (67). The prospect seems unacceptable, and she tells him that she cannot answer yet. Eutrope departs, dejected.

March is a melancholy month for Maria, with each day bleeding into the next. The happiness she felt with François is gone forever, and she must forget it to move on with her life. No longer guided by her heart, she will need to make a practical decision between Eutrope and Lorenzo—life on the farm, or life in the city. She decides to marry Lorenzo, driven primarily by her desire to leave behind the woods and the winter cold that remind her of François.