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...