In "The Alchemy of Day," Hébert talks of a Quebec culture that has been repressed. In The Handmaid's Tale (1985), bestselling Canadian author Margaret Atwood depicts a future American society where religious fundamentalism holds sway and women live repressed lives and are subservient to men.

In the poem, Hébert changes from the style of her earlier poems, which glorified solitude, and advocates speaking out, which she does through a nature analogy. In Wendell Barry's A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979—1997 (1999), the poet focuses on the theme of solitude, detailing pastoral images of country life.

While "The Alchemy of Day" explores the renewal of life through language, Hébert's 1980 novel Héloïse explores the undead through the use of a protagonist who is a vampire.

Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), the first book...