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Whatever the reasons, we have largely neglected an important ... dimension in Canadian fiction, namely the dark band of gothicism which stretches from earliest to recent times.
- Margot Northey, The Haunted Wilderness (3)
Magic and monsters don't usually get associated with Canadian literature.
- Margaret Atwood, "Canadian Monsters" (230)
IN A REVIEW of Eden Robinson's novel, Joan Thomas describes Monkey Beach as an example of "glorious northern Gothic," bringing the geographic and literary dimensions of the text together in a single term that is not clearly defined (D9). Similarly, Warren Cariou claims that Robinson follows the tradition of Stephen King, using "the trappings of a contemporary gothic novel" but adding a twist by setting her text in the First Nations Haisla community located on the British Columbia coastline (36). Both use the word Gothic to describe Monkey Beach's narrative, a term that certainly is not new to studies of English Canadian literature. Margot Northey's The Haunted Wilderness: The Gothic and Grotesque in Canadian Fiction, published in 1976, is perhaps the best-known and most substantial study of the significance of the "Gothic" in a distinctly Canadian context., Northey's book offers a "critical analysis" of the "varieties of gothic fiction" in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Canadian literature, surveying English and French Canadian texts ranging from what Northey calls the "Canadian prototype" of the Gothic novel, Wacousta, to Wild Geese, Surfacing, The Double Hook, Kamouraska, and La Guerre, Yes Sir! (18). Although she insists that Gothic is a relevant term for Canadian literature, few scholars over the past three decades have used it in their discussions of Canadian fiction. Moreover, the articles that have been published typically explore the same handful of novels discussed in The Haunted Wilderness, limiting the concept of the Gothic to a narrow selection of works.2
Yet the reappearance of the term "Gothic" in recent reviews of Robinson's book suggests that it remains potentially useful for Canadian literature. If so, then what role might it play in discussions of contemporary English Canadian fiction? This paper examines the relevance of the Gothic novel in a Canadian context through a close reading of a recent text. Monkey Beach presents its own version of the Gothic novel through the story of Lisamarie Hill, a Haisla woman whose...