The Inspiration: Longfellow famously heard the core of the story from his friend, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne had been told a legend about an Acadian couple separated on their wedding day who spent their lives searching for each other. Hawthorne didn’t feel the story suited his style and gave the "rights" to Longfellow.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s "Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie" (1847) is one of the most influential narrative poems in American literature. Written in dactylic hexameter—the same meter used in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—it transformed a localized historical tragedy into a national epic of devotion and resilience.
Historical Background
While the characters are fictional, the poem is set against the backdrop of a brutal historical event: The Expulsion of the Acadians (1755–1764), also known as Le Grand Dérangement.
The Conflict: During the Seven Years' War, British officials demanded that French-speaking Acadians in Nova Scotia swear an unconditional oath of allegiance to the British Crown. When they refused, preferring to remain neutral, the British forcibly deported over 10,000 people, scattering them across the American colonies, France, and Great Britain.
The Inspiration: Longfellow famously heard the core of the story from his friend, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne had been told a legend about an Acadian couple separated on their wedding day who spent their lives searching for each other. Hawthorne didn’t feel the story suited his style and gave the "rights" to Longfellow.
Cultural Impact: Though Longfellow never visited Acadia or Louisiana, his romanticized depiction of the "forest primeval" and the pious, peaceful Acadians defined the public's understanding of the event for over a century. It is largely responsible for the modern Cajun identity in Louisiana and inspired the naming of the "Land of Evangeline" in Nova Scotia.
Plot Summary
The poem is divided into two parts: the idyllic life in Acadia followed by the harrowing years of exile.
Part I: Acadie
In the village of Grand-Pré, seventeen-year-old Evangeline Bellefontaine is the pride of the community. She is betrothed to Gabriel Lajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith. Their wedding feast is a scene of pastoral joy until British soldiers arrive. They summon the men to the church, declare them prisoners, and announce the forfeiture of all Acadian lands to the Crown. In the chaotic boarding of ships, families are torn apart. Evangeline is separated from Gabriel, and her father dies of a broken heart on the shore as they watch their village burn.
Part II: The Search
Evangeline spends the rest of her life wandering across North America in search of Gabriel. She travels down the Mississippi River to the bayous of Louisiana, through the Western prairies, and into the Michigan forests. She is often just days or even hours behind him—at one point, their boats pass on the river at night, but she is asleep and does not see him.
As the years pass and her youth fades, she settles in Philadelphia and becomes a Sister of Mercy, a nun dedicated to nursing the poor. During a yellow fever epidemic, she recognizes an old, dying man in the almshouse. It is Gabriel. They have a final moment of recognition before he dies in her arms. She follows him shortly after, and they are buried together in a nameless grave.
Narrative Summary: The Story of Evangeline
The story begins in the "forest primeval," where the murmuring pines stand as silent witnesses to a lost paradise. Evangeline and Gabriel represent the pinnacle of this simple, virtuous life—childhood sweethearts whose love is sanctioned by their fathers and their faith. Their tragedy is not caused by a personal flaw, but by the cold machinery of war and "the might of the strongest."
When the British ships arrive, the world of Grand-Pré is shattered. Evangeline’s life becomes a lifelong odyssey of "patience and abnegation." She rejects other suitors, driven by a singular, divine-like constancy. Her journey takes her from the moss-draped oaks of the South to the rugged frontier, turning her from a village maiden into a symbol of the entire Acadian diaspora.
Her search ends not in a traditional happy marriage, but in a spiritual union. By becoming a Sister of Mercy, her personal grief is transformed into universal compassion. When she finally finds Gabriel, he is no longer the "valiant youth" of her memory, but a "feeble old man." Their reunion is bittersweet—a brief flash of recognition that justifies a lifetime of searching before they are reunited in death.
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