I must needs 'fess up. My Favorite Authors list is a mercurial and incomplete thing, but I have omitted one of my favorite novelists. Margaret Atwood explains for me. “’Anne of Green Gables’ is one of those books you feel almost guilty liking, because so many other people seem to like it as well. If it’s that popular, you feel, it can’t possibly be good, or good for you.” . Of course that guilt is only compounded when the book’s author, L. M. Montgomery, does not enjoy the same level of popularity on Litnet (that grand arbitrator of all things literary) as Shakespeare, or even Jane Austen.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of “Anne of Green Gables”, was raised on Prince Edward Island, Canada. She early showed talent as a writer, and had the unique felicity of seeing her first published book, the aforementioned, become a best seller and children’s classic. She also wrote poetry, short stories, and dozens of other novels, whilst living the busy life of a wife and mother.

“Anne of Green Gables” has the reputation of a humorous, but idyllic tale for girls. These elements it does have, doubtless the reason that even in my antagonistic-towards-fiction upbringing, I was allowed to read it. Reading AoGG, however, set me on the course of fiction reading that I’ve pursued since.

I have read every one of the 20 novels published during Montgomery’s lifetime, several volumes of her short stories, and books of criticism on her work. I acknowledge that, while I have come to appreciate many vastly different authors, Montgomery remains among those who most influenced me as a preteen.

Allow me to share some of my favorite things about Montgomery's most beloved heroine, Anne Shirley.

Recently I came across a book entitled “100 Years of Anne with an ’E’”, which discussed the various influences that led to the creation of the character Anne Shirley. I became excited and began to pace the library floor, as I read the theory of Anne as a Wordsworthian poet figure. Wordsworth, it so happens, was my first great love in poetry. He and Montgomery together have been as parents nurturing and raising my love of beauty and nature.

If the following quote by Montgomery does not remind you of Wordsworth... well, then you might never have read him.

"It has always seemed to me ever since early childhood, amid all the commonplaces of life, I was very near to a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the enchanting realms beyond - only a glimpse - but those glimpses have always made life worthwhile."

Here’s how Melissa Mullins sets forth her thesis in chapter four of “100 Years of Anne with an E”.

“As Anne and Matthew pass a couple of natural landmarks, the ‘Avenue’ and ‘Barry’s Pond’ on the way to Green Gables, Anne interrupts her own monologue to gasp and yelp in wonder as she inquires after them. Her ecstatic encounter with the ‘Avenue’ leaves her temporarily speechless, ‘It’s beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white splendour above’. Matthew mistakes this reaction for physical concerns, thinking she’s tired and hungry,. Actually this incident is our first and most documented glimpse of Anne the Romantic poet figure, specifically the Wordsworthian poet figure. Matthew’s words break the silence, and Anne comes ‘out of her reverie with a deep sigh’ and looks at him ‘with the dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wandering afar, star-fed,’ declaring, ‘It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by imagination’. But, indeed, Anne does insist upon improving it by renaming it ‘the White Way of Delight’. This is only the first of many such incidents throughout the book in which Anne renames a location with such authority that it is never again referred to by its original name. This experience with the ‘Avenue’ - Anne’s exuberant exclamation, ‘Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!!!’ followed by her distant silence and subsequent naming - recalls Wordsworth’s thoughts on the creation of poetry, which should be:


But there’s more to “Anne of Green Gables” than the Romantic elements and the addition of another work to tradition of girlhood classics.

Consider the cases presented in two letters that tied as winners of an “Anne of Green Gables” Centennial Contest. One is from a young woman. But not one like me - a Canadian book-worm identifying with my cross-country sister. This young woman discovered Anne while living a life of repression in a tyrannical Middle Eastern environment. Anne -a character who unintentionally, but hilarious, scandalizes the community - became a symbol of a female who, through merely being herself, challenged her society's restrictions and rose triumphant.

The other letter is not surprising because of its writer's environment – the writer is Canadian and a minister. But he is male. Why should it matter? We are all human. If Anne is indeed a poet figure, then perhaps, as Coleridge and Woolf would have it, there is something a little androgynous under all her desire for puffed sleeves.
(The following link includes experts from the two letters mentioned above.)
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...f-e285b0fe3d77


And then, Margaret Atwood has “another way of reading ‘Anne of Green Gables‘, and that's to assume that the true central character is not Anne, but Marilla Cuthbert. Anne herself doesn't really change throughout the book. She grows taller, her hair turns from ‘carrots’ to ‘a handsome auburn‘, her clothes get much prettier, due to the spirit of clothes competition she awakens in Marilla, she talks less, though more thoughtfully, but that's about it. As she herself says, she's still the same girl inside. Similarly, Matthew remains Matthew, and Anne's best chum Diana is equally static. Only Marilla unfolds into something unimaginable to us at the beginning of the book. Her growing love for Anne, and her growing ability to express that love - not Anne's duckling-to-swan act - is the real magic transformation. Anne is the catalyst who allows the crisp, rigid Marilla to finally express her long-buried softer human emotions. At the beginning of the book, it's Anne who does all the crying; by the end of it, much of this task has been transferred to Marilla. As Mrs Rachel Lynde says, ‘Marilla Cuthbert has got mellow. That's what.’”

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008...margaretatwood


No, L.M. Montgomery was not Shakespeare, or even Jane Austen. But, (yes, Mr. Carpenter, I simply must italicize that but) Lucy Maud Montgomery as verily found her sentence as did Shakespeare or Austen. She crafted an immortal world out of the materials available to her. She was not perfect, but if perfection is writing of pig-sties when one might write of sunsets... then... I'll take the sunsets. As Montgomery said herself, “Sunsets are just as real as pig-sties and a darn sight pleasanter…”