to make life decisions that she would come to regret. The particularly sad element here is that her work was and continues to be loved worldwide, and many of her fans believe her voice to be one of the best in literature. In fact, Mark Twain was even quoted as saying that Montgomery’s Anne was ‘the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice.’ The irony is that Montgomery’s own upbringing had made her a writer and given her the basis for her most successful work, but it also left her bereft of the skills to forge a fulfilled life. In fact, the fictitious Anne, in many respects, fundamentally enjoys her life far more than Montgomery ever did. It makes one wonder whether Montgomery might have dived headlong into her invented fictional realm had she been able.
In the end, there were eight ‘Anne’ novels, six of which had the name Anne in the title. The last one was Anne of Ingleside, which was published in 1939. Anne also features in a number of short stories. Montgomery’s final work (a collection of short stories and poems) was presented to her publisher on the day of her death in 1942, but it was shelved because World War II was ongoing and the book contained some potentially inflammatory anti-war content. Even after the war, the publishers seem to have remained reluctant to publish for fear of tarnishing Montgomery’s reputation and their own. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that these stories saw the light of day, when anti-war sentiment was all the rage, but even then the book was re-titled and hugely dismantled. In 2009, Montgomery’s final work was finally published in its entirety, and with its original title of The Blythes Are Quoted, 67 years after it was written.
Anne of Green Gables
In the novel, the eponymous Anne finds herself adopted by a late-middle-aged brother and sister, who had requested a boy from an orphanage to help run their farm. The Cuthberts had no benevolent desire to offer a loving home to a child in the first place and when they receive a girl, their first instinct is to send her back, as if she were faulty goods. Despite this unfortunate start, however, Anne makes the best of the situation and manages to win them over before they have a chance to return her to the orphanage. Thus the story sees Anne forge a life for herself with the Cuthberts and in the small community in which they live.
During the course of the story, Anne develops from an eleven-year-old tomboy into a sixteen-year-old young woman. Montgomery wrote her as a feisty redhead who is teased about the colour of her hair, which is now something of a cliché, but there was a long-held idea that those with ginger locks had a matching ‘fiery’ temperament. This served to make Anne a memorable character, which undoubtedly helped in making the novel a bestseller during Montgomery’s lifetime.
In terms of plot, Anne of Green Gables is unremarkable compared with many novels. However, this commonality was part of the secret of its success, too, as it is a pleasant amble through the formative years of the lovable main protagonist. Indeed, Montgomery subsequently made a career from serialising the life of Anne in a number of other novels. When Montgomery initially wrote the books, they were intended for a general readership, but as the twentieth century matured, they became thought of as children’s literature due to their quaint take on life and the perpetuation of a lovely and imaginary world.
Anne of Avonlea
Following the success of Anne of Green Gables, the sequel, Anne of Avonlea, was published a year later in 1909. Anne Shirley is now in her late teenage years, leaving her childhood behind and embarking on adulthood. She is occasionally still childish, getting herself into misunderstandings and scrapes, but as her maturity develops her behaviour begins to change.
Many of the much-loved characters from Anne of Green Gables reappear in Montgomery’s sequel, which sees Anne as the sole teacher in the village of Avonlea. Positioned at the heart of society, Anne is actively involved with her local community and its dynamics. In the first book, Anne was the mischievous pupil, but now she has to deal with mischief in her own classroom. Although often exasperating, she rather enjoys the challenge and admires such unruly behaviour for its expression of spirit and rebellion.
Anne of Avonlea also explores adolescence and the changes that it brings. One of Anne’s childhood adversaries is now a fellow teacher at a nearby school, and an attraction develops between the pair. Their childhood rivalry has now transformed itself into deeper feeling, and together they provide a plotline that endures throughout the series.
A tall, slim girl, “half-past sixteen,” with serious gray eyes and hair which her friends called auburn, had sat down on the broad red sandstone doorstep of a Prince Edward Island farmhouse one ripe afternoon in August, firmly resolved to construe so many lines of Virgil.
But an August afternoon, with blue hazes scarfing the harvest slopes, little winds whispering elfishly in the poplars, and a dancing slendor of red poppies outflaming against the dark coppice of young firs in a corner of the cherry orchard, was fitter for dreams than dead languages. The Virgil soon slipped unheeded to the ground, and Anne, her chin propped on her clasped hands, and her eyes on the splendid mass of fluffy clouds that were heaping up just over Mr. J. A. Harrison’s house like a great white mountain, was far away in a delicious world where a certain schoolteacher was doing a wonderful work, shaping the destinies of future statesmen, and inspiring youthful minds and hearts with high and lofty ambitions.
To be sure, if you came down to harsh facts … which, it must be confessed, Anne seldom did until she had to … it did not seem likely that there was much promising material for celebrities in Avonlea school; but you could never tell what might happen if a teacher used her influence for good. Anne had certain rose-tinted ideals of what a teacher might accomplish if she only went the right way about it; and she was in the midst of a delightful scene, forty years hence, with a famous personage … just exactly what he was to be famous for was left in convenient haziness, but Anne thought it would be rather nice to have him a college president or a Canadian premier … bowing low over her wrinkled hand and assuring her that it was she who had first kindled his ambition, and that all his success in life was due to the lessons she had instilled so long ago in Avonlea school. This pleasant vision was shattered by a most unpleasant interruption.
A demure little Jersey cow came scuttling down the lane and five seconds later Mr. Harrison arrived … if “arrived” be not too mild a term to describe the manner of his irruption into the yard.
He bounced over the fence without waiting to open the gate, and angrily confronted astonished Anne, who had risen to her feet and stood looking at him in some bewilderment. Mr. Harrison was their new righthand neighbor and she had never met him before, although she had seen him once or twice.
In early April, before Anne had come home from Queen’s, Mr. Robert Bell, whose farm adjoined the Cuthbert place on the west, had sold out and moved to Charlottetown. His farm had been bought by a certain Mr. J. A. Harrison, whose name, and the fact that he was a New Brunswick man, were all that was known about him. But before he had been a month in Avonlea he had won the reputation of being an odd person … “a crank,” Mrs. Rachel Lynde said. Mrs. Rachel was an outspoken lady, as those of you who may have already made her acquaintance will remember. Mr. Harrison was certainly different from other people … and that is the essential characteristic of a crank, as everybody knows.
In the first place he kept house for himself and had publicly stated that he wanted no fools of women around his diggings. Feminine Avonlea took its revenge by the gruesome tales it related about his house-keeping and cooking.
