A season to mark the centenary of the last book’s publication until the 80th anniversary of the author’s death
I start with the time of year I most associate with Anne – autumn, or to her, Fall.
Over the last dozen years, I’ve found myself creating an involuntary series of things once held dear to me: Austen, Gandhi – even Jesus (as usually portrayed); Jane Eyre was subverted in my novel, and two favourite films from the era I set it (Eternal Sunshine…, Quills and Chocolat) were revisited with as much criticism as alacrity. Here, Avonlea, not Brideshead, is revisited…
Like the Janeys [Austen and Eyre], Anne Shirley has been my literary and screen companion since puberty. The first time we met received a diary entry: she was new year 1987 home viewing. I was perturbed by the Fishermen’s Friend adverts interspersing this 1985 TV movie, and my mother’s aahing at the romance and the end of film tragedy; but I was intrigued enough by Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert to recall his name, and something must’ve taken hold, for within the year I was enlisting those who knew Anne as Kindred Spirits. Since then, I believed that only those who understood the phrase were truly mine. At university, Anne and Gilbert looked down from my shelves, as they have – at least spine on – ever since.
At that time, I discovered Little Women; I now find an important parallel between these North American children’s classics. I reviewed LM Alcott’s work and found out about the true story behind the New England series; I began to wonder about that behind the other authoress with the same initials. Now, after another re-watch and re-read, I am finding out.
Anne was sufficiently important to me to be referred to in my first published novel, Parallel Spirals. My heroine has red – or rather, gerbil coloured – hair: I’ve warmed to the colour ever since my I welcomed Anne into my heart and bookshelves. I expected that many of my readers would need no introduction to the quote about a partner who could be wicked, but wasn’t… innocent friends of the bosom, or for waiting for the ideal of a Gilbert. He and Anne reappear for a seminal scene in the sequel. (The proof is at the printers for – it is going to be a trilogy). Having discarded Darcy and Rochester as fantasy literary men, I felt that there was still something in Gilbert Blythe – like Anne, with an ‘e’ – although my readers will know I’m being slightly misleading by speaking of such heroes. Gilbert is an unselfish suitor, a true friend to Anne, who survives distance and time… or so I thought, until I got out the CBC Kevin Sullivan sequel this week.
Much has happened on my own journey since I last rode in a haywagon with the Blythes. I discovered a trait, which I believe that Anne has, and it was fascinating reading and watching with that in mind. More anon. The other was deeper discoveries about education and media, and most of all, the most spiritual kind of loves. I no longer wish for a love like Anne and Gilbert’s, nor hold Mr Blythe up as an ideal beau any more than I rate his literary critical skills.
This will come out in Anne-like thought form! (ie long [5000 words], snaky logic and no breaks)
I am taken by the realisation of how young Anne and Gilbert are, even at the end of the sequel. In the story, they are barely out of their teens. Thus Anne’s feeling spinsterish and behind her contemporaries is almost insultingly ironic to any middle aged single person or senior widow. Worse still are the pronouncements she makes, sometimes to people much older than she, issuing blunt statements that she wouldn’t take in reverse. There’s little congruent conversation here – by which I mean, where characters mutually share their hearts in difficult exchanges. One person tells the other their opinions, which they consider to be home truths – ie, objectively correct. The other person either takes this, or sulks and attacks. Not truly an adult interaction. Examples are with Anne and Gilbert over his writing advice; to Katherine Brooke, and to Morgan Harris and his hilarious mother, played so wonderfully by Dame Wendy Hiller. Enough of your wheedling ways – have a peppermint!
I would like to comment on Anne’s uncannily swift literary success. So often in films, the protagonist reaches their audience very quickly. Like, in 2 hrs. Or in Anne’s case, 4. Although Lucy Maud did rapidly attain acclaim, she had many rejections and she was in her mid thirties, not barely twenty, when her first novel was published. A longer journey – the experience of many – could be because what you’ve to say not only took longer to marinate, but has something original to share that’s not so easily marketed. Lucy Maud (I understand she preferred being called Maud) found that a quick marriage – with a publisher – had its drawbacks.
I query Gilbert’s writing advice. (No offence to anyone called that, but is anyone else wondering why a century of women languished over a man so named?) Gil tells Anne what Jo March is told by her German professor: scrub the silly overdone stories and write simply about what you know.(In the first novel, teacher Miss Stacy prescribes the same.) Here you will find success. It’s fine to take the people around you and use them as your models – even whilst they yet live and you live among them. They’ll not mind.
I was innately aware of the fact that they might, and that there are ethical as well as legal considerations for this naive approach.
As a young writer, I didn’t wish to use language other than the contemporary idiom and I was most interested in contemporary stories set somewhere I knew, about people my of own age. (I didn’t realise until later that my own style is a hybrid between the classics I came to love and colloquial, something which baffled publishers and universities). So to that extent, I thought that Gil was right and had followed his advice. But later, I became interested in layers and imagery, in allegory and bigger themes. Hence Jane Eyre earned its place as a classic, but my other favourite authors do not employ these. Whereas nature is profusely described with imagery in Anne, it is rarely used as a device to share something deeper. Anne of GG, like contemporary Lark Rise to Candleford, is full of anecdotal vignettes. Sometimes there is most definitely characterisation and development of a story; other passages are as rambling as the country lanes Anne walks. Of course, all of these authors deal with the reality of life, however bucolic and idyllic they seem. People love, lose, worry, hurt, ail; banks fail, promises are broken, dreams gets punctured – and mended again. Yes, wider issues reside within, but I think much of the Anne books is padding.
I resented how Gilbert advises Anne in the 1987 Sullivan film with Jonathan and Megan. When told Anne’s secret, he proclaims it to the street at large. When Anne is upset by the Rollings Reliable Baking Powder competition, Gil is rude, calling her dialogue ‘high falutin mumbo jumbo.’ He needs to take some lessons in giving writers constructive feedback. Yet, much of Anne – and Maud’s – turn of phrase is high falutin, and we who like the story appreciate it. (Anne’s early work is trying to emulate Shakespeare, who is even more popular and long lasting). I especially hate the horse whip moment – trying to introduce S&M to this Universal Certificate story?! It’s aggressive and it is kind of sexualised. Give me your attention! Bow to my will! says Gilbert with his whip when he’s actually not capable of really sympathising with Anne’s feelings. He’s not a writer, so how would he know what is right? He’s only seen to be because Anne is given yet more success, as they both are at whatever they turn to. This simple warm story – the score underscores its true tenure – would give Anne early success; would emulate what LM Montgomery enjoyed – in part; and would imply that this TV show is also going to be successful, as this genre generally is. (Cf Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford).
Like the other LM writer down the coast, Maud didn’t want to write sequels, but her publisher held her into doing so. Did she want Anne to marry Gilbert – or anyone? Anne often says that she’ll not marry, she’s happy alone… although what she actually says is: I’ll die an old maid. That phrase can have a shiver about it for today’s single woman. It’s designed to, I realised: a social construct that lures women into the marriage market – and yes it is a market, a transaction. It’s self policing – like we have seen during the pandemic. Beyond the law is the wagging sharp tongues of your community. We might even call the Anne of the End of the Second Film a girl by our ridiculously stretched out notion of childhood. And yet, she already feels that she may be destined to be like her adopted mother, over three times her age, because she’s finished college and not got a ring on her finger. I heard such sentiments in my own time.
I note that LM Alcott didn’t want Jo to marry. She resisted having her marry the boy next door, and instead gave him to the younger sister. I have never been convinced by who Jo does marry; and although I threw the novel across the room and stormed to my friend’s when I found out whom she didn’t, I now agree with that. Jo and Laurie are not that sort of friends.
And I now feel the same about Anne and one of the first boys she met. In their small community, they were an obvious pairing. “Everyone expects it,” says Gil at his first proposal in CBC. That is an awful reason to marry. Even worse, Marilla seems to join in, reminding Anne of the sacrifices which Gil made for her. Who gave up his scholarship and then gave a lift into town each day? So…Anne owes Gil something. Have they not heard of the idea of no strings gifts? Gilbert doesn’t ask if Anne would like his role instead; he just asks the trustees to give it to her. Its benefit is as much for recently bereaved Marilla, whose eyesight is failing, and for Anne’s friends, as it is Anne herself. It was a beautiful, but the right thing to do. Even so, it seems that this slightly older young man is managing Anne, laying out a trap for her, a contract to call her on later. You accepted the local school job which I should have had; that means you owe me…your hand.
Anne for once nicely and truly speaks to Gilbert and tells him that she cares a great deal, but not in that way. They are on the cusp of their adult lives and have explorations away from Avonlea before they can possibly know who and what they want. Gil doesn’t believe that Anne’s heart can not be for another if she won’t have him. Spitefully, he walks away with: ‘Whoever he is, I hope he breaks your heart.’ That is utter manipulation, and not the talk of an altruist.
I’m not one for measurement scales, but David Hawkins has developed one for different feelings called the Map of Consciousness. Romantic love scored in the lowest bracket. And I can believe it: I wrote a piece called The Most Selfish Kinds of Love about romance and parenting, these very exclusive bonds that can involve controlling the object of love. I don’t now see Gil’s love for Anne in the higher echelons of what is confusingly called Unconditional Love.
Like LM Alcott was pressured to, Kevin Sullivan and team invent an older man for their tomboyish imaginative writer. Mum maintained that Morgan Harris could be a match for Anne, but I’m glad she didn’t follow Jo March’s suit. Morgan is besotted by the spirit of this unusual young woman, but in some ways, he doesn’t know her. They’ve not really been alone apart from cliched arguments over broken down vehicles and windswept manuscripts. What do we know of Morgan that makes him a kindred to Anne? Does he adore poetry and nature? Does he get hers? Would he understand why Avonlea is so important to Anne? I critique the “Marry me,” before “I love you” culture of that time, when couples hadn’t courted or kissed until the contract had been made. Another business transaction for philandering, capitalist Captain Harris. Most of their conversations are silly: Anne’s often being childishly coquettish. If they’d not had a heart to heart conversation, how could they enter matrimony? Thinking of all that involves…the expected intimacies with one you are not emotionally and spiritually intimate with… I felt that there was a greater bond and kindredness with his daughter Emmeline than with the very different worldly man who so neglected her. Would he not treat Anne the same?
I watched the end scenes carefully and they felt rather rushed. Anne is away from Avonlea for much of the CBC sequel, which invents a fair deal. I wanted to see Anne meet her proud, rich, melancholy ideal in Royal Gardner. It was an important part of her journey. I suppose that Morgan was rich, proud and melancholy – but also bossy. Yes, Anne misses Gil… and has a brief encounter to stir her up at that bandstand where she hears that she could be losing him. He now agrees that her speech was right. Give him a few months, and he’s changed again. A fevered brow to mop (Diana’s reason for considering nursing), the further possibility of losing him, and Anne scootles over the bridge (don’t they redress it for wherever they’re filming… I think this is a one bridge show)… Anne scootles with her big, half loose hair to be tumbling out to Gil, showing that she obeyed him regarding her book AND gave him the credit. A recycled speech: I’ve been so blind, there has only been you (yes because you’re hardly mingling, dear). Her visit saves him. Next, he is seen looking ‘robust’ in the orchard, and the business of their engagement only has time for a walk across that blessed pond. No I love you, just the presumption that since he lived, Anne is to have him after all. Gil’s first words to her are practical and back to being a transaction. This is what I can offer you…this is my employment status. Why not put a figure on it?! He does put a time on it: Anne is expected to wait three years until he’s earning and no longer studying. And where is she to be? Naturally, at the titular homestead, now an authoress rather than a common teacher. Would she be happy? Kevin Sullivan, unlike Maud, does not let us find out, for his final instalment a dozen years later is his own story about the first world war.
I was put off by what I see as his arrogant comments regarding the Anne fans: that they should see what he’s done and how well he’s emulated Maud. I never took to the Continuing Story, don’t own it or intend to, and have only watched it twice; I have had other opportunities which I turned down to view the middle aged face feeling festival set in the trenches.
Is this marriage the ideal for all us Anne-spirited women (or indeed, men?) Svetlana Sterlin points out that in the books, married Anne fades into children’s lives and she’s henceforth called Mother or Mrs Blythe. Does the Anne who needed exactly the right kind of pen to write to her fiancé still have that kind of passionate connection to her doctor husband once she starts furnishing him with kids? I recall with alarm that those letters ended ‘your obedient servant’ and she viewed this sign off – copied from a more ancient couple – the height of romance. What precisely is romantic about compliance and servitude in intimate partnership, Miss Shirley?!
When I discovered Twin Flames, certain literary and celluloid couples came to mind – Jane and Rochester, amusingly Jack and Rose from Titanic (more on this for next year’s novel on the ship), Romeo and Juliet perhaps…Cathy and Heathcliff… but I didn’t think of any Austen pairs, and I didn’t think of Anne and Gilbert. They seemed to work on a as-well-as-you-can-in-these-times- without-being-extraordinary level. Despite the others I mentioned all being written and set earlier, and Anne being in the times of first wave feminism, there’s no extraordinary bond between Anne and Gilbert. It’s not spiritual, they’ve not obvious in service together, although he sees his medical practice as being that. I worry that Anne’s role is not so much complementary but supporting, and her dreams subsume and succumb to his…what happens to her work?
—————-Go and get yourself a raspberry cordial ———–
Education and Giftedness
I wonder why Gil and Anne need to be top of their class. I understand the plot driven by their being rivals, but… Why do we need to grade people and their capabilities and performances?! When Miss Stacey reports to Anne about Gilbert whilst he’s at medical school, she says that while Gil is so modest (another important value for a hero) he’s clearly top of his class. If a friend I cared about – especially romantically – had only one fact to impart to me, second hand, in many months, I would not care about their grades, I would care how they felt. What was really going in their world?
Beyond it being cloying that Anne and Gilbert are forever winning scholarships, being chosen and singled out, there is also a reason why it’s unrealistic. When I last read Anne, I learned of the trait of giftedness and swiftly thought of her. Giftedness isn’t about being top of the class; it may or may not swiftly garner you recognition in the conventional world. Giftedness is a way of being. You’re tuned differently. Anne’s intensity isn’t all from the colour of her hair. It’s physical, mental, spiritual. It is a trait, not an illness or a condition; not something to treat or pity, but to celebrate.
Some gifted people actually find that the school system does not celebrate their gifts. The narrow way of learning in our mainstream education, set up to be competitive and conditioning, can be depressing to some students and to teachers, including those passionate and gifted ones. So I question how well Anne would have got on sitting at either desk – copying from the blackboard or writing on it. Exams test a very particular set of skills: your memory, your ability to work under timed pressure; your ability to trot out what the system wants. It’s long been a bugbear that those good at exams could potentially waste much of the time, suddenly cram, and come out with better grades than the steady diligent workers. In some cases, it’s recalling a set of answers; with essays, it’s about reproducing an argument in a particular way. Sometimes real originality is fostered and rewarded, but often it is suppressed and frustrated.
I was told that I didn’t fit the mark scheme – and I’m proud. I resent being held up to one.
In my own studies, I learned about the many different learning styles and methods. In Anne’s day, these were more restricted. Learning was by rote and rules. It was not unlike training a dog: with whistles and claps the class has learned responses to those claiming power over them. Anne’s belief of governing her class via love – as Marmee March does her family – is tested when she gives into administering physical punishment. I am perturbed that, according to the 1975 BBC version, Anne’s aberated principle is shown to be the correct way: the wayard child is not only broken, but henceforth friendly and helpful. He is already acclimatised to abuse from his family. He even speaks of Anne’s thrashing in complementary terms: she was as a good as a man. Thus the highest compliment for a woman was still that she emulated a man in strength and authority. Yet as with KLC head teacher Katherine Brooke, disciplinarians hid unhappy trapped spinsters. Perhaps free from the national curriculum that we have in England, Anne could devise her own classes in a small school, but in a larger one, and one part of a chain, she may find that her colleagues watched her more and she wasn’t free to indulge her own passions in poetry. She did have to answer to a board and to paying prying Pringle parents in Kingsport.
I wonder if she would have found such quick acceptance after a vendetta against her; and if Anne would be happy assisting at the women’s charity bazaars. Note how tactlessly the Pringle who turned her away from her door now embraces her, putting Anne up whilst denigrating others in earshot. Is Anne really good at hanging streamers, or is that a practical thing she’s less gifted at?
I have deep concerns about how Anne develops in book and screen (the adaptations will receive an article to themselves on 3/1/22).
Young Anne – she literally and literarily of Green Gables – is very much gifted. We love her for her fiery temper, her silly scrapes, her earnest, genuine loving, her uncanny unravelling of hearts tied up under lock and key. Then Anne comes of age, and something odd happens. Just as she is told that her flame coloured hair must mellow into auburn and her freckles must fade for her to be pretty (by the way, that’s rubbish!), mature Anne must acquire an acceptable post pubescent tinge to her inner self. Anne is expected to dress like a young lady – a feminised version of a man. Her waist is high; her blouses tucked in; her skirts long and wide to hide her legs; her collars neat and covering her neck; her hair contained – only once is it down. Like Muslims, unbound hair is to be seen only when alone or in the intimate company of other women or your husband. Like biblical Ruth, Anne’s going to a man alone in such a state (as she does to Gilbert in the CBC version) implies that she is offering herself to be his wife. Is Gil, like Boaz, a kinsman redeemer?!
I am seguing away from where I want to be: giftedness often doesn’t easily sit within the linear argument. But I am saying that Anne’s clothes reflect what is being imposed on her: that the independent woman – the working one – is a feminised man, and you only wear your tie if you teach. Otherwise, you get your brooch out and pin yourself together. And you must be together.As Maud could attest, if you or yours are not, you work hard to hide it.
Great minds can be mistaken for madness, and I very much query the know alls who speak of Maud’s husband’s affliction. I question the construct of madness and mental illness, which I don’t think that many of us – least of all the medical world – understand. I wonder too at how many Anne promoters understand this most famous Canadian export. The next most famous female author wrote a verbose piece on Anne that gave away little, except the plot: it was more vehicle for herself. Imagination is massive to gifted people, and I was worried that the reality of Anne being brought up by Matthew and especially Marilla and by extension, Mrs Lynde, whom even brooks obeyed, would mean an unhappy and suppressed Ms Shirley. None of these let Anne really talk out her heart. Marilla often nags Anne, cruelly sending her into the woods at night to cure that imagination of the monsters that she supposes are there. But there are woodland predators, and Anne could have suffered psychological terrors even if a physical one had not attacked her. Anne is happily quite practical, which some gifted people are not; if Anne hadn’t been, I wonder how she would have fared. MORE IN A FORTHCOMING PIECE
Real life Maud did not apparently enjoy the warmth of her grandparents that her invention did.
It was Anne’s imagination, as well as her vast vocabulary, which alerted me to her giftedness. Where others saw Barry’s pond, Anne saw The Lake of Shining Waters; where others saw just real pretty blossoms, Anne saw The White Way of Delight. I think that Maud must share this trait. Anthropomorphising a brook to show us Rachel Lynde’s character is a brilliant opening. It tells us that this will be a story that appreciates nature in a poetic way, and that it is entwined with the central characters who live among it. A deep love of nature is another common trait of gifted people, as is precociousness, an early huge reservoir of words, including inventing your own – ‘tragical’ and ‘empurpled’ – and profound understanding of the world. They are often spiritual, but may not be conventionally so. Anne’s nature based prayers shock Marilla, yet there is something disarming about her naive but sincere original take on faith…. but as she matures, we’re not updated on Anne’s spiritual biography, at least not by Kevin Sullivan. Anne perceives nature spirits – which is an earth religion, not a heathen childish fancy, whether or not it’s part of your theology. From Diana and her parting, she also intrinsically knowns that one can commune in spirit with people who are absent, which suggests a belief in higher selves.
Anne’s imagination is appreciated, but not fully matched by anyone – save Emelline Harris who is another Sullivan invention with some precedent in Maud’s books. In the latter, Anne’s own children write, but as Svetlana Sterlin pointed out, the characters with pens are often lost to us. Jem grows out of his imaginings for medicine and the army; Anne is foremost housekeeper and mother; and the only one of her kids to publish – Walter (named after grandad Shirley) – is killed in the war. Maud apparently didn’t want to keep writing about Anne, but her public demanded it, so so did her publisher. Note that an American company put this intrinsically Canadian author into print. Like Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, Maud wanted to put Anne aside and bring out new characters and ideas. She seemed to think that her new ideas were better ones, more serious. I said that Maud found acclaim, but actually, it was popular public acclaim; critics and universities took much longer. I watched a documentary [CBC’s The Life and Times of L M Montgomery 1996] that claimed that only in the 1980s – with the conference they filmed, mind – did a university (of Prince Edward Island, the place that Anne put on the map) take an interest in Anne. Maud attained the wide appeal and high sales which academics did not, so academic authors were jealous, they said. My teachers were sniffy when I wrote an essay on Anne for English literature.
I’m intrigued by the legacy of Anne and how she is curated. Anne is presented as a wholesome, timeless, popular export with a big maple leaf on the bottom, although in the 1980s films, there are many British Union Jacks. Anne is cultural and cultured, if not highbrow. She is loved, she will endure. She will be good for many more copies yet, and other films and new musicals from time to time. I note that two of the best known Anne screen adaptations were national television companies, known for setting the tone of the country as much as dramatising its period literature. As much as Anne is owned by Canada, loved around the world, she is also appropriated in a less comfortable sense. The pigtailed boaters and quote-inscribed products all need permission as much as the new scripts. I note that there is a body protecting her work, although Maud died 80 years ago. I don’t know what I feel about subsequent generations benefiting from someone’s work financially – and I mean great grandchildren as much as the publishing house who pushed Maud to keep writing to fill their pockets. Farmsteads have been recreated, in her native island and in Japan, where there is a great thirst for her, who have made a film about a modern woman seeking her as well as wonderful 70s Manga. Weddings can happen in Green Gables orchard; coachloads turn up to take a tour of a home with potent cordials, elusive broaches, green hair dye and smashed slates. There is not just a house or two, as with other authors, or as with Shakespeare, a town… Maud country is a national park! Maud is kept alive by locals who recall her, although they were allegedly shocked by the very different portrayal in her own diaries.
Do we have a right to publish those? Did Maud really say she’d put a hex on her family if they didn’t? For all those purists, glad of the family friendly rating certificate, the discovery of Anne’s author as a very sexual woman is a surprise. (I’m not… so much passion and sensuality). Unlike Anne, Maud’s husband didn’t support her writing. She was middle aged by her day when she married – double the age of her characters, and no Royal Gardner or Gilbert Blythe for her. She was miserable on her own wedding day, and seemed to often be in that state, although she hid it from neighbours and from her readers. It’s suggested that the Anne books were the projection of what she wanted, but didn’t get. Law of attraction proponents might be puzzled: didn’t she visualise what she wanted and thus she ought to have manifested it? – unless the great iniquity of doubt prevented it.
Then there was the part which really shocked and saddened me. The real story of one who created a character with inexhaustible joy which always came back to her as a Weeble comes back to standing, no matter what the knocks is that for her, the Weeble was often low and ultimately hit herself on the ground and didn’t get up. The truth of Lucy Maude Montgomery seems to be that she actually took her life. It was revealed by a granddaughter in 2008, who reinterpreted a note. I wasn’t surprised about the unhappy marriage – I sensed it. I can think of other classic romantic authors who either didn’t marry (LM Alcott; Emily Bronte; Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson) or who didn’t very happily (Charlotte Bronte). But that she died in that way… that Maud was another Virginia Woolf (her contemporary), a Sylvia Plath… a Hemingway, a Chatterton… Ouch. That’s not where I want to leave Anne, or Maud. It’s quite raw news for me. I hear that Maud’s last work was refused by her publisher for being too dark, and was unavailable until recently. I wish that she could have written more honestly. I wish she’d had the support of her husband. I wish that her grandparents and father had shown her more love. I’m glad that her readers did. I would like to think that we are coming into a world more like the one of the Anne books, of possibility and gentleness, of long curses being broken, of freedom and joy and without horror. I will not say, one where mental health is better understood, because I think that statement itself misunderstands and gives power to institutions to control and grade us, just like education and church and government. We are awakening to how health can be used as a form of tyranny, to exclude those who are different, and either crush or sedate into being acceptable. I believe that there are many Annes in our world, and more are coming, and we need to celebrate them, to allow to fly rather than tether and weigh down wings; a world which Anne can thrive and she – we – can find our true soulmates, not just the obvious person who everyone pairs us off with before we go past our sellby date. A person with whom we’re true equals. A real kindred spirit.
The next article will be on Maud’s birthday, 30th November
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 