My Weekly Book

Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

I found this in one of those discount bookshops in Paignton, of all places. We’d just come to the slightly premature end of a walking holiday and we’d read everything we had with us. Paignton does not initially appear to be very promising territory when looking for bookshops, but eventually we found this one – and I’d have taken it over a Waterstones or a Borders any day. It had a brilliant crime and thrillers section and we left with a compilation of the first three of Sue Grafton’s alphabet novels, a book on forensic pathology – and this.

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Of course I read Anne of Green Gables as a child. Of course I did – and all the rest of the Avonlea saga too. Strange, the fascination a story set in such a far-flung corner of the North American continent in the early years of the 20th century can have. But I’m not exactly sure what propelled me into picking it up again. Fond memories, I suppose, reinforced by hearing a lot of very positive references to it in various online/fan communities. And four things struck me about it [major spoilers past this point]:

1. Firstly, I really enjoyed reading it. It was delightfully-written and kept hold of the adult attention. Partly this is the dual point of view that gives you Anne’s take on things but also allows you to see what the adults around her are thinking. And I definitely think more young women should crack slates over impertinent male heads. If I have one slight criticism it is that the narrative is rather episodic - it reads almost like something that was serialised in a periodical. But that didn’t affect my enjoyment very much.
2. Secondly, why this book is so popular with the sort of bookish, clever girls who like reading or writing and grow up to write for themselves. It’s not the pretty or the rich who inherit the earth here. It’s the scrawny, red-haired, extremely clever orphan girl who comes top of her class and wins a college scholarship – and is feted for it by her adoptive family and, to a degree, by wider society. I’m reminded also of Jo March the would-be novellist in Little Women (who I believe also has red hair and a talent for getting into trouble) and, in a true cross-cultural moment, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s very own Willow Rosenberg. No, just stop and think about it. The brainy, socially-awkward redhead with long braids (at the outset, anyway) who is strongly identified with by sections of the audience to the exclusion of the series heroine. Also, while not an orphan she is effectively parentless. Her father never appears on screen and her mother rarely, and then only to cause trouble. She sacrifices a very high-status college place to stay in Sunnydale and care for her ‘family’ of Buffy, Xander, etc. So we’re looking at something of an archetype here, I think. I’m reminded of a quote I read from Linda Barnes, author of the Carlotta Carlyle detective series, a woman described as six foot one and having “hair so red it beggars adjectives like flaming”. I can’t find the exact quote – but it’s something like every woman with the sense to want to be interesting covets red rather than blonde hair. (Myself? A brunette with a good supply of henna.)
3. Thirdly how this book simply doesn’t figure on male radar. Not only in the bare terms of its existence but also in terms of its importance to a certain kind of female reader. The world of the novel is very female too – there is, of course, Matthew Cuthbert but he’s over sixty and nearly invisible by his very character. And Gilbert Blythe (who, irritatingly, is far too keen to ingratiate himself with Anne for the first half of the novel. How many teenage boys are going to react to having an apology flung in their faces by persevering in apologising?) is kept firmly at arms’ length. There are a few fathers, brothers and schoolmates scattered about but they are largely for decoration. No, this is true women’s fiction (as well as having been, perhaps mistakenly, trivialised characterised as a children’s novel in recent years) and I am to be honest a little unsure what male readers would get out of it.
4. Last, and perhaps most important, I got really angry at the ending. Anne, having distinguished herself by winning the Avery scholarship, is persuaded by a sense of duty that her role lies in relinquishing it and becoming a carer for her elderly guardian. And is expected (thanks to guilt and community pressure and the aforementioned sense of duty) to take pleasure in this limiting of her horizons and the throwing away of what must then appear to her as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The author says: “Anne’s horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queens; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy and her ideal world of dreams. And there was alwas the bend in the road! ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world,’ whispered Anne softly.” But conversely this didn’t spoil the book for me. Rather, it gave it the ring of truth and reinforced its proto-feminist message – this is what so many women still face in real life, more than 80 years later. And the biographical parallels are actually rather interesting – see the LM Montgomery link below.

Some links:

• Wikipedia: Anne of Green Gables
• Wikipedia: LM Montgomery
• Read it online

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 2:33 pm and is filed under 2006 - Also read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.