Recently a friend with stellar taste in literature was taken aback when she learned I’d never read any of L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” books. In my parenting days, my daughter and her Atlanta cousin both devoured as many of these stories as they could get their hands on, and two of my granddaughters, my daughter tells me, have read a few of these books multiple times. Our family watched one of the Green Gable films, but the books – well, it never crossed my mind even to dip into them. Weren’t they mostly for girls?
Inspired – and yes, shamed – by my friend, I swung by the library the next day and picked up the first book of the series. The only available copy was a plump volume decked with flowers and an archway of trees beneath which a red-haired girl is holding a valise. It’s a Puffin in Bloom Edition, part of “a charming assortment of classic novels with coming-of-age themes,” and clearly designed to appeal to 12-year-old females. I was thankful for the self-checkout station.
And that night came my first visit on Canada’s Prince Edward Island with a carrot-top orphan who talked incessantly, who preferred dreams to reality, and who by chapter six had snagged my heart.
The story is well-known to so many readers that only a brief summary is necessary. Two childless siblings old enough to be grandparents, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, plan to adopt a boy to help out on their farm, but a mix-up delivers 11-year-old Anne Shirley. The quiet Matthew falls immediately hostage to the girl’s charms, and Marilla eventually comes round as well, albeit grudgingly. Anne finds a “bosom friend” in Diana Barry, lashes out when another neighbor, the outspoken Mrs. Rachel Lynde, criticizes her looks, and begins a long feud with the handsome Gilbert Blythe when he calls Anne “Carrots” in class and she answers this insult by smashing a writing slate over his head.
As we romp with Anne through her adventures and misadventures, we meet some of the others who live or visit in Avonlea, friends at school like the practical Jane Andrews, adults like Mrs. Allan, the minister’s wife whom Anne considers a “kindred spirit,” and the elderly and acerbic Josephine Barry, Diana’s wealthy aunt, who is softened by Anne’s zest and ability to amuse her.
In addition to the plot and the people, other facets of Montgomery’s literary jewel appealed to me as well.
Painting a Landscape
From the very first pages, Montgomery breathes life into the woods, fields, hills, and waters of Prince Edward Island. This talent, I’ve found, is rare in fiction. Emily Bronte’s descriptive powers in “Wuthering Heights” bring the Yorkshire moors into the reader’s living room. In his novels, Pat Conroy word-paints South Carolina Lowcountry so vividly that you can smell the brackish water of tidal basins and hear the rustling of sea oats.
In part because of these descriptions, every year tens of thousands of tourists visit Prince Edward Island, paying homage to Montgomery and looking for the beauty in the land she described.
Growing Together
Watching the stiff-necked, practical Marilla come to love and appreciate Anne was a delight, as was Anne’s evolution from a prattling adolescent into a young adult who kept hold of her dreams while maturing in her demeanor. Though opposites in so many ways, by the novel’s end Anne and Marilla have formed an unbreakable bond of love. Montgomery offers us an exquisite, subtle study of the many ways in which such relationships are forged.
Humor
Anne’s dreamy ways, her volubility, and her use of “big words” brings a humor to this book that probably flies right over the heads of most adolescent girls. At one point, confronted by a possible return to the orphanage, the articulate 11-year-old says, “It’s just that my life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes now. That’s a sentence I read once and I say it over to comfort myself in these times that try the soul.” At another point in the book – I’m afraid I’ve lost the particular line and circumstance – she speaks of the lead in her heart in a way that made me burst out laughing.
Food for the Heart
This is the core reason for my enthusiasm for Montgomery’s “Green Gables.”
Today’s literature, arts, and entertainment lean heavily in the direction of fantasy, thrillers, and sensationalism. Portraits of families in particular, as found, for example, in another great coming-of-age novel, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” have become rare. Those who shape our culture all too often favor the exotic over the familiar, eroticism over true love, and action and sensationalism over the gentler currents of the heart.
“Anne of Green Gables” is a wholesome work, meaning it’s morally healthy for the soul. Few novels written today, outside of Christian literature, would merit that description. In fact, our culture is so degraded that to apply the description “wholesome” to any novel is probably the kiss of death. The very word can be cause for derision. It’s little wonder why so many older Americans, including me, prefer reading nonfiction, particularly history and biography, to today’s fiction.
As for me, the next time I’m yearning for a good story, I’ll likely turn to “Anne of Avonlea,” the second of Montgomery’s tales about Anne Shirley and Prince Edward Island.
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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Image Credit: Flickr-Smudge 9000, CC BY 2.0
