Herstory

Mark Twain once said L. M. Montgomery’s Anne Shirley was “the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice." Anne Shirley, Green Gables and Montgomery’s fictional world have become so ingrained in Canadian culture, that their stories have become a musical, a movie and a television series. A museum and national historical sites have also been established. It is hard to think of Prince Edward Island without also conjuring a picture of a red-haired orphan and her incredible imagination.

 

Lucy Maud Montgomery, who went by Maud, was born in 1874 to Clara and Hugh Montgomery in Clifton, Prince Edward Island. Her mother died of tuberculosis before Maud turned two. Her father, unable to raise her, relinquished custody of his young daughter to Montgomery’s maternal grandparents who were strict and detached guardians. They raised her in Cavendish, PEI where she spent most of her time alone. She credited her lonely childhood for developing her imagination and love of writing.

 

After finishing grade school, Montgomery obtained her teaching certificate and spent two years studying literature at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Following university, she returned to PEI to teach and began writing short stories, having more than a 100 published over the course of a decade. Montgomery, known best for Anne of Green Gables, went on to publish 20 novels, more than 500 short stories and as many poems. But one theme remained through her work, Montgomery told stories of strong women, women with “gumption”.

 

“Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn't can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.” 
                                    ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

Her lead female characters, like Anne Shirley and Marilla Cuthbert of the Anne of Green Gables series, were independent thinkers. Anne, especially, was focussed on pursuing her education, establishing a career and creating a self-sufficient existence, lessons she learned in part from Marilla. Anne Shirley once stated, “Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”

 

In stark contrast, Montgomery’s secondary female characters displayed more typical behaviour for the time. They were interested in finding husbands, having children and keeping a home. Also, the male lead characters, Matthew and Gilbert, were softer, almost deferent to their female counterparts. Regarding this, Elizabeth Waterston, a leading Canadian scholar on Montgomery’s works, stated that Montgomery was “clearly ahead of her time in telling a story about a female hero who is not afraid to be loud and bold at a time when girls were expected to be the opposite."

 

Mary Henley Rubio, who along with Elizabeth Waterston, published five volumes of Montgomery’s personal journals, wrote, "Montgomery's books inspired women to greater heights of achievement while bringing consolation to heads of state and spurring soldiers in the trenches to fight for home. Even today, the worldwide appeal of her homely stories shows no sign of fading.”

 

Rilla of Ingleside, the story of Anne and Gilbert’s daughter, was, at the time, the only novel about World War I told from a Canadian woman’s perspective. Rilla is left at home, as the unwitting guardian of a war orphan, while her brother enlists and the rest of her siblings head back to school. Unlike other war-time stories that were set in the heart of the war, this novel chronicled the struggles and experiences of Canadians at home while the war raged overseas.

 

Scholars have spent decades studying Montgomery and her literary impact on Canadian culture. Rubio stated that Montgomery’s work seemed “…to be 'simple little tales' ... but that was misleading: The last quarter-century of scholarly research has shown that her writing has been, in fact, a very powerful agent of social change.”

 

Theodore Sheckels, another scholar who studied Montgomery’s work, noted that while Montgomery never claimed to be a feminist, “what she expressed in her journals was a general desire for freedom (Rubio and Waterston) and a general rebelliousness against both social conventions and controls. These general feelings were particularized in her numerous disparaging comments on the social institution of marriage and on the conventions of literature, especially when these conventions confined her as a writer or female characters.”

 

In 1993, the University of Prince Edward Island founded the L.M. Montgomery institute to promote the study of her work and its cultural influence. The institute conducts research, supports the scholarly study of Montgomery and hosts an international conference every two years dedicated sharing research, exhibits and creative works inspired by Montgomery. Past themes have included L.M. Montgomery & Cultural Memory, L.M. Montgomery & War and in 2016, L.M. Montgomery & Gender. Her legacy is undeniable and as such was the first female in Canada to be named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in England and to be named as an Officer to the Order of the British Empire.

 

Sadly, while Montgomery used many details from her early life to create her vivid characters, settings and storylines, as Anne Shirley grew stronger and more self-assured, Montgomery was sinking further into depression. Engulfed with the stress of her husband’s incapacitating mental illness and her son Chester’s reported criminal behaviour, she eventually died of a fatal drug overdose, which her granddaughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, confirmed as suicide decades later.

 

Regardless of Montgomery’s personal and professional decline in her later years, she will be remembered for creating one of Canada’s most beloved characters. 

 

“There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.” 
                                                                    ~ Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables

 

 

 

References

 

Lefebvre, B. (2013) The L.M. montgomery reader, volume one: A life in print University of Toronto Press.

L.M. Montgomery Institute of U.P.E.I. (n.d) Conferences. Retrieved from http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/conferences

 

McIntyre, Caitlin, (2006, June 17) Waterston refused to believe L.M. Montgomery irrelevant. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.lexisnexis.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/hottopics/lnacademic/?shr=t&csi=249784&sr=HLEAD(%22Waterston%20refused%20to%20believe%20L.M.%20Montgomery%20irrelevant%22)%20and%20date%20is%202006

 

Menon, V. (2012, June 11)  Return to Green Gables; Heir of Lucy Maud Montgomery promises 'new interpretation' for miniseries to be filmed next year. Toronto Star. Retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2012/06/11/anne_of_green_gables_to_be_remade_for_tv.html

 

Montgomery, L.M. (1908) Anne of Green Gables. L.C. Page & Co.

 

Montgomery, L. M., Waterston, E., Rubio, M., & McNaughton, J. (1998). The selected journals of LM montgomery, vol IV: 1929-1935]. Quill & Quire, 64(10), 31. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/235661681?accountid=8056

 

Oosterom, N. (2009, Apr). Lucy maud montgomery: The gift of wings. The Beaver, 89, 46-47. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/200251351?accountid=8056

 

Sheckels, T. F. (1993). In search of structures for the stories of girls and women: LM montgomery's life-long struggle. The American Review of Canadian Studies