When I try to unravel the chronology of my interaction with Lucy Maude Montgomery I start to get a confused. I know when it started; Christmas 1989, when my cousin gave me the boxed set of the television miniseries. My cousin was very proud of this gift, as she should have been–it was a very generous and thoughtful gift for a teenager–but I honestly knew nothing about it. So we popped in the movies and started to watch, and the seed was definitely sown: I was now obsessed with Anne of Green Gables.
I watched the movie every weekend, once on Saturday, and again on Sunday, while my mother was working and my brothers were playing Nintendo. I took many trips to the library, and brought home armloads of Montgomery’s books. I read most of them, and cried often because she can be very sappy, and as a pre-teen I was vulnerable to the sappiness. When I wasn’t reading her books I was re-watching the movie. This went on for a couple of years.
Time changes our priorities, and soon I had essays to write and friends to keep up with, so Lucy and I took a break. But we are kindred spirits, and we soon reconnected. During my third year of university, I was in the rare book room, working quietly (there is absolutely no talking in the rare book room), when I heard the librarian come over to the only other person in the room and ask him if she had brought him the LM Montgomery manuscript he was looking for. He made some reply and took the hand-written document and started flipping through it. I stared; all thoughts of the suffragist movement were temporary forgotten as I stared at those hand-written pages. The only thought my star-struck mind could process was: “that’s her writing…she wrote that!” The gentleman noticed my staring and asked if I had read Anne of Green Gables. I replied yes (I was only able to pronounce single-syllable words at this point) and he invited me over to have a look at LM Montgomery’s first draft of Rilla of Ingleside. Even now my heart is beating, and I feel breathless remembering it. I went home that night and started rereading The Blue Castle, the only one of Montgomery’s books short enough for me to handle while I juggled my school assignments.
Montgomery and I were reunited at last, and we have never parted since for any real length of time. Though I was focused on Canadian literature, and one of the foremost scholars in the country works out of my university, I did not study Montgomery’s work formally, and I have no explanation for that. Instead I did my own research, watching and reading every biography I could find.
Montgomery’s life is often described as lonely and isolated. As a small child her mother died of tuberculosis. Not long after, her father left her in the care of her grandparents in Prince Edward Island, so that he could move across the country to Saskatchewan. Montgomery’s father never returned to PEI, though LM did spend a year living with her father on the Prairie. Montgomery’s childhood was strict and lonely, and it was during this time that she developed her keen imagination that would allow her to develop into a writer. As the years went on Montgomery became her grandparents’ caregiver, a position that required more time as they aged. She also excelled at school. She decided to pursue her teaching certificate, and studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
After university Montgomery held down a couple of different teaching posts; she also wrote and published a large number of short stories. Montgomery’s writing was profitable, and though she had established a comfortable life for herself she was aware that “marriage was a necessary choice for women in Canada” at that time. Following the death of her grandmother Montgomery married a Presbyterian minister named Ewan MacDonald, a man she’d been secretly engaged to for almost 10 years. They then moved to Ontario where she spent the remainder of her life. It was not a happy marriage, and Montgomery was lonely and isolated. She was also attempting to deal with the stresses of motherhood and being a minister’s wife, and she again found herself in the position of caregiver, this time to her husband, who suffered from mental health illnesses for most of their marriage. Montgomery died in 1943 in Toronto.
Montgomery wrote 20 books, 500 short stories, and a book of poetry, and edited her journals so that they could serve as an autobiography. Her best known novel is Anne of Green Gables, though some of Montgomery’s lesser known works include the beautifully written Emily of New Moon trilogy, The Story Girl and, if you’ve read Jenna’s blog this morning, you know she also wrote The Blue Castle, a more mature endeavor, and the only one of her novels set outside of PEI.
Montgomery’s writing is considered children’s or young adult literature. While I see the appeal for the young, particularly as instructive novels and stories, I think Montgomery’s real appeal is that her writing is so emotionally evocative. Her paragraphs ooze hopefulness and love, and emphasize the important of togetherness and happy social circles. Most of her heroines are women and girls who are looking to feel like they are part of a group. This, I think, is Montgomery’s true genius, to create stories that acknowledge the loneliness and despair that some readers might be feeling, and give them hope that happier times lie ahead.
I really love the ‘Emily’ trilogy as well, and I think I’ll reread them this summer. I wish she could have had a happy marriage. =( She writes so much about people finding love, I guess because she was lacking it in her own life.
And by ‘she’ I mean Lucy, not Emily! Emily definitely finds true love. =)
ha! I knew who you meant. I know I’ve always found LMM’s life kind of sad, but then I also wonder about the artistic tradeoff. Had she been happy through out her life I wonder if she still would have been able to write about happiness with so much longing.
I organized my bookshelves this weekend, and I can’t find my Emily books, I’m starting to wonder if I ever bought them, or if I just borrowed them from the library. I buy too many books.