Anne of Avonlea

"Having adventures comes naturally to some people," said Anne serenely.  "You just have a gift for them or you haven't."

This week I re-read L.M. Montgomery's sequel to Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea.  It chronicles Anne's life in her mid-teens as she becomes the Avonlea village school teacher and helps to found a village improvement society.  

Almost immediately the reader can tell that Anne has grown up.  Though she's still filled with flowery language and prone to daydreaming about the beauty of nature she has come a long way from the troubled girl she was.  As grown up as she has become, Anne can still make mistakes.  The most memorable one from this volume is when Anne believes her cow has escaped (again) and is running free in the fields.  She impulsively sells it on the spot only to realize that her cow is safely locked up at home!  I think Montgomery is telling us that we will make mistakes all our lives and the important thing is that we learn from them and make certain we take responsibility for them.

Montgomery introduces a colourful new character in this book as a new neighbour for Anne and Marilla: Mr. Harris.  Harris lives alone with a crude-talking parrot so everyone assumes he is an unmarried bachelor until his estranged wife comes to Avonlea.  Other new characters include Davy and Dora Keith.  These twin children are distant relatives of Marilla's and she takes them in after their mother dies. Davy's mishaps make up for the lack of Anne's.  She's now in a position to help another young person learn from their mistakes.

I find it incredible that 16 year-olds could be school teachers!  Anne becomes a teacher before even going to college.  My grandmother became a teacher in the 1950s at the age of 19 so I suppose it's not far-fetched but it certainly is different from the way things tend to happen today.  I'd say that most teenagers today are nowhere near responsible enough to take on such a role.  Life was much more difficult a hundred years ago so I expect most people had to grow up quite quickly.  In many ways we are quite spoiled today.  I know I have been!

Montgomery's romantic language continues to evolve in this novel.  It's written in a very episodic fashion so it's perfect for reading to children or for children to read one chapter at a time.  Though we miss childhood-Anne acutely there is enough of her remaining in her teenaged self so that we remain in love with her.  As much as we might wish it would, time will never stand still.  Children always have to grow up.  Anne remains young by dealing closely with other children.  She understands their spirit and their needs and is able to encourage them while still helping to mold them into proper adults.  This novel is an interesting exploration of the transitional time of adolescence and the adventure continues...

Anne of Green Gables

I've just had the most incredible morning!  Earlier this week I began re-reading L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables for the first time in many years and this morning, over about four hours, I finished it.  I must admit that I had partially forgotten its magic.  So much time and so many changes have gone by since what Anne might call the "epoch in my life" in which I first discovered the Anne books.

As I lay reading this morning -- my slightly worn 1987 paperback edition with the Megan Follows cover -- so many memories came flooding back to me!  Not just memories of my previous readings of the novel but memories of my own childhood which can sometimes be forgotten in the blindingly fast evolution to adulthood.

Montgomery does such a superb job of capturing the spirit of youth; not at all carefree but so strong as to be able to overcome almost any obstacle.  As an orphan who had rarely been treated with kindness, Anne Shirley was never carefree and even after she moved on to her life at Green Gables she was never spoiled or coddled.  And though her heart was often heavy her imagination and love of the gifts of nature made her seem carefree.  It's amazing to compare the way children are raised today to Anne's upbringing (fictional though it may be).

Though I love towering skyscrapers and bustling cities, at the moment I've overcome with a nostalgia for a time I never knew when a child might not taste ice cream until the age of 11 and time spent relaxing was all the more rewarding after one had worked hard all day to help feed and clothe the family.  Just as Anne thought the days of Camelot, as described by Tennyson, were "so much more romantic than the present," I admit to feeling the Victorian days described by Montgomery seem so much more romantic than our present.

There are so many things to love about this book!  The story itself is of course charming, heartbreaking and romantic.  Montgomery's voice is wonderfully pleasant to read.  Her vivid and loving descriptions of locales on Prince Edward Island are a love letter to the island and even if the reader has never been there the descriptions recall to memory other natural settings, just as beautiful, that most people could never describe with such simplicity or charm.  But for all that, it is truly the characters of Anne of Green Gables that make it so personal and memorable.

Anne Shirley (Anne with an 'e') is one of the greatest literary heroines ever created and it is a crime that she is not more often remembered alongside Alice (of Wonderland), Dorothy (of Oz) and Jane Austen's heroines.  I can say quite earnestly that I think Anne embodies the best qualities of the human race and I think that if everyone took some of her lessons to heart the world might be a better place. Montgomery's other characters are just as wonderful!  Everyone must have known a busybody like Rachel Lynde and a mild-mannered sweetheart like Matthew Cuthbert.  Marilla Cuthbert is a wonderful example of a woman caught between two worlds as the Victorian Empire gives way to new roles and new ways of living for women in the twentieth century.

For me, the heart of the novel is really in the relationship between Anne and Marilla as they figure each other out over several years.  Anne transforms Marilla's somewhat sad, conservative life with her whirlwind of enthusiasm.  It seems to me that, through Anne, Marilla is able to see the world with fresh eyes; which makes her condition at the end of the novel all the more painful.  In turn, Marilla is able to temper some of Anne's wild qualities.  She bestows upon the child gifts of knowledge in how to run a household and also the gift of work ethic which helps Anne get so very far in life.

I remembered keenly over the past week how much I fell in love with Anne's scrumptious vocabulary, including words like "enpurpled" and "thrillier."  I can imagine these probably seemed quite strange to readers in 1908 and there were probably many Marilla Cuthberts who forbade many Anne Shirleys from reading such frivolous nonsense!  I have often said that it is sometimes wise to lose one's self in nonsense in order to truly figure out who one actually is.  I have read that the original manuscript was rejected by several publishers until it was finally bestowed upon the world in 1908.  I'm so thankful that it was!  I'm excited to re-read the rest of the Anne books now as I prepare to visit Green Gables this summer.