klcthebookworm

Anne of Green Gables is one of those childhood classics that I have never read until now; I enjoyed it and it falls into the same niche of "cozy found family" stories as The Secret Garden (which is roughly contemporaneous). I got the Norton edition with commentary and footnotes, which was fun, though you can definitely enjoy the book without them. Apparently, the original NYT book reviewer c. 1908 critiqued it for having the allegedly uneducated orphan constantly quoting Romantic poetry, but no one cared about realism because the character is so charming.

Unfortunately, the sequel, Anne of Avonlea feels like diminishing returns - trying to capture the magic of the original with the same kinds of wacky hijinks while also having the character grow up, and it doesn't quite work. Ditto for Anne of the Island and Anne of Windy Poplars.

Basically, the more important Gilbert Blythe becomes to the narrative, the less I enjoy the books. I do not like Gilbert - I think Anne is absolutely right to crack the slate over his head - and I resent the way the narrative keeps pushing them together in less and less subtle ways as the series progresses. Maybe I would like him more if he was an actual character, but he mostly just hovers around on the edges for a couple books, and then she decides to marry him, which does not feel like romance to me.

After learning more about LM Montgomery's life, it's very clear that certain bits of the books are autobiographical, and also she is working out some things about her marriage - my distinct impression is that she is keenly aware that marriage is the key decision in a woman's life that shapes everything after that, and wants to give her heroine everything she didn't get, but at the same time, Anne's strongest relationships are with her friends and with older women, so it just feels hollow and more than a little comphet. I kind of wish Montgomery had let Anne remain unmarried and living with other women (and Windy Poplars is her getting one more book out of this premise before the actual marriage) but I don't think Montgomery or her contemporary readers would have considered that to be a "happy" ending. But I also suspect this tension is why Gilbert feels so perfunctory and ineffectual as a romantic lead, and why Montgomery goes to great pains to keep him out of the narrative. This won't last - the next book is Anne's House of Dreams about her married life - but even then, I'm skeptical that she can make Gilbert interesting enough to make him a main focus.

Anyway, I have been learning a lot about Prince Edward Island, since one of Montgomery's greatest strengths are her landscape descriptions. In an ironic twist, the book has become one of its major industries. It sounds like an interesting place to visit in the summer and early fall, but I would not be happy living there.

It's also a good thing I didn't read these books earlier, because I would have enjoyed the first one, but the others would have annoyed me in the same ways that Little Women and the Little House books annoyed me re: the options available for female characters.

I also read The Blue Castle, a later adult romance by the same author, which followed the classic formula of setting up various tropes and symbolism at the beginning for payoff by the end. I'm not the target audience, but the structure is sound.