I found a scholarly book to support my thesis, namely, that L.M. Montgomery was strongly influenced by a prevalent idea during the late nineteenth century, which said that women can find happiness only through obedience.
You found a textbook from around the time Montgomery was born. You did not find textbook evidence that she read it and was influenced by it. In fact, the book was written by a Swedish scholar, as you say, so I have no idea how likely it might even be that she'd heard of it.
It's fact that chauvinism was a widespread attitude at the time, true; but there were enough feminists back then, that assuming someone lived around the time the book was published means they were influenced by it or even read it is quite ridiculous, you can see why.
In fact, I present my own
evidence to the contrary .
From the link:
Although Anne of Green Gables is not an overtly feminist work, and traditionally “female” roles are maintained, the novel does insist on the importance of education, intelligence, and sensitivity for both genders.
To make you see what I mean, I once read a story about a young boy who escaped from a man he was afraid of by jumping out of an airplaine and miraculously landing in a haystack. The boy was completely unhurt, and he had escaped from the man who frightened him. So, was it right to jump out of the plane? Yes, it clearly was. So is this a lesson that you want to teach your children? If you get scared when you are a thousand feet up in the air, then jump out of the plane, because there will be a haystack below you which will break your fall? I think not.
Clearly your logic and my logic are different, because I don't see the connection. I knew a guy who cheated at school by plagiarising an essay but wasn't caught, and got an A on it. Should I teach my kids to cheat? No. Likewise, most people who jump out of airplanes are likely to die as a result (as they are to be caught if they cheat at school), so - no. Not everything that sometimes has a fortunate result is a good lesson to be learned.
You still haven't gotten the point of Leslie's story. They were religious, back then. Very religious. Morality in accordance with religion was important to them. This is why Gilbert insisted on the surgery. It was the right thing to do from an unselfish point of view, whatever Anne and Cornelia thought of it (and they did argue with him over suggesting the possiblity to Leslie). Eventually, it was proven that Gilbert was right. This is what they call, I suppose, a parable. Not to be taken as something that's likely to happen in real life by taking the lesson learnt and applying it to real life; i.e., doing the morally right thing will eventually reward you.
As for the medical stuff, okay - I won't argue over that because it's irrelevant and because the extent of my medical knowledge comes from Grey's Anatomy and House. I know that it's highly improbably to reverse the effects of brain damage, but it's a book - suspend your disbelief. (Also, it had been 10 years since his injury.)
How likely is it that she wouldn't even have known that her husband had a twin brother? And how likely is it that her real husband would die, but his twin brother would be hit on the head and become amnesiac, and people would bring the twin brother back to Leslie many years after her real husband died, telling Leslie that this was her husband? And nobody would have a clue that the man was the twin brother and not the husband? Really, Julie, the story is more full of holes than a Swiss cheese.
Because it wasn't his twin brother. It was his cousin, as I said in my previous post. If the subject had never come up - if he had never told her - why would she know about it? The reason the mix-up happened was that Dick (her husband) died of illness on his voyage, and no one but his cousin knew. Then his cousin was found, brain damaged, and was assumed to be Dick, because, as I said, of the similarities between them. If no one knew he had an identical cousin, why would anyone think differently?
Montgomery's story was not only targeted at women. Her aim was to teach ANYONE to live by the truth. And be rewarded by it. Okay, so Leslie was instantly rewarded to reinforce the lesson; sometimes you might only be rewarded in your next life. But still. That was her point.
And if not, why would it be morally right to restore a man's personality so that he could treat his wife cruelly, if it would not be morally right to restore another man's memory so that he could treat his children cruelly?
The situation would have been handled in exactly the same way if Montgomery was writing it. I don't see your point.
They saw a Christian marital therapist, who told them that Helen could only find peace and happiness by becoming totally submissive to Mikael. Do you believe that that is true, Julie?
No. But there are many religious Christians and people from other religions with whose opinions I disagree. I don't believe the Bible says anywhere that it was a sin to disagree with your husband... this is completely different from Leslie's situation. It would have been morally wrong to take Dick's fate into their hands (i.e. not give him a chance to heal when there was one) when God was the only one who could judge him.
The question with the couple you presented is, what exactly was Helen doing that wrong in Mikael's eyes? If she was out killing puppies, then yes, I believe she should have listened to her husband.
Otherwise, if she did nothing morally wrong, obviously the marriage therapist was wrong.
Leslie's lesson was not "you should listen to men"; it was "live by the truth." Nothing to do with Helen and Mikael.
So what if you tell him to jump? He will not ever find himself in that particular situation.
Lessons learned in life are not always applied in exactly the same way they were learned. This one, I would say, say never to give up when you're fighting for your life.
So absolutely, if the man he was afraid of was going to kill him otherwise, jump. If not, it was pretty foolish and lucky that he lived.
I don't believe Montgomery's lesson was about obedience at all.
The second reason was that I felt that you and I are too far apart in our views, and in the end we must agree to disagree.
I like discussions that bring out vastly different points of view. The point of this discussion is not to convince each other that either one of us is right, but to try and understand those points of view.
Corrent me if I'm wrong (please do), but having grown up in a strictly religious environment, I imagine you were probably taught many of these lessons, about obedience etc., and you might be so used to it that you're finding these lessons in everything you watch and reach.
But sometimes a potato is just a potato.
Julie
