I hardly know if I should reply at all, but since I started this thread and since I've managed to make so many people angry, why not?

First of all - there is no way I can say that any of you are wrong about the main points you have made. Hasini quoted long passages from different Anne books describing Anne's happiness in her marriage. Hasini also pointed out that in the last book, Anne has created a great leagcy for herself - well-behaved and well-liked children and a very good standing in her own society. Somebody, perhaps Wendy, pointed out that Anne couldn't be a part of the world more than she was, because of the time and place where she lived. And someone else, maybe Karen, pointed out that not only was the story of Leslie Moore and Dick Moorehead a parable about unselfishness, but Gilbert was also obliged to help Dick Moorehead, regardless of any possible consequences, because of his Hippocratic oath.

All of that is right. And yet I'm not backing down from everything I said, either.

One accusation that has been made against me is that I don't understand the society that Anne lived in. I should not criticize the society she lived in since I don't understand it, and I should not criticize the way Anne lived and the way she was thinking, because she couldn't live or think in any other way, since she was a product of her own society.

I think that accusation is a bit unfair. I never read a book or a story without trying to pay attention to what kind of society the story is taking place in. What are the rules of this society? What possibilities are people offered there? What are the punishments for breaking the rules?

In an English textbook we have at my school, there is a short text about bored horses. The horses are bored because they are stabled, and their food is very easily available to them. Wild horses spend almost all their time grazing. They have to do that, because grazing is a very slow way to absorb nutrients, so in order to get enough food the horses have to graze almost all the time. But stabled horses usually have all the food they need easily available in a manger. They eat it quickly, and then that's it: they just stand there in their pens, doing nothing.

In some societies, people are like horses in a field. They have to graze all the time, or rather, they have to work all the time for their survival. Also, like horses, they graze side by side, or rather, they work side by side.

An excellent example of people who were like happy grazing horses were Laura Ingalls Wilder's family. Her mother and father literally worked all the time for their survival. They worked side by side, he doing the "man's work" and she the "woman's work"; both were absolutely necessary for the family's survival. Laura Ingalls Wilder showed us both her mother's work and her father's work. She made us feel the deep, deep sympathy this man and this woman had for each other, the friendship, the loyalty, the trust. But she also made us glimpse the physical attraction between them. I have never much liked beards myself, but I always loved how much Laura's mother loved her husband's beard. And Laura also made us feel how the members of the family enjoyed themselves together, how the father played the violin to them, how they danced together, how they sometimes joined celebrations together.

Anne, on the other hand, belonged to another social stratum and lived in another kind of society. Unlike Laura's family, Anne and Gilbert didn't live at the frontier, where survival was something you had to fight for daily. Instead, they belonged to a social stratum and a society where the husband's life and the wife's life had become separated. The husband left for work in the morning, being away all the day. He returned, bringing back money, so that the family could buy what they needed for their survival. Meanwhile, the wife stayed at home, waiting all day for her husband. Perhaps she was the kind of woman who diligently did all her housework because she knew it was necessary for her family's survival. But perhaps she was more like a stabled horse, waiting all day for her horse mate, who was out grazing on the fields all day, meeting other horses that she knew nothing about.

Societies change. They change for different reasons. That doesn't mean that all societies are equally good, or that they offer their members equally good living conditions. My colleague Arnost showed me a scientific article about ancient societies in South America. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that they were Maya Indians. Well, the archaelogical digs found that at a certain time in the past, the health of the ancient Maya Indians severely deteriorated. They grew to shorter heights. Their skeletons were brittler. They had more fractures. They lived, on average, shorter lives. What had happened? Other evidence suggested that it was at this time that corn became the staple food of the Maya Indians. Earlier they had had a varied diet. Now they had apparently learned how to grow corn, and that way they could easily provide a growing population with a rich supply of food. But corn is rather poor in nutrients. When people started subsisting on corn alone, they developed various deficiency diseases.

My point? Well, imagine a Maya Indian woman who raised her children on corn alone, after they had been weaned. There is no way we can accuse that mother of taking bad care of her children. We also can't accuse the Mayan society of deliberately making its people sick. But we can say, for all of that, that it probably wasn't very good to grow up in that society and be forced to live on a diet that was likely to make you weak and sick. Because all societies just aren't equally good, and all customs aren't equally good, either. And I insist that we should be allowed to say that.

In her book "Women in Western Political Thought" Susan Moller Okin discusses four Western philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, and analyses their views on women. Moller Okin argues that Rousseau was just about incredibly sexist, and I certainly agree with her. The way I understand Rousseau, he wanted all men to be equals, like brothers, and he wanted all women to be the servants of men.

In one chapter in her book, Moller Okin discusses the fates of the heroines in Rousseau's books. One of her points is that in these books, Rousseau describes his own ideal society. This is the world he would create according to his own beliefs, it he was able to. So what is it like to be a woman in Rousseau's ideal world?

According to Moller Okin, being a woman in Rousseau's ideal world is impossible. And it is impossible not because the women have to suffer a bit while they adjust to a world of servitude. No, it is impossible because Moller Okin argues that none of Rousseau's heroines can adjust. They are destroyed. They are put in impossible situations, given irreconcilable choices, and driven into corners until they can only be ostracized, forced into prostitution, or made to commit suicide.

What is so serious about this, argues Moller Okin, is that Rousseau's books indeed describe ideal societies. But if a society is constructed in such a way that it must destroy its female population, how can it be an ideal?

I want to make a comparison between L.M. Montgomery's Anne books and Rousseau's books. I think it is true that both Rouseeau and L.M. Montgomery tried to describe ideals. Also, like Rousseau's heroines, Anne lived in a patriarchal society. I think that L.M. Montgomery wanted to show Anne's life in this society as positively as she could. Maybe you'll object and say that because Anne's first child died, Montgomery's books can't be regarded as all that idealized. But as a matter of fact death is a prevalent and recurring theme of the Anne books. And in spite of what I said about being shaken by the death of Ruby because of my aversion to death-of-women fics, the death that shook me most in the Anne books was the death of a man, the endearing Matthew. Another man whose death I mourned was the death of Anne's favorite son, David(?). In L.M. Montgomery's days, child mortality was relatively high even among the upper classes, and anyone who had to send a son out into the First World War certainly risked to get him back in a coffin. Montgomery didn't deny death, but instead she tried to teach her young readers how to deal with it: by trusting in God, by trying to be better persons and better Christians, and by not losing hope in the future.

I think Montgomery wrote her books for young women whose lives could be expected to be rather similar to Anne's. Montgomery tried to teach her young readers how to be good women and how to have good and happy lives. So many readers think that Montgomery succeeded: they delight in Anne's happiness and in her triumphs.

But I ask myself the same question about Montgomery's books that Susan Moller Okin asked about Rousseau's books: What is the ultimate fate of the heroine? And that is when I see a woman whose last words, uttered at the age of forty-five or fifty, was "I discovered my first gray hair today." And then she falls silent and fades into the wallpaper. That is her fate. And she is an idealized heroine, created, or so I think, to reassure young women that they can have good and happy lives being the sort of housewives that Anne was.

I think that unlike Rousseau, Montgomery honestly tried to give her heroine a good life in what I consider a rather patriarchal society. And I also think that precisely because of the rules of that society, Montgomery ultimately failed to give Anne a good life, at least after her fictional heroine's children had grown up. It was that failure to do right by Anne in the last book that shook me so, and made me so disappointed.

Remember the stabled horses that were so bored because they didn't have to work for their food? The solution to their problem was to give them a special toy that contained their food and that they had to push it, pull at it, twist and turn it and generally "attack" it in order to make it release any food. That way the stabled horses were happy again.

We live at a time when we have to spend a lot of our time playing with artificial toys in order to save ourselves from boredom. Well, I'm not complaining. I'll use Martha Kent as an example again. She is "playing" at a lot of things - but surely she lives a more fulfilling life than Anne did when she was Martha's age? And if Martha is happy and vital in her fifties and sixties, but Anne is mute, isn't that a tribute to our society rather than to Anne's?

Let me return to Lois and Clark fanfiction. I read these fics because I expect them to be idealized. Really, I do. Yes, I agree that there are some amazing, "adult" LnC fics, that look reality squarely in the face and do not back down from the sorrows of real life. These fics are indeed admirable. Nevertheless, I want to read LnC fics precisely because they are idealized. I want to see what kind of happiness and wonderful scenarios writers can come up with for our favorite couple. I want to revel and delight in the happiness of Lois and Clark. Really.

But I also wonder about what the ultimate fate of Lois and Clark would be. Particularly the fate of Lois. Oh, her ultimate fate would be to die, of course. Even I understand that. But hopefully it wouldn't happen until she was at least eighty years old. What would her life be like when she was fifty? Sixty? What would many years of marriage to Clark do to her? I very, very much hope that she wouldn't fade into the wallpaper. I hope - yes, I do - that she would have children. Clark's children. I hope she would be vital and curious and happy and strong, and that she would be a very important force to be reckoned with, both in her family and at the Daily Planet. I hope - yes, I do - that she wouldn't be like Anne of Green Gables.

And that is why I started this thread. I apologize to those I have offended.

Ann