Note: This turned out much longer than intended. TL;DR? I hope not, but would understand.
Let me preface this by saying I *think* I read AoGG as a young girl, but I'm quite aware I may be confusing it with The Secret Garden [don't ask me why... no clue...]
Anyway, I've been reading with interest.
Sometimes over the course of several books, the focus simply shifts. One of my favorite authors, Janette Oke, has a series of books called the "Love Comes Softly" series. It stars with a late teen moving west probably sometime in the 1870s. She finds herself widowed in a town that probably makes Smallville look like Metropolis nearing winter and ends up marrying a recently widowed man in order to have a place to live until spring and to care for his daughter. Over the course of the next 5-6 books, she falls in love with her husband, they have more kids, they grow up, move out etc. Very LIWesque in some ways. They work together like you describe Ma/Pa Ingells.
As the kids grow up and get lives of their own, the series shifts to focus on them. Does that mean Marty ceases to be important? No, not at all. Her children and grandchildren love her. She offers wisdom and advice, often through a characters thoughts - not in words, but a 'what would Grandma Marty or Grandpa say?' type thing. Her life is, necessarily still a busy, and presumably fulfilled one - she still farms beside her husband, though one of her children and his spouse do eventually take over most of the actual farming duties.
BUT... her 'adventures' are over. She's learned most of life's lessons in earlier books and let's face it, a book about the day to day life of a farm wife with no kids left to look after and cause trouble, probably would be boring and wouldn't sell so the author moved on. She's still there, in the background, in everything her kids and grandkids do, but she's not in the forefront or even mentioned more than in passing in some books. In one that focuses on her oldest daughter, after the first chapter or so, she's not in it at all. In others, she's not in much more.
There was a subsequent series, the name of which is escaping me at the moment, which follows the youngest daughter's youngest daughter. Grandma Marty, probably well into her 40s by the time the daughter [a late in life baby, I believe 15 years or more younger than the next youngest]was born, is now probably closing in on 75 or 80. The author stated in more than one author's note that she had no desire to visit Marty or her husband much because at that age [which I agree is older than Anne], in that time, they would likely be deteriorating and she, along with many of her readers, preferred to remember the Marty of the earlier books and not the aging and slowing Marty.
But that didn't diminish the impact she had.
That's the impression I'm getting of Anne. Her story was told. She'd grown up, matured, moved on past what would be considered 'adventures' in the book selling world. She doesn't 'fade into the background' of the character's lives, but she's not nearly as visible to the READER. That doesn't mean she's a 'bored horse' just that her life has 'calmed down' - she's no longer raising young children whose exploits cause her no end of interesting things to have written about, she's settled down and, from everyone else's posts, loves her life and her husband and after raising 6 kids, probably more than ready to relax a bit and maybe even sleep in once and a while. That doesn't make her less important, but probably less exciting to read about.
Would the same happen to Lois? I find it unlikely. She'd likely grow and change, possibly become an editor or freelance while the kids are younger, especially given Clark's sideline - which she was well aware of when she married him. She knew it would involve sacrifices. But, at heart, she's an investigative journalist and I can easily see her getting back into that as the kids get older. "Honesty", being posted right now, is a good example of that. It's a Next Gen fic [excellent btw] in which Lois could probably be described as a minor character to this point. However, she's very important to her son's life and in the one/two present day scenes that we've seen her, she's no wallflower in the slightest, but she's not the focus of the story and therefore, relegated to the 'background' of what WE see. Her son sees her much more than we do - and to me that is the natural evolution of a series of the nature of "Love Comes Softly" or, it seems "Anne of Green Gables" or even "Lois and Clark" eventually - we're more than 25 years into the future in "Honesty". I could easily see a story focusing on Lois and Clark in the universe created by "Honesty" but that doesn't mean she needs to be the focus of a story that's not about her, which is the impression I'm getting about the later "Anne" books - they're not about her.
*sigh* I'm probably way off base and am going to get 'eaten alive' by one or more people or may have completely misunderstood the premise of "Anne".
Carol
