Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Boring Anne (of Green Gables) syndrome

Did you see the results of the LnC fanfic genre poll? Most popular of eighteen genres you could choose between was, not suprisingly, romance. Number fifteen, tied with deathfics, was married fics (where Lois and Clark have small kids). I have to wonder - is marriage equal to death, fiction-wise?

When I was a kid I read Anne of Green Gables. I loved, loved, loved the first book, where Anne was, if I remember it correctly, eleven years old. I thought Anne was terrific! She was simply sparkling and bubbling with energy and happiness and life. She so very, very much wanted to be a good girl, but she had all kinds of unfortunate accidents - such as when she put cough syrup instead of vanilla in the cake she had baked for the vicar's wife, or when she tried to dye her red hair a rich chestnut color, but accidentally dyed it greenish-brown instead. (Her foster mother Marilla cut Anne's hair all off close to the scalp, because in those days it was more unforgivable for a girl to have green hair than to have no hair at all - can you imagine?)

Already at the end of the first book, Anne was a lot more mature and thoughtful, and she had no more horrible accidents. She slowly became more interested in a boy, Gilbert, whom she had hated when she was eleven. He had pulled at one of her red braids in school, where everyone could see and hear them, and said, "It's on fire!". Anne resolved never to forgive him. Later, she resolved to do better at school than him. And she succeeded, pretty much, because at least she and Gilbert were the two best students at their school.

After Anne left the school that all the other kids at Saint Mary's Mead (or whatever the place was called) also went to, she went on to study at a teachers' training college. Anne and three other girls rented a small house together, and they became great friends and had a generally splendid time. Later Anne got a job as a teacher and liked that, too. But she grew apart from her old friends in Saint Mary's Mead. Her best friend Diana had married young and become fat (well, that's how I remember it), and now she was really interested only in her equally chubby husband and their ugly little baby boy. And another of Anne's old friends, Ruby, had actually died. I hated death-of-women fics even back then, so I was shocked and upset.

Then Gilbert came back into the story and started wooing Anne for real, and this time she was quite responsive. She fell in love with him and agreed to marry him. I remember that particular book as quite romantic. When I had finished reading it, I eagerly started looking for the next one. Now I wanted to read about Anne's married life!

But, alas! How boring that book was. And how - well, unexciting and unsatisfying her married life seemed to be. Nothing much happened. Gilbert, the boy who had done no better at school than her, was now a medical doctor who was away all day, while she was at home, doing pretty much nothing. As an educated woman, she didn't seem to have all that much in common with the women who were her neighbours. Anne seemed to spend much of her time by going for long lonely walks, or at least that is how I remember it. There was one woman she met that she became interested in, whose name was Lesley Ford. Lesley Ford was very unhappy in her marriage. She had been happy enough with her husband, who was a sea captain, until he disappeared at sea. He was presumed to be dead. But then he was found, and he returned home to his wife, but he was like another person. He had apparently hit his head, and now he had become mean. Poor Lesley Ford was so unhappy. Ah, but then it turned out that her husband wasn't her husband after all! He was her husband's twin brother! He really had hit his head, and he suffered from partial amnesia, but he wasn't her husband. Lesley Ford was free. And she had been discreetly seeing a young man - completely chastely, of course - but she loved him, and now she was free to marry him. What a happy ending!

Ah, but - when I read about Lesley Ford, it suddenly occurred to me that her name resembled L.M. Montgomery's own name, Lucy Maud. Lucy Maud - Lesley Ford. Lucy Maud Montgomery, the creator of Anne of Green Gables and Lesley Ford. Perhaps Lucy Maud wrote about her own unhappy marriage when she wrote about Lesley Ford? Perhaps she gave Lesley Ford the wishful-thinking-happy-ending that she herself could never have?

And perhaps Anne's marriage seemed so boring and unsatisfying because Lucy Maud's own marriage was just like that?

Or perhaps Lucy Maud did have a bit of sexual satisfaction in her own marriage, but it was absolutely impossible to breathe as much as a syllable about that in a book whose readership consisted of young women and girls? So if that was the only good thing between Anne and Gilbert, then it was impossible for Lucy Maud to even hint at any nightly pleasures that her fictional heroine might have enjoyed. But whether or not her sex life was good, it was enough to make Anne pregnant in the next book. But the word "pregnant" was never mentioned, oh no! One day a neighbour came by and gave Anne a baby shirt. That's how we were told that Anne was having a baby. After that we were told nothing whatsoever until the night when Anne was giving birth. Then she thought she was going to die, and then she gave birth to a little girl who really died. And a suitable time later Anne gave birth to a boy, who survived.

The last book I read in the series was called "Lilla Marilla" (Little Marilla(?) in English). The story focused on Anne's daughter Marilla. To my shock, Anne herself was hardly even mentioned in that book, even though young Marilla herself was still living at home with her parents! I compared the book about little Marilla with the first book about Anne, where the older Marilla had been an imposing presence. Not so Anne in this last book. The vivacious, happy young girl had become a married woman who faded into the wallpaper until you could hardly find her. Even though she was probably no more than about forty-five years old, it was as if Anne was completely spent as a focus for stories, as if absolutely nothing could be told about her any more.

And I was thinking about stories about married Lois and Clark. I really don't think that Clark is spent as a "story force" after he has been married to Lois for a while. After all, he is Superman. He can fight villains. And if he and Lois have children, then Clark can teach his kids how to be super. He can even become a widower and fall in love with another woman. If nothing else, Clark can spend a lot of time away from home and make new (male) acquaintances.

But what will happen to Lois after she has been married to Clark for several years? Will she become a housewife whose daily chores are not worth mentioning? Will she be confined to her house? Will she fade into the wallpaper?

Is it possible to write engrossing stories about middle-aged married Lois and Clark, where Lois is still a vital force and still an important part of the story? I'm just wondering.

Ann

Oh, P.S.... I know, I know. "When the World Finds Out" by C.C. Aiken is an amazing story about middle-aged married Lois and Clark. I'm just wondering if there are any other stories like that.

Oooooh, tons. Unfortunately, my brain has seized up and I can't remember many titles or authors. But I'm sure that others will.

For starters, try Erin Klingler's stories on the Archive. She's written several with an older Lois and Clark.

LabRat

Oh, Jenni Debbage's series. In fact, The Forgotten was nominated for a Kerth last year as Best Overall. So some people must be liking Lois and Clark married with kids fics.

And Nan Smith's Dagger series.

Others will likely occur to me later.

c.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Nan's "married Lois and Clark" stories the kind where Lois is pretty much confined to the house, concentrates on having babies and doing housewifely chores, and pretty much fades into the background?

Ann

I believe you mean Avonlea. I loved that series growing up! Prince Edward Island (where fictional Avonlea is supposed to be) is just two hours from here, and we visited the Green Gables House in Cavendish on Vacation one year (L.M. based the setting on real places from her youth).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Green_Gables This site can fill in any blanks in your memeory. (I know theres a better one, but I can't find it right now. It's been years since I wrote a paper on it...


Desiree

I wouldn't have put it that way, although I admit that I haven't reread some of the Dagger series stories for some time. Yes, at times Lois is pregnant, which does restrict her reporting activities somewhat, but I would never characterize her as "fading into the background". She's far too strong a character for that.

As far as AOGG is concerned, I haven't read the books since I was young, but I do have the three Canadian TV productions on DVD and have watched them often. I do remember reading that Lucy Maud Montgomery at some point in the series grew tired about writing about these people, but the public (and her publishers!) kept demanding more. She did write other books, of course, but it does sound as though she wrote more than one in the Anne series to please her public, rather than herself. I also know that one of Lucy Maud's children died at birth, which was probably the impetus behind the death of Anne's child.

Since it's been so long since I've read the books, I don't remember whether Anne's marriage was portrayed as happy, or sad, or dull, or whatever. Nor do I know anything about Lucy Maud's marriage. Perhaps any description of Anne's was a mirror image of Lucy Maud's; perhaps they were different in many ways.

She could have written about happiness and joy in the marriage, but no discussion of sex, I would think. As you said, the readership included young girls, and this was the early 1900's. People didn't allude to sex in books read by children.

Regarding story recommendations: a lot of the time when authors write next-gen stories they want to concentrate on L&C's children and what adventures happen to them in their lives, so even though L&C may figure in the story (in fact, they usually do), they are not necessarily the primary characters.

You should try, if you haven't already:
Jude's The Circle Game and its sequel, Secrets
Irene's Firestorm series
Cindy's Dawn of Discovery series
Crystal Wimmer's Full Circle series

Kathy

Hah, should have know Kathy would have been able to add what my memory had fuzzed on. Yes, those too.

c.

As Desiree mentioned, Anne grew up in Avonlea. When she married Gilbert, she moved to Glen Saint Mary, which does indeed sound a lot like Saint Mary's Mead!

St. Mary Mead is actually the home of Jane Marple, Agatha Christie's elderly mystery-solving heroine. Miss Marple is a perfect example of the fact that a quiet domestic life (married or otherwise) can be interesting and exciting if you look beneath the surface.

And in that vein, I doubt that Lois Lane would lead a boring, fade-into-the-wallpaper life even if she was married a hundred years. Her character is too strong. But that doesn't mean her entire life has to revolve around apprehending villains. It is not outside the realm of possibility for an intelligent, vivacious woman to find happiness and adventure in activities that don’t result in a headline. Whether that person is married to Superman or a small-town doctor is beside the point.

Whether the stories of that person’s life are interesting to others is obviously a personal choice. I, for example, loved Anne’s House of Dreams (the book that chronicles the early years of Anne and Gilbert's marriage). Ann (er, our Ann ) didn’t. And that’s ok. But it's not fair to write someone off as boring just because their primary activity is raising their kids and being a supportive partner to their spouse.

Lisa

I have to say that I find your perception of Anne's marriage quite puzzling Ann. The Anne of Green Gables series have been one of the closest to my heart since I was fourteen, and for me, her marriage epitomized thekind of husband-wife relationship I'd aspire toward.

Personally, I thought this was merely because most people aren't very interested in reading about kids. Or the fact that once people fall into a steady pattern and routine that is necessitated by a marriage, a lot of the relationship issues we like to explore have already been resolved. The thing about having a happily ever after is that they're boring to other people.

It's not a case of whether it was socially acceptable for a girl to have dyed her hair an unorthodox colour. It was that Anne dyed her hair puke-green. I think even today, cropped hair would draw less school-yard bullying than hideous puke-green braids.

It's interesting how different our takes on Diana's marriage is. From my perspective, Diana married at the age that was considered suitable for women of that time, and always having being a domestic soul, she loved her husband and revelled in motherhood. On behalf of women who are content to stay home and take care of their families, I find the connotations in your wording rather insulting. Should she only been wrapped up in her family if her husband had been less chubby and bland and her baby more beautiful?

Personally, I always thought Diana's family life was very sweet, because in the end she was a fulfilled woman, with children she could be proud of and a husband who never made a slight in his affections toward her no matter how much weight she gained as the years went on. Her life was a very prosy, bland one, but I loved how Montgomery kept illustrating that there is romance in such lives as well, and that should be appreciated as well as that which is found in more glamourous circles.

Ruby's death was very important to the book, because she personified a life that had been devoted solely to superficial self-congratulation and self-obsession. It took death for Ruby to realize that there were greater things than those bound to earth, and in facing death with this realization, her character was elevated and given depth. It is a religious message that is typical of Montgomery's writing, and other writers of her time period; however, it is one that can be applied to the ultimate message of earthly transience that is inherent in all major religions today. I highly doubt it had anything to do with her being a woman. Louisa May Alcott used the same device to convey the same message when she killed Prince Charlie's character in Rose in Bloom.


Again, you are applying the standards and social perceptions of our own times to Anne's life. It was expected of women to give up their careers once they were married, and Anne was hardly a social reformist. She enjoyed her career in teaching, but it has always been clear that having a family of her own - which she has never really had, until then - was her goal, ever since she fell in love with Gilbert.

And again, strikes against the housewife. Ann, I'm not exactly a housewife, but I've been taking care of my family during the holidays as my mother has gone on a trip to the UK and my father has to work all day. So I do rather take personal umbrage at your disparaging implications. Taking care of two kids and a house is hardly "doing nothing all day", let me tell you. And that is in the modern day, with all the conveniences available to me. I can't imagine how busy Anne must have been a hundred years ago, with a considerably huger house, a harried doctor who really sucks at taking care of himself, six small children and all the social obligations that comes of holding a prominent position in an urban community. Being a housewife is a career far nobler and harder one than most people realize.

I know there are people who'd say that housewives are people who waste their potential by confining themselves to their home. The fact of the matter is, that housewives do not usually confine themselves to their family, and even if they do, I cannot see the waste in applying one's talents and capabilities to care for the ones you love most.

I myself chafe at my household duties because I've never been a particularly domestic animal. But Anne is a person who was raised differently, and of different tastes, and Montgomery made it clear that she was supremely talented in the art of finding pleasure in simple things.


You seem to paint a picture in which this situation chafed at her as much as it would chafe at you. Gilbert bought that first house only after taking into consideration all his wife's needs. When he opined that she might be lonely there sometimes, she assured him that she wouldn't be. Many a woman might, but Anne was a special case, with her well-honed talent for optimism and love of nature.

Clark: "Lois, what am I doing now?"
Lois: "Reaching?"
Clark: "And I'm not the only one."

Anne was hardly ever bored or unsatisfied. I'm telling you because I have the book open in front of me. The life she led was not to our taste, but there could be no doubt that she liked it.

This book was published in 1917 with a target readership of young girls who still only got the birds and the bees talk before their wedding nights. I admit, I was disappointed that there wasn't even a hint of smut (the way Anne referred to "keeping bridal tryst" on her wedding night, she might as well have been out picking daisies with Gilbert the whole evening) but then, that was hardly different from other writers of that genre, in that period. The author was clearly either as reticent as a women of her time were expected to be, or she was being careful of convention.

I rather think that the wonderful camaraderie, humour and fulfillment they found in each other were good things enough to hint that Anne's marriage was a very happy one. I refer to the scene where Gilbert and Anne are having a casual heart-to-heart by the front steps before they meet Miss Cornelia for the first time.

Really? The one I read was called "Rilla of Ingleside".


Again you must account for the time period, Ann. Anne was about forty-five years old in this book, and in that time that was considered pretty old. Also, Anne was by now enough of a well-rounded and fulfilled individual that her own story did not make for great plot. Her role was in the capacity of a mentor, and her presence was felt very strongly by me through the legacy of wisdom and upbringing she had bestowed upon her children. The story was centered around Rilla's own coming of age and how the war affected the Blythe children. It's interesting to note that in Rilla, we have a character very different from Anne, one who is also closer to the average girl than Anne, with her coddled existence, vanity and obsession with trivialities. She wasn't as close to Anne as her siblings were, although that changed through the course of the story.

Although I missed Anne myself in this book, in retrospect, I still love the glimpses of her life that we were given in the book. Youthful for her years, admired by the whole community and still fulfilled in her love and her home. I love the scene where she reminisces about their courtship with Gilbert, and the subtle little tid-bits that showed us how tender and loving her relationship with her husband still was. Added to that was an air of gentleness and wisdom that allowed her to guide her family in the face of her own devastation at losing her son.

As I said above, there were plenty of subtle things that told of her how far her character had evolved. But yes, her story was done. And I don't mean that her story was done for her, because I'm sure she continued to grow as a person until she died. But her story can hold no more enjoyment fo r us seekers of conflict and drama, and for Anne, this is indubitably a good thing. Because Happily Ever After doesn't make for a good story.

Well, Woman in the Mirror is still being written, but it perfectly matches all your requirements, so I think you know what my stand is on that.

I leave you with this quote from Anne of the Island:

I came back to comment more on Anne Blythe's life and her marriage, but Hasini touched on all the points I was going mention. So this is me saying, "Yeah, what Hasini said!"

Lisa

I can't comment on AoGG because I never read them, but I have to agree completely with this from Hasini:

When I went through my phase of reading romance novels when I was a teenager I always used to hate it when the author married the characters off at the end and gave them kids - that always spelled the death of romance to me.

I have to qualify that personally to say that I actually have never minded reading married LNC fic. Heck, even wrote a few myself. Next Gen/kidfic is probably at the bottom of my list to read, still, though. I'm very much in Tank's camp on that one. Minus the odd exception here and there through the years, I'd much rather read about a married LNC who have still to become a family or an unmarried LNC.

LabRat

I happen to like stories with the older, married Lois and Clark. Probably because I'm old. But definitely no kids. They destroy the ability of Lois and Clark to be Lois and Clark.

You don't have to 'build' the relationship, but there are still plenty of opportunities within the framework of a good story to have a lot of angst if you wish, and I think the instances of humor are even more available.

One of my favorite scenes has always been Lois' reaction to the break-in news conference that happened in Super Mann where they mention that Superman has been 'taken care of'. They weren't married yet, but for all practical purposes they were a coupled unit. Her concern for 'Superman' is heightened by the fact that he is also her fiancee Clark, and that is easy to see.

I think back on shows like Hart to Hart, McMillian and wife, and the old movie serials of The Thin Man. In these situations, the couple worked as a team to solve the problem at hand, but still had plenty of opportunities to get into trouble together, or individually.

With the relationship fairly well-established I thought the emotional component was amped up because we knew the depth of their love for each other. The highs were higher, and the lows lower. There was no need to waste time 'realizing' what they really meant to each other.

I'm not saying that the series gave us better stories and writing once they put the two together. They didn't. I think many Hollywood writers have a hard time writing a mature, loving relationship. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. In the hands of a good writer stories set in the midst of the couples life together can be just as exciting, and enjoyable as those set in the 'early days'.

The reason I don't want kids in the story (aside from the fact that I don't like children) is that as soon as a child enters into a story they, by default, become the center of the story. Even if they aren't actually featured prominantly, as parents Lois and Clark's behavior has to change. The child must become their priority. I'm not interested in stories where Lois and Clark are merely supporting players, or are constrainged from acting like I know Lois and Clark should act.

At least that's my opinion.

Tank (who also points out that the married Lois had the better haircut)

I posted in haste earlier, so I didn't touch on the topic Ann raised of being a housewife, with a dull life, etc. I am a housewife - have been ever since my son was born (he's a teenager now). Some of the reasons that I stopped working were by choice; others beyond my control and remain so. Back in LM's time, a woman giving up her career to marry and raise a family was the norm, rather than the exception. Today it's much rarer, of course, and unfortunately is often greeted with the same amount of condescension and lack of respect that the "career" women of the early 1900's probably faced.

So thanks for the words of support people have given to the housewife. I certainly appreciate it...

Kathy

I hesitate to sound a little miffed but I am. If you read the last stories of the Dagger series, Ann, you'd have seen that although Lois was confined to the house because of her medical problems she *still* managed to help solve the problem of the stalker/serial killer in "Suspicions" and in "Mother's Day" played a significant part. And at the end we have Clark thinking about how he's missed her as his partner at the Planet and how glad he is that she'll soon be back. I don't think that sounds as if I intend to have her settle down into obscurity, does it?

In the case of Anne of Green Gables, I think you're making the mistake I've seen often these days -- judging a story written in another era by the standards of today. That simply can't be done if you are to evaluate a work like Anne fairly. You have to take the chronology into account. Think about it in another kind of context -- wouldn't a story about the American Revolution be pretty silly if you think that Washington's army could have used a sub while crossing the Deleware instead of boats, or where you say "But why were his men freezing at Valley Forge? Didn't they have space heaters and sleeping bags insulated with synthetic fibers to keep the cold out?" The time in which things happen is all important, as are the mores of that time. If you wrote Anne as a woman of the 21st Century she wouldn't have been even believable set in the context of a century ago. But Anne of Green Gables and the subsequent books are classics. Which says that the author got things just right.

Nan

Right, I put my words about Diana's marriage harshly. And I didn't disapprove of her marriage. But to me, she had been interesting mostly because she had been Anne's friend. The scene I'm describing, from memory, is when Anne came to see Diana shortly after her dear friend had had her first baby. I remember a sense of melancholy in that scene on Anne's part, because she felt rather strongly that Diana had entered into a world where she couldn't follow. She was sad because she and Diana were growing apart, and indeed I can't remember that the two of them saw each other a lot after that. And in view of how incredibly important Diana had been to Anne during her childhood in Avonlea, growing apart was a sad thing for her.

But I want to underscore that I never got the impression that Diana's marriage was wrong for her. On the contrary, I, too, thought that she seemed very happy in it. Fred, her husband, was indeed a sweet man, and I don't think Diana wanted a lot more in life than Fred and the home and the children she had with him.

I quite agree that Anne wanted a family. And that was for several reasons. I'm sure she wanted a family, of course. But it must also be remembered that the alternatives to having a family weren't great for a woman in her day. Anne could have remained a teacher, but only if she stayed unmarried. Weren't female teachers always called 'Miss'? That was because they automatically had to quit if they got married. And unmarried women didn't enjoy the same respect as married ones around the year 1900. In Sweden, we had a female writer who was in fact famous over large parts of the world at that time, Selma Lagerlöf. Because her books sold so very well both at home and abroad, she had become quite rich. In her local district of Värmland, she was one of the most important employers, because she had bought a lot of land and employed many farm workers. And yet, when the people of Värmland had their grand local parties, where everyone took part, Selma Lagerlöf was was given a rather humble and obscure seat, slightly to the side, because she was an unmarried woman. The married women all sat at better, more "honorable" tables. I'm sure that unmarried women in Avonlea were similarly looked down on. So when Anne said yes to Gilbert, she said yes not only to him, but to the life she was expected to live as a woman of her time.

I know it isn't! But I want to point out two things. Some upper-class women had servants, who did all the housework for them, and there really were women of that time who did practically nothing!

I don't know if Anne had any servants. I didn't get the impression that she did. But the way I remember the books, L.M. Montgomery didn't write much, or anything at all, about Anne's housework. And since Anne probably spent most of her day doing housework, but Montgomery didn't want to write anything about that, her way of describing Anne's life made it seem as if Anne wasn't doing anything.

Let me add that I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder's books about her family's life as settlers at the frontier in America in the late nineteenth century. Ingalls Wilder described everything the family did in order to survive in painstaking detail, including all the housework they did, and I found it all absolutely fascinating. But Montgomery didn't describe Anne's housework, as if it wasn't worth mentioning. That is what made it seem boring or unworthy to me.

The way Montgomery wrote about Anne, I got the impression that she wasn't much of a domestic animal, either. And that is precisely my objection to the life Anne led. She didn't have much of a choice, and to me she didn't seem happy as a married woman. Or at least, L.M. Montgomery failed to make me feel her happiness.

The question mark I put in there was meant to say that I didn't know what the English title was. Thanks for telling me.

Well, here we must agree to disagree. I felt Anne's presence hardly at all in that book. But then, to me it is not enough to feel a woman's presence exclusively through her children - particularly if her children aren't talking or thinking about their mother.

I remember Anne's presence in a single passage in that book. That is when Anne suddenly, and to me almost shockingly, opens her mouth to speak. She says to Gilbert(?) that she has just found her very first grey hair that morning. And I think Gilbert gives her a rather sweet answer, although I can't remember what it was.

As far as I can remember, Anne never said another word in that book.

And I loved that fic! Please finish it, Hasini!

Hasini, you gave me a very sweet quote from the book Anne of the Island. But unless I'm very wrong, Anne isn't married in that book. The love Anne describes there, which is waiting for her, is not the love of her husband and family. It is, rather, the love of her foster mother Marilla and Mrs Rachel Lynde, who wait for her in Anne's childhood home of Green Gables. To me, that quote is worthless as proof that Anne was happy in her marriage.

And Kathy, please - I wasn't writing what I did in order to make a general attack on housewives. Why should I question anybody's right to live the life that he or she wants? But it just seemed to me that married Anne didn't have a very good life, and maybe not a life that she really, really wanted. Or at least not a life that was good for her. My points were these:

1) it seems to be rather unpopular to write LnC fanfics about married Lois and Clark, and

2) Anne of Green Gables is an example of a girl who grew up to be a housewife, and, to me at least, seemed to have a rather unfulfilling life as a housewife (although I most certainly don't doubt that she loved her children).

I was wondering if it is considered generally hard to write satisfying fics about married LnC, and I was using Anne of Green Gables as an example of a woman who was, to me at least, "killed as a character" by her marriage. I was really asking people if Lois has to be "killed as a character" if she has been married for a long time to Clark. I was really hoping that you would say that there are many absolutely great fics about married Lois and Clark!

I do think that Lois seems to be the wrong sort of person to devote her life exclusively to her house and her children. To me, Lois seems too interested in the world for me to be happy with the idea that she would "close her doors to shut out the world" if she got married.

Let me comment on something LabRat said:

Personally I don't like it when the kids take over the story. I don't want Lois and Clark, and certainly not Lois, to be relegated to a background supporting role while the kids take center stage. I want the focus of the story to be on Lois and Clark! I don't mind if they have kids - heck, I love it if they have kids! - but I want to see the kids through Lois and Clark's eyes, rather than having the kids grab the story all for themselves. That's why I don't want to read married Lois and Clark stories that are really Next Generation fics.

Ann

I still feel rather mystified as to how you could have found Anne's marriage unfullfilling, Ann-spelt-without-an-e. And I rather think you miss the point of the AotI quote I put up. But if you still want verification that Anne had the same attitude toward her married life, here are some quotes from Anne of Ingleside:

You know, even I would want an unfulfilling marriage like that.

Montgomery didn't describe the housework painstakingly like she did in the previous books, but she distinctly made it clear that it was a happy, busy time for Anne, engaged in putting her new nest in order. We are given to understand that she grew into a meticulous housewife under Marilla's strict tutelage, and if she had more free time on her hands than other married women (because her house was small and she did not yet have children), it hardly qualifies the statement that "she did nothing all day". And no, Anne had no help until she was well advanced into her first pregnancy.

And I still don't understand how you could say that Montgomery didn't make us feel Anne's happiness when it is her sincere and heartfelt appreciation of life that runs through the voice of the entire book (except for the part where she grieves over the loss of her first child). I suppose it is the reader that makes the book after all.

Regarding women who married into affluent households and "only had to manage servants" all day; the argument there is two-fold. One is that these women were/ are not housewives so much as ladies of leisure and it simply does not do to compare the two situations. These women are usually socialites who are active in promoting charities and causes and generally making a career of supporting their husband's aspirations, which I personally find admirable. The other is that having servants usually means that your estate is large and your duties are many. Jane Austen and Daphne Du Maurier make it sound like they never had to do anything but make calls and go to parties day in and day out, but this is largely a generalization. Managing a large household with several servants, when done conscientiously, is an art unto itself and not just a case of issuing orders. There was once a time when my own family lived that kind of life, and frankly, living in a smaller house and doing your own chores is far less of a headache than employing so many others to do them for you.

As for the percentage of rich, married women who do nothing productive with their days, I think they are really no different from the rich unmarried women who do the same thing. It's nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with the kind of person that you are.

Hasini said so much of what I was going to, but I can't not comment, when you're taking a series of books so close to my heart and warping the plot, without even describing it accurately (something, by the way, you have been told once and again that you tend to do with L&C as well - and you yourself have admitted to having seen very little of the series).

In Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island, what adventures did Anne have? They were all interesting and fun to read about, but none of them were full of mystery and action-filled adventure. They were very much about a unique girl like Anne growing up and coming into her own, in a domestic little town called Avonlea. (Well, I suppose the last one was more about Redmond College.)

So I'm not sure what you were expecting to find in Anne's House of Dreams. This time it was about a young married couple in another small community. Miss Cornelia, Captain Jim and Leslie were all wonderful and loveable characters to me. Anne wasn't lonely there.

You say she seemed to go on many lonely walks. Did you miss the whole point of the first book in the series, Ann? Anne had a unique imagination that could keep her occupied for hours on her own, and she loved giving it that freedom. She also enjoyed nature and everything she met - every little rock and flower - were precious to her and were company she sometimes preferred over the company of people. I suppose from the way you got so many details wrong, I can assume it's been ages since you've read them, but I'm not really that forgiving when someone rats on my Anne. <g>

Finally, Leslie Moore's husband was a mean drunk before he left. He came back, having received a blow to the head, brain-damaged and reduced to the mental state of a child. Leslie would never have said so, but she preferred him this way - she was safe from him. She was terrified when Gilbert brought up the possibility of surgery to restore his health (but eventually consented to it). When Gilbert went ahead with the surgery, the patient woke up and identified himself as her husband's cousin, who was identical to him right down to the differently-coloured eyes (well, they're described as being similar enough, anyway, as adults, that the differences were attributed to whatever he had been through on his voyage - and Leslie hadn't known about the cousin's existance so couldn't have possibly concluded otherwise about his identity as Dick Moore). Her husband had been dead for 10 years. He left, of course, for his own life, because he didn't know Leslie.

The young man (Owen Ford) you are referring to her seeing discreetly was a lodger she had living with her, while her (incapacitated) "husband" was still around. They loved each other in secret and never revealed it to each other. He was also friendly with the rest of the characters, integrating himself to the community for the summer he spent there. I think it was down to Anne, in the end, to push them together after the whole husband/cousin episode was over, but even if I'm wrong about that detail, it doesn't matter - they became a couple only when it was clear Leslie was free.

As for Anne taking care of children and staying at home - as other have said, she was a product of her time. As well, she was fulfilled in her life and her relationship with Gilbert was the sort I'd like to have some day. Taking care of a household and six children was a full time job no less busy than being a teacher (probably busier, in fact).

I also resent the way you describe Diana's situation. You put down their physical appearance, first of all, unnecessarily and hurtfully - overweight people deserve credit and happiness no less than others. As well, Diana married at the expected age and she too, was in love with her husband as he was with her, and found happiness with him.

I wonder what you would have preferred for Anne. Your basic point is that kids kill a marriage - so should she not have had children (whatever that may have meant to her love life) and remained a teacher? Do you think that would have made her happier? I think, if so, that you should sit down and reread the books.

Actually, I recommend everyone does that. They're just that awesome.

Julie

Wonderful replies, Julie and Hasini. Personally, the Anne books that bored me were the ones when she was teaching at the private school and when she was going to college at Redmond, so the ones after she left Avonlea but before she married. "Anne's House of Dreams," the book with her young married life, is one of my favorites. I love the story of Leslie. Leslie was trapped in such a horrible marriage, first by an abused husband and then by a returned husband who was basically a small child. We clearly understand the dangers to Leslie's personal safety, life, and happiness when Gilbert tells her that he might be able to "fix" her husband's brain injury. And yet Leslie agrees to the surgery, because it's the right thing to do. And she's rewarded by the result. I always loved that story.

I think one of the reasons that people may consider Anne's stories a bit more boring when she gets older is that she's making fewer mistakes. Many of her childhood "adventures" are screw-ups, like when she dyes her hair, almost feeds everybody a sauce that a mouse died in, hits Gilbert over the head with the slate, almost drowns, or tries a new freckle-removal cream on her nose and is covered with feathers from pillows the day an important visitor arrives. As she becomes an adult, these mistakes become fewer and far between (I think the freckle cream/feathers was one of her last big ones?). I'm sure Anne was grateful to be having fewer tragedies and to be dipping into the "depths of despair" more rarely, even though her accidents were delights to read about.

Have any of you read the "Emily of New Moon" books? Emily isn't a chatterbox like Anne, but she has some delightful adventures of her own, and she loves to write just as much, perhaps even more than Anne does. There are some wonderful sort of mysteries in her books that I loved reading and even more love rereading and seeing how cleverly and subtly the clues are placed.

I think any story where kids are involved, the kids tend to take over. As some of my family have yet to learn, when you have kids, your life is no longer your own. You have to take the kids into consideration in everything you do. So of course the parents after kids won't be the same as before kids. They're not exactly boring, but their focus has shifted.

Now if only my in-laws could learn that lesson.

Hmmm I'm just jumping in because I'm sad to see how many people dislike second gen fics. I love to read about them when they are grown-up... not so much when they are babies though.

Perfect examples: Honesty (being written by Beth right now), and Irene Dutch's Firestorm series. If you guys haven't read those you should... it may change your mind on a nicely written second gen fic.

As for the Anne of Green Gable's stories... I for some reason never read those growing up. I just saw the mini series (which I loved)and didn't even know about the books till I was grown. I think however I'm going to have to read them soon.

Hasini, I have to admit that I had forgotten many things about Anne of Green Gables. I read the first book when I was about ten, which would have been around 1965. Then I read the next in the series when I was about thirteen, and the rest when I was around sixteen. Thanks to your quotes, I do remember that I thought that Anne seemed to have a happy life when she had small children at home. But I remember, too, how much the last book depressed me.

Many years later, probably when I was around thirty, I re-read some of the books. Not all of them, because I had never owned all of them, and I couldn't find all of them in the library. I don't think I re-read the one(s?) where Anne had young children at home.

When I re-read the Anne books, I had come across an article saying that L.M. Montgomery had a rather unhappy marriage herself. I have no idea if that is true, but when I read that, I wanted to read the Anne books again to see how Anne's marriage was portrayed. The story about Leslie Moore absolutely fascinated me. You are right, Julie, I now remember that Leslie's husband used to be mean, but when he came back he was just child-like and needed to be taken care of. In any case, she was not happy with him, and she wished that she could marry the young man, Owen Ford, that she had met while her husband was missing.

I strongly remember that Gilbert insisted that Leslie Moore's husband could be cured of his amnesia if he had an operation. That seemed like complete nonsense to me - I have never heard of anyone who was cured of amnesia by having an operation, and if it was not possible to give people their memories back in the late twentieth century by operating on them, then it certainly wasn't possible in the early twentieth century. Therefore, the whole story about giving Leslie Moore's husband his memories back by performing brain surgery on him seemed like a complete wishful-thinking scenario to me. But since it was so unrealistic, why did L.M. Montgomery write it?

This is my answer. The story about Leslie Moore is a didactic one, meant to teach young women a lesson about proper female behaviour. When Leslie Moore is told that her husband can have his memory and his earlier personality back if he has an operation, she doesn't want him to have that operation. Like Julie said, earlier her husband had been mean, but now he was at least docile. Was Leslie Moore really supposed to pay a lot of money to give her husband his tyrant-like personality back?

Anne shuddered at the prospect that Leslie Moore would become the victim of her husband's earlier viciousness again. Therefore she argued fiercely with Gilbert that he mustn't let this operation take place. Gilbert waved aside all of Anne's objections. It was the duty of the physician to look out for the best interests of his patient, and if that could only come with the restoration of the patient's evil personality, then so be it.

So the act of turning an invalid into a healthy wife abuser was a righteous one, according to Gilbert. Or maybe he didn't think like that; maybe he felt that God wouldn't let a good and generous act, like the curing of a man's mind, lead to the cruel oppression of a woman. And Gilbert was right, of course. Thanks to the fact that the amnesiac man had the operation, he could explain to the world that he was in fact not Leslie Moore's husband at all, but his twin brother. So because Leslie Moore had dutifully paid for her husband's operation, and because Gilbert had refused to be swayed by his wife's objections, Leslie Moore was now free.

Lesson? It is this. If a woman accepts that she must subordinate herself to her husband, and always put his best interests above her own, then God will reward her and give her the kind of happiness that she could never have found if she had selfishly looked out for her own best interests rather than her husband's.

I'm pretty sure that L.M. Montgomery was repeating a message that young girls of that time were likely to hear from other quarters, too. I have a book at home, "Remember That You Are Inferior!", written by a Swedish scholar who has studied didactic books and magazines from the 1880s, aimed at young girls and women. The message of these books and magazines is always the same: only through obedience and submissiveness can a woman find true happiness.

I was thinking, as I was mulling over the story of Leslie Moore, that L.M. Montgomery tried to be mainstream and "safe" when she wrote that young girls find happiness in obedience and in submissiveness in their marriages. Parents needn't be afraid that her books would inspire their daughters to be rebellious. But I thought that maybe, maybe L.M. Montgomery was trying to reassure herself that God would reward her, too, if she accepted her own (not necessarily happy) marriage without complaints. Maybe, maybe there might come an Owen Ford even into her own life. (Yes, Hasini, this is pure speculation.)

When I first read the story about Leslie Moore, when I was about sixteen, it didn't particularly stick in my mind. What did stick was the last book, and the evaporation of Anne in it. That shocked me enough to make that the thing that I really remembered about Anne: how the lively little girl from the first book became a shadow of a woman after twenty-plus years of marriage. But when I reread the books - some of the books, not all of them - then the Leslie Moore story became a sort of key to the message of the books. A woman must obey. That is her lot. And accepting her lot and her duty will bring her happiness. And yet, and yet - after twenty years of obedience, she had nevertheless faded into the wallpaper.

I'm sure that if Anne had figured as prominently in "Rilla of Ingleside" as Marilla did in "Anne of Green Gables", then I would never have thought of Anne as a victim of her own marriage. Now I do. And that is what makes me wonder about what role Lois will play after twenty years of marriage to Clark.

Ann

Me! I loved them even more than the Anne series, personally. When I was pregnant, I called the baby "Emily". At least I did until an ultrasound showed that my son would probably not appreciate the name.

Ann, if I did misread your comments on being a housewife as being negative, I apologize. I admit to being a little hypersensitive on the subject. Just a number of years ago, as more and more women started having children and then returning to their careers, they faced contempt from society about abandoning their children to caregivers. The tide turned relatively quickly, however, and now the 'stay-at-home' moms, unless they have several pre-school age children, are often looked down upon. I've been to any number of dinners where one of the first questions I'm asked is "What do you do?", and you can just see their eyes glaze over with my reply.

But again, that is present-day society, which is not the same as the times that Anne was living in. So when you write in what appears to be horror:
Hasini has already commented very well to that, but let's suppose that it is really true: some women did practically nothing. You are viewing it through modern eyes, apparently seeing them as unfulfilled or lazy or simply not living up to their potential. Maybe that was in fact true, but these were the restrictions set out by the society of the time. And if a woman was perfectly content living that kind of life - whether it was because she enjoyed it or whether she honestly never thought of challenging it - what was wrong with that? The sorrow would have been for the women who chafed under such restrictions, but didn't know how to - or couldn't - change things.

And again, as Hasini has mentioned, no matter the size of the household you are managing, there is a lot to do. Ann, surely you, as a working woman, struggle at times to take care of the various minutiae of your life around your teaching responsibilities. I may be a stay-at-home housewife, but I can assure you that I do not spend most of my day actually cleaning house. I hate cleaning house. But believe me, even if I'm not dusting and vacuuming all the time, there is enough to do. I'm not overstressed (not most of the time, anyway), but I can't imagine trying to get everything done while raising children and still working a full-time job outside the house. These women who "have it all" really are superwomen, in my books.

Back to the issue of L&C with children: as so many have mentioned, I think we're more interested in reading about L&C than the children, and the focus of your life shifts considerably once you have a child. I suppose I prefer reading about their romance because, no matter how happy or content I may be with my marriage and my family, I remember the days when our relationship was just starting, when we were on the cusp of romance. My feelings of love, of anticipation as the relationship was growing, were different than now, and reading about L&C's path to love helps remind me of that.

There are many next-gen stories, as I and others have listed, that I have enjoyed very much, and have reread time and again. And I'm sure there are others that I have forgotten. Both Yvonne and Sheila have written several awesome "married" stories, but I didn't mention them earlier in this thread because there are no kids in those stories. It's not my favorite genre, but that hardly means that I hate it or even dislike it. Nothing of the kind. It's just not my first or second choice.

And now that I've made so many of your eyes glaze over with this rambling post , I'll shuffle out of here...

Kathy

Kathy, I have no right whatsoever to criticize a woman for choosing to be a housewife. You are so right, there are so many demands made on women these days, and if a woman chooses to concentrate on being a stay-at-home mom instead of trying to combine motherhood a and job, no one has any right to ciritcize her for that. My point was always that after twenty-plus years of marriage Anne of Green Gables was "out of the story", and that is something I hate. There is no way that a woman should be treated as so uninteresting that she can be left out of the story!

A relatively famous Swedish book series tells the story of a few Swedish women who belonged to the Swedish nobility in the early twentieth century. The books insist that these women truly had almost nothing to do. They didn't do any housework, not even any planning of the housework, and there were so many things they weren't allowed to do, because the activities were unsuitable, or beneath them, or immoral, or something. Two of these women had nervous breakdowns. But I quite agree that they belonged to another social stratum than Anne of Green Gables, and there really weren't many other women who were in their situation.

On the other hand, I have also read another book about some people who knew absolutely nothing about how to take care of a home. The book was written by Darwin's granddaughter, and it is not the least bit darwinistic - the woman doesn't even mention her grandfather's world-shaking new theory - but instead it is delightfully full of a lovely sense of humour. The woman tells, very lovingly, a story about her many eccentric relatives. She says that because they had so many servants, they were absolutely helpless if they were left alone. They could do nothing practical on their own. On the other hand, they all seemed content and happy.

Ann

Ann, the story of what happened to Leslie was a moral lesson. The series is aimed at probably the under-15 crowd (at least, almost anyone I know who is a fan of it read it around 12, though of course anyone older will enjoy is as well. I've lost track of how many times I've reread them now ).

She did the right thing, even though selfishly she could have let him go on as before and make her own life easier, and was rewarded by the result.

The lesson is not even subtle. They quote the Bible once and again (something along the lines of "the truth shall set you free" - forgive me for the probable misquote, I'm not religious, and have never read the Bible in English).

So how you could possibly misintepret it, I have no idea. Perhaps you need to start taking stories at face value and stop looking for chauvinistic subtle messages in everything this world has to offer - contrary to what seems to be your belief, not everyone is out to put women in the kitchen. Especially, I daresay, a female author.

(Also, I would just like to say that, irrelevant as it is to the topic at hand, it made sense to me that a surgery could cure him - I think Gilbert said that the procedure would involve reshaping a part of the skull or somesuch to remove the pressure on the brain. Do you have a medical degree? If you do, fine. If not - again, don't rat on the books without knowing better. .)

Furthermore, all of your claims about how Montgomery played it safe by not mentioning sex, including religious allusions and putting the woman in the role of housewife - Ann, you forget when this book was published. It was published at a time when this was the norm.

And, frankly, I think sometimes the idea that a couple loves each other and is happy together without the outright mention of sex is refreshing and beautiful. Whatever age group a book is aimed at. I think a lot of today's writers could take note (though of course this sort of content is welcome and encouraged as well in many cases <g>).

Julie

I googled "surgical cure of amnesia", "surgical cure for amnesia" and "surgical treatment of amnesia". Google came up with exactly nothing.

Ann

His condition was not "amnesia." His condition would probably be better described as brain damage. To that I say, stranger things have happened.

Is that really the only reply you have to my post(s)? It seems you tend to ignore any good counter-argument ever made in your threads.

Julie

I was going to respond, but Julie beat me to it. I agree, Julie!

While I've always admired how well-read and well-informed you are, I really do think that you are sometimes guilty of tunnel-vision when it comes to feminism and religion, Ann. Not to say that I don't enjoy your discourse on them, but sometimes it seems to me that your opinions would benefit from a more objective standpoint that explores the counter-arguments more thoroughly?

What can I say, Julie? 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. I demonstrated - at least I think I demonstrated - that Leslie Moore gains wonderful happiness precisely because she is prepared to turn her husband into an abusive tyrant again, for his sake. Because she is willing to be badly oppressed rather than let her husband suffer from an unnecessary case of amnesia, she is gloriously rewarded, is released from an oppressive marriage that she could otherwise never have gotten out of, and finds wonderful love. All because she was prepared to be abused by her husband again, just so that he could get well!

However, let us examine the case. Was Leslie's choice really the right one? Oh sure, it certainly turned out that way. But is it likely that something similar would have happened in reality? In other words, is this the kind of story we should learn from? 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.

Was it right of Gilbert to operate on a man to restore his personality, even though he had reason to believe that the man's personality was a bad one? Yes, in this story it was definitely the right thing to do. But would it have been the right thing to do in real life, too?

Of course, I keep insisting that it was absolutely improbable that an operation could give Leslie's husband his memory back in the first place. The man had been hit on the head at least a year, probably several years, before he had the operation - how was the operation supposed to fix whatever injuries that blow had caused at least a year earlier? Dead brain cells are dead brain cells! They don't grow back.

Anyway, Julie, I presented my reasons for not believing that you can cure amnesia surgically. If you seriously want me to consider the possibility that it is possible to do so, then please present some actual evidence, some cases where doctors have operated on amnesiac patients to give them their memory back, and the patient's memory has actually been restored.

Let's discuss the other details of the story about Leslie Moore. 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. So if you believe that you will get Leslie's kind of reward if you make the leap of faith that Leslie did, how likely is it that you would find that reward? Are you really willing to tell your kid that there is a haystack waiting below him if he jumps out of a plane without a parachute?

Let's get back to what I said about the reason for L.M. Montgomery to tell the story about Leslie Moore. I think that her reason for telling it was that she wanted to teach young women obedience and submissiveness. And she wanted to do that because that was the sort of thing she was supposed to do if she wanted to be regarded as "safe", mainstream, moral and religious.

You say that what happened to Leslie was a moral lesson. I say it was a lesson meant to teach young women obedience. Now imagine a case where a father had lost his memory. Imagine, too, that the neighbours knew that the father used to beat up his children and generally treat them cruelly. Suppose that he had been hit on the head and become docile. Let's pretend that there was a cure available which could restore his true personality. Would it have been right to restore that man's personality and thereby his cruelty to his children? Would that have been the moral thing to do?

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?

In that scholarly book I referred to (Beate Lundberg: Kom ihåg att du är underlägsen! (Remember that you are inferior!), Studentlitteratur, printed in Sweden 1986, ISBN 91-44-25471-7), the author pointed out that young women were told to respond to cruelty and abusiveness from their husbands by becoming even more submissive to the men who oppressed them. Do you think that will help, Julie? Will wife abusers stop abusing their wives if the wives become even more docile, humble and self-effacing?

In another thread, I recently wrote about a Norwegian couple, Helen and Mikael, where Mikael insisted that Helen could be saved only if she completely deferred to her husband and obeyed him in everything. Every time he "felt" that she was thinking "defiant thoughts", he also felt that she was full of demons, and he beat her up in various ways to drive the demons out of her. 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?

Let's return to the story about the haystack for a moment. How likely is it that a young boy will ever be kidnapped on board a plane? I'd say it is extremely, extremely unlikely. I'd say it's pretty okay to tell your son that if he is kidnapped on board a plane he should jump, because there will be a haystack below him to break his fall. It is extremely unlikely that there will be a haystack in the right position below him. But, honestly, it is also extremely unlikely that he will be kidnapped on board an airplane. So what if you tell him to jump? He will not ever find himself in that particular situation.

Similarly, how likely is it that a young woman will be told that her husband can have his true, abusive personality restored by having an operation? Frankly, such a thing will just not happen. So what if we tell her that she should make sure that her husband has the operation?

Only - is it right to teach young people that general outlook on life? If you are are a young man and you are in any sort of danger, jump, even if your chances of survivial are nearly zero? And if you are a young woman and a man wants to treat you badly, by all means don't try to stop him? Is that a good lesson to teach young people?

Okay. Did L.M. Montgomery want to hurt and torture young women by teaching them to obey wife abusers? No, I don't think she wanted young women to have bad lives at all. I don't think she had any interest in seeing young women being hurt. It is quite possible that she believed that in a society where women were so powerless and had so few real options, being obedient was really the best recourse and the best way for a woman to find happiness. It is quite possible that she wanted to believe that there was a God who would reward the obedient women for their obedience. And for all I know many young women who were moderately unhappy in their marriages may have drawn strength from Montgomery's lesson: if they were obedient they would be rewarded, sooner or later. Maybe quite a few young women were able to feel optimism about their own situation thanks to the story about Leslie Moore.

There are two reasons why I didn't respond more in detail to what you said. The first reason is that I thought that I had already replied to and countered the points you made. 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. But if you want to discuss any of the points I have raised here, please do so.

Ann

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:
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.)

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.

The situation would have been handled in exactly the same way if Montgomery was writing it. I don't see your point.

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.

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.

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

I see I didn't respond to your first post, Julie. I should do that.

First, you know the books so much better than I do, and I simply can't argue with you when you say that Anne was happy during much of her married life. I'm sure she was. I guess one reason why the sense of happiness somehow didn't penetrate when I read them is that L.M. Montgomery seemed to tell me rather than show me that Anne was happy. I was told more about her happiness than I saw of it.

Anyway, my main objection was always the "disappearance" of Anne in the last book.

I guess the difference to me was that in the first book, I felt Anne's happiness so intensely. I felt how much she loved the nature around her, every little rock and flower, like you said. I didn't feel that she was that totally caught up in the loveliness of the nature she had around her when she was a young married woman. Case in point: I can quote several passages (in Swedish, unfortunately) where Anne declares her love for a cherry tree or a brook in the first book about her, but I can't remember a single instant when she admires a particular tree, rock or flower after she had married Gilbert. But that could just mean that I was much less responsive to the later books than to the first one, of course.

I don't want to say anything negative about being a housewife and devoting all your time to your home and family if that is what you really want to do. My problem was that I didn't get the impression that this is what Anne really, really wanted to do with her life. All right: I never doubted for a moment that she loved her children, and when her children were young I'm sure that she liked nothing better than being with them and taking care of them. But when they were older, and she was a totally "spent force" who could seemingly do nothing with her life, I was actually horrified. This was so wrong! This woman had seemed so gifted! Why did she have to be like an empty shell now?

Consider Martha in LnC. She is a housewife, and she may well have been a housewife all her life. But she is so interesting! So well-rounded! So full of life! And she has so many hobbies! Anne most certainly didn't seem anything like that when her children had grown up.

I agree. I shouldn't have said what I said about her. But let me say this. I do think that Diana's marriage made her and Anne grow apart more than they had grown apart already. Also, interestingly, I think that Diana's marriage may have put pressure on Anne to marry Gilbert. She was reminded that she was supposed to get married instead of studying at a college, and instead of becoming a teacher. Diana reminded her what a woman's proper place was - but Diana, I think, was perfectly happy in her marriage, and it doesn't necessarily follow that Anne was equally happy in her marriage. At least that was my own gut reaction. When I think about Diana and Fred, I feel Fred's love for Diana. But when I think about Anne and Gilbert, I don't feel Gilbert's love for Anne in the same way. Of course, that may very well just be me.

I'm sure that Anne loved her children. Of course I'm not saying that she should not have had her kids! I just wish that she could have done other things as well, like Martha Kent of LnC. I would have loved to see her paint, take various courses in various subjects, laugh and smile, be a part of the world... and be a source of strength and wisdom for her kids when they had grown up, not just be a woman who couldn't say another word when she had discovered her first grey hair.

Ann

OMG! Is that how it works? Geeeeeeez, I should have shut up years ago.

Sue (who thinks being a mother/housewife is the best part of womanhood)

I haven't read any of the books yet. But after having read most of this discussion, it has been pushed up to the top my to-read-list. It sounds like something I'd truly enjoy.

Anyway, I'm posting to ask you a question, Ann. The books have been written in the early to mid 19th century. The series Lois and Clark is from the very late 19th century. They are two different worlds, not at all comparable in how people lived. Woman like Martha had the freedom to pursue hobbies because, well, we're past the sixties and seventies where that freedom had been gained. You can hardly expect that of Anne, who lives in a world where she would be looked upon by her society if she were to take up a hobby. I believe the world back then had even been introduced to such novelties. So I'm kind of missing the point how the two can be compared.

Saskia

Ann, I'm going to make a point that several people have already made to you, but which you seem not to be appreciating - to the point that I'm almost getting the impression that you're sticking your fingers in your ears and going "Lalala, not listening, not listening."

Anne lived in a tiny rural village on the coast of a Maritimes province in the early 1900s. No internet. No adult education. No 'various courses in various subjects' available to her. School was for children, and only up until the age of around 14 or so anyway.

How could she have been 'a part of the world' in this time and place? She was certainly a vital part of her community - if you're not aware of that, then are you sure you've actually read the books? She was a vital, necessary and valued part of her children's lives, and also Gilbert's life - again, if you've somehow missed that point, I wonder whether your knowledge of the books is similar to your knowledge of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

It does seem to me that several of us who've been posting on this thread have read the Anne books, and you're the only one with such a different perspective on them and even memory of them. Might I suggest that you re-read them, particularly the ones after Anne's marriage, so that you can see for yourself how Anne most certainly did not fade into the distance? Yes, her children got more attention than she did, but that's the nature of family sagas. What's very evident is that she loved her family and found complete fulfilment in having a family. This is a little girl who had no family; who was taken in by Matthew and Marilla but who always wanted a real family of her own, no matter how much she came to love them. Here, she finally has one and it's obvious that she's happy.

Yes, staying at home as a wife and mother is not every woman's vision of a fulfilling life, but (a) for some women it's everything they want and - as people here have attested - it makes them very happy, and (b) in the 1900s, and even for decades after that, it was what women did. Yes, some chafed against the restrictions, but we're never given the impression from the books that Anne is one of those. My view of her, from the books, is of not only a satisfied and fulfilled wife and mother, but also a pillar of the community, with many friends and with lots to do. If you have a different perception, maybe you're thinking of a different book?


Wendy

Okay. I need to press this point. My point is that Gilbert had reason to believe that he was going to turn an invalid into a healthy, but rather evil, person. Was he morally right to restore a person to his natural state of health and evilness? Where do you draw the line there?

I'm going to give you an example that I hope you can't misunderstand. Let's assume that the amnesiac man in question had been a pedophile. Oh, he wasn't the worst kind of pedophile. He had never actually raped a child. But he liked to show himself naked to children. Who knows if he would some day go further than that?

Now imagine that this man had had an accident which had given him amnesia. Also imagine that his amnesia had somehow altered his personality, so that he had lost his sexual interest in children. And let's assume that Gilbert could restore this man's memory and his personality. Including his sexual interest in children.

Would it have been right to return this man to his former self? I think most people would have answered in the negative.

What if you had been a parent of a young child? What if this man lived close to you and your family? Would you have wanted him to be restored to his former self? I really, really think not.

But should we applaud a woman for wanting to restore her formerly abusive husband to his former abusive self? So that she would once again become his victim? Why should we admire that kind of self-flagellation in a woman? And why should we admire a doctor who insists on turning an invalid into a healthy wife-abusing tyrant once again?

I think Gilbert was prepared to return a man to his former healthy abusive self, and I don't think he deserves any praise for that. On the contrary, I think he should be chastised for risking to bring more evil into the world than was there already.

Well, there are at least five passages from the New Testament where it says that a wife must obey her husband: Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18, 1 Timothy 2:11-15, Titus 2:4-5 and 1 Peter 3:1.

Let me tell you one thing that Helen said in a radio documentary about her marriage. She explained that she might be ironing some shirts, and then Mikael might come into the room and just feel that she had become possessed by demons. And how could he feel that? Well, that was because he could feel the lack of total submissiveness in Helen at that moment. Instead of being totally concentrated on what Mikael wanted, she might have some thoughts of her own. That meant she was possessed. So Mikael would push her, hard, so that she fell, and then he would throw the hot iron after her.

Well, I believe it was. But of course Montgomery wouldn't have thought that Leslie's husband would ever be as unreasonable and horrible as Mikael was.

I think Montgomery's point was simply this: A woman should obey her husband (like the Bible says so many times), and if she does that, if she obeys, then God will reward her for that. But I think that this is a dangerous assumption to make, because there really are men who are wife abusers. Obeying them will generally solve nothing. Like Mikael, they will just ask for more and more and more submissiveness, demanding ever more abject self-flagellation from their wives.

But I agree with you that Montgomery wasn't trying to make the point that women should obey men like Mikael. She may very well not have believed that men like Mikael existed. On the other hand, she may well have believed that a woman's obedience was the guarantee that a man would never become a really out-of-control wife abuser.

I do think that Montgomery's point was to teach young women obedience. The fact that Anne is proved to be so wrong when she tried to sway her husband, and the fact that Leslie is so gloriously rewarded for being willing to sacrifice her own well-being and peace of mind for her husband's health and restored (evil) personality, very strongly suggests to me that Montgomery's message was that a woman's obedience carries its own reward. The fact that Montgomery so often quotes the Bible only strengthens my belief that she was telling young women to obey their husbands and put their husbands' well-being above their own, just like the Bible tells them. And just like the texts in the book I referred to earlier, Montgomery told the young women that obedient women will find happiness. (By the way: that book contains large numbers of quotes from British, French and German texts, so most of them were not originally Swedish.)

But once again: I really don't think that Montgomery wanted to torture young women. Instead, she probably really wanted to believe that women become happy if they learn to subordinate themselves to their husbands.

Let me tell you a story that I myself read as a young child. It was about a small girl who was playing on her own in a decrepit shed. Suddenly she heard her mother call for her. The obedient girl immediately left the shed and went to her mother to find out what she wanted.

"I have not called for you, dear daughter," said the mother. "Go and play again."

The daughter went back to the shed. Almost immediately she heard her mother call again. Instantly she went back to her mother, only to be told once again that her mother had not called.

The girl went back to the shed for the third time. Again she heard her mother call. Immediately she went back to her mother.

"Stay, my daughter," said the mother. "I have not called for you, but someone has. The one who called for you can only be your guardian angel. Stay here. Don't go back to the shed."

The moment the mother stopped talking a horrible crash was heard. It was the shed that had collapsed. If the girl had been inside it, she would have been crushed. But thanks to the fact that she was so obedient, she had left the shed in time.

Moral: All children (and particularly all little girls, because for some reason there were few or no such stories about boys) should always and immediately obey their parents.

This story is like the story about Leslie Moore in important respects. First, it is about a girl or a young woman who obeys the person that she is supposed to obey, and puts that person's wishes above her own (the little girl cares more about obeying her mother than about playing her own games, and Leslie Moore cares more about her husband's health than about her won well-being). Second, both the girl and Leslie Moore are splendidly rewarded for their obedience. And third, both of the stories are highly unlikely. Because when did you last read or hear of a child who was saved because her guardian angel called for her repeatedly and made her leave a place of acute danger? And when did you last hear of a man whose memory was restored thanks to an operation - and then it was found out that he wasn't his wife's husband, but the husband's cousin?

So yes, Julie, I believe that the story about Leslie Moore is a story about the moral righteousness of a woman's obedience. Alternatively, it could be said to be about something that is closely related to obedience, namely, the humility that a woman shows when she is putting a man's wishes and well-being above her own. Leslie Moore would have to assume that if the man she believed to be her husband had been able to, he would have told her that he wanted the operation, and he would have ordered her to make sure that he got it. He would have told her this if he had been able to, or at least Leslie Moore had to assume that he would have, so she was obeying his unspoken command.

When all is said and done none of us can go back in time and meet L.M. Montgomery and ask her what she really meant with her story about Leslie Moore. I believe it was a story about a woman's obedience, and you believe it was just a story about unselfishness. I guess none of us is ever going to convince the other one of our point of view.

Ann

I've read stories along this line myself, but it's about equal whether they were about boys or girls. To me, the moral is that the little girl and then her mother were following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I firmly believe that we should always follow promptings like that, but that's something I've learned through personal experience. This forum is not where I'd share something that private and sacred to me.

I'm really not sure that I would, Ann. Do I support bad men who do bad things? No. But, I have to ask in the examples you've given in your posts - what gives this Gilbert (whoever he is <g>) the authority to decide what this man should be? What gives him the right to judge him? Or interfere in his life in any way? Or decide whether he gets medical treatment or not?

If he's a bad man, try him in a court and if he's found guilty lock him up for as long as it takes to keep children safe from him. But from your examples, it's not even certain that he would do evil. Gilbert merely assumes that he may.

To suggest that someone should take it upon themselves to decide that he should be denied a cure for a medical condition on the basis that he's 'not a nice man' is quite appalling to me.

What you seem to be saying, in fact, is that medical treatment should be reserved solely for the good in society. I'm afraid, for me, that would lie in the area of two wrongs don't make a right.

LabRat

Well, the old saying: "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

But seriously, and sadly, doctors here in Canada make those sorts of decisions all too frequently. I suspect it's even more true in the U.S., although I gather the Insurance companies do too. Don't know much about how things go in other parts of the world, though.

As for Gilbert, now don't go maligning Gilbert Blythe. Clark Kent pales in comparison.

c.

What you say about *feeling* Anne's happiness versus simply reading about is a point of view and rather belongs in a discussion about the style of writing, not content. There is no question that Anne was happy. Somehow all of the rest of us successfully got that impression. I felt Fred's love and Gilbert's love certainly just as strongly.

And I disagree that Anne was an empty shell, but I see Wendy covered that.

LabRat covered my next point. No, I don't think it was Gilbert's place to decide that because Dick Moorehad been a bad man, he should be denied treatment, and that is precisely the moral lesson they learn. Whether he was a paedophile or whatever, the point is the same. The point is that I don't have the right to deny him treatment.

We're not applauding obedient women. We're applauding people who do the morally right thing even at the possible cost of their own happiness and well-being.

I stand corrected on the Bible, but I guess Montgomery chose to convey the truly useful lessons... so it's still irrelevant. And yes, I do think that their marriage therapist was wrong. Not because he is a Christian but because he is a chauvinist.

If Montgomery wanted to teach girls to be submissive and obedient, she chose the wrong heroine to write a book about. Anne was hardly that. And she was the focus of the story, after all, and found happiness.

Finally - doctors do not have the right to decide who gets treatment and who doesn't. This is up to God to decide. This is Montgomery's message. It's stated clearly enough.

Julie

Morality is an important issue, but Gilbert also functioned under the Hippocratic oath, along with his own heart and consience, which says that if you can help, you must help to the best of your ability. Without the surgery, Lesley would have been stuck taking care of a man-child for the rest of her life. He saw a way of alleviating that, but didn't know the extent of how much it would help.

This thread has made me want to read the books again. I'll have to put it on my reading list, and really makes me want to get the Emily books.

And sad to say, it's also made me decide to never visit Sweden. And I'm sure it's a lovely country, too. *sigh*

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

I'm not going to get into the Anne debate because I haven't read the books, but I have to comment on this:

You're allowed to say anything you want, but I'm afraid it's hard to reconcile this with an idea that we are all equal. Ultimately, you are railing against circumstance-chance which makes cultures and societies different from one another. You appear to forget this when you demonize whole cultures and societies without any context. So given your railings on sexism, your "tough" stance on the inequality of whole cultures and societies with respect to your own ultra modern Westernized one (with which you evaluate them) rings hypocritical and ridiculously insensitive.

You can voice any claims you want Ann, but expect me to do the same. No matter how you dress it up...to claim inequality among cultures is to claim that some are less. And less than what Ann? Yours? I don't think anyone benefits from pointing out who is less. In fact, I think it's quite offensive, I don't care how many anecdotes you dish out. They prove nothing to me except what Hasini mentioned--a sort of tunnel vision, where nothing, certainly not facts, will jar you from what you believe at least for a moment to entertain other possibilities.

No, obviously not all customs are to be applauded and yes, some are to be denounced. But to stand up and say that X means a whole culture and society is "not as good" (ie less) is crossing the line to disrespect, no matter how obliquely you write it.

alcyone

I didn't read all of your latest post in detail, Ann - perhaps you don't realise, but when you make such long posts, with so many anecdotes and references to other sources (where an anecdote is really just an anecdote and evidence of nothing, and a reference to another source is only relevant if the other source has any genuine bearing on the subject), people's eyes do start to glaze over by the time they get 1/4 way through them. It's inevitable - people have busy lives and, while they feel passionate about part of this topic (the Anne books) some of your strange analogies and anecdotes are rather less compelling.

In other online forums and spaces, you'd get a simple tl;dr in response to some of your posts - too long; didn't read. We're more polite here.

The reason I'm replying this time is to point out the flaw that still exists in your reasoning. It starts here:

You'd be right about the bored horse if there was evidence in the books that Anne was sitting at home, bored stupid, twiddling her thumbs and wanting to be out in the world doing more exciting things. You haven't quoted a shred of evidence that she was. Instead, Hasini - as you acknowledge - posted excerpts from the books showing that Anne was happy and fulfilled in her life. You also acknowledge that I made similar points referencing the books.

Now, perhaps it's true that you, used to your modern life where you can do all sorts of things, would be bored and frustrated in Anne's world. But Anne is not you. That's a very basic lesson that we try to teach some young fanfiction writers whose characters are Mary Sues. Anne is herself. She had a very happy, fulfilling life. Back in her time, too, wives were an integral part of a doctor's working life - she would have taken messages for Gilbert, sometimes gone to deliver them for him if she could leave the children, perhaps even helped him as an assistant of sorts. No receptionists, no practice nurses, not then.

So your conclusion about Anne is flawed, as it's based on a flawed picture of her life - which you've already been shown is flawed.

Then there's this:
We've already said: different times, different standards. But you're also utilising that flawed premise again. Anne is mute - how? Where? Nobody agrees with you that this is the case based on the books. She's happy, fulfilled and very active. She lives a very different life from Martha, of course. But it's impossible to say that one is happier than the other. LM Montgomery made a choice, as author, to show us a lot of detail about the children, but Anne was there at every turn. She was happy, too, and another way we know that is that the children were happy. They loved their mother. She was there in their lives any time they needed her. Believe me, if a mother is unhappy or frustrated in her life, children know. It's impossible to hide that kind of thing from children.

And your final apologia for starting the thread:
Leave aside your flawed premise (again) about Anne - why on earth would you assume that Lois's life would not be anything other than what you hope for her? Lois is simply not the type to fade into the wallpaper - and, actually, if you bothered to re-read the books, as people have suggested, nor is Anne.

But, finally, if your skewed perception of Anne's life bothers you so much, and if you prefer the picture of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life so much more, why not just imagine Lois like her instead? Or you could go for a European heroine and see Lois as Pippi Longstocking. I'm sure that comparison is about as apt as the Anne of Green Gables one you've been making. :rolleyes:

As for offending people, Anne, apart from your sideswipes at housewives and Nan's stories, I don't think you offended people so much as left us dumbfounded at your complete misreading of books many of us know well.


Wendy

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

I'm not offended, Ann. It's not my writing or my lifestyle you've been arguing against. I'm simply defending my very favourite books from your views, which, yes, in my opinion, are wrong.

It's not because I think you aren't entitled to an opinion, or anything. I have friends, too, who've told me they didn't like the books after giving them a chance (the first one, at least - which is my favourite), and that's fair enough.

What bothers me is, like Wendy just pointed out, your flawed views of Anne's world.

She wasn't mute. She wasn't bored at home like a stabled horse. She was a busy mother to her children, wife to Gilbert and, like Wendy said, a contributor to his work.

Why would you think she faded into the wallpaper? Because she was mentioned less as her children grew up and the focus of the books shifted on them? Like someone else said, that's the nature of family sagas. It's not because she wasn't there, but because the story was not more about the children. I see Carol said this better than I could already.

Finally, why ever would you think Lois would fade into the background? You've contradicted yourself in the worst possible way. You presented us with three characters:
1) Laura Ingalls
2) Martha Kent
3) Anne of Green Gables

You said that Anne and Laura lived in similar societies but different social stratums, and while Anne was "mute" and "bored" Laura was active and fulfilled. Which tells me that you believe someone who lived in that sort of society had the potential to be happy in your opinion. Already I can say, yes, and Lois would be fulfilled and happy and never allow herself to become a stabled horse.

Then Martha Kent and her fulfilled, active life comes up as an example. In the context of Martha living in Smallville. So why in the world would you ever think that Lois, feisty and passionate and proactive Lois, living in Metropolis, would fade away into the wallpaper? I'm just not following your reasoning because, as I've just pointed out, you throw out jumbled masses of anecdotes and examples, take what you want from them selectively and conveniently, and ignore the fact that you're contradicting yourself.

You point out that there are flaws in every society. Yes, there are. Does that mean that there aren't any happy people out there in the world? No. Ann, look around: if you think for one second that the world we live in is even close to "ideal", you're kidding yourself. I would say that to deny the flaws in our modern, developed Western world, would be true blindness.

Yeah... all societies have flaws... and there can be happy people in all of them. Anne was happy. What you just said was "because of societal rules back then, no one could be happy no matter what." Which is ridiculous. Because Montgomery succeeded, and furthermore, I daresay that real women who lived back then sometimes found happiness too.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at with your references to Rousseau. Yes, I've read a couple of excerpts from his works in history and philosophy classes I've taken. Yes, he was a chauvinist. What is your point? I just don't see how this ties into Montgomery's books.

Carol, Julie, thank you for your thoughtful responses.

Carol, you said:

Some years ago, I had long discussions about Anne of Green Gables with one of my best friends. She said exactly the same thing that you just said - that the last book in the Anne series was simply not about Anne. Or rather, what my friend said was that at first she was surprised and a bit disappointed that Anne was all but absent in the last book, but then she accepted that the book simply wasn't about Anne. And when she had accepted that, she had no objections to reading about Anne's daughter rather than about Anne herself.

I understand very well that that you can approach "Rilla of Ingleside" that way. I'm sure L.M. Montgomery would have wanted her readers to take that approach. And there is no way ever that I can say that any of you are wrong for looking at "Rilla of Ingleside" in that light.

But for myself, I still feel as if I've been watching a two-hour movie about a person's life, and suddenly I find myself rather shockingly cheated out of a proper ending. It is as if the main character suddenly and mysteriously all but disappeared from the last fifteen minutes of the movie and was replaced by a short guest appearance of her daughter. Somehow I doubt that the main character would have disappeared from the story like that at an age of only around fifty, if said main character had been a man.

So, Carol, Julie, there is no way I can say that your approach to the last book is wrong. L.M. Montgomery would undoubtedly say that it was right. It was just shocking, confusing and saddening to me, that's all. And no: I still can't accept it, any more than I would have been able to accept the ending of that movie.

Julie, I really need to make myself clear on a few points:

Yes, she was, up until the last book. Or rather: if she was all of that in the last book too, I didn't get the impression that L.M. Montgomery found it worth mentioning.

But this isn't a family saga, not really. It isn't a multi-generation tale. It is not as if we are told all that much about the lives of Anne's children, let alone about the lives of her grandchildren. Like I said: The story about Anne is like a two-hour movie where the main character disappears from the movie during the last fifteen minutes.

Absolutely, Julie! Of course people who lived at that time had the capacity to be happy. That includes people like Anne. I'm sure there were women like Anne at that time and in that society who were happy and who had interesting lives when they were fifty!

I guess I was really wondering if people who write a lot of LnC fics find fifty-year-old Lois sufficiently interesting to want to write stories about middle-aged married Lois and Clark. And I was also wondering if those who do write about middle-aged Lois and Clark will let Lois herself "fade from the story" more and more and move the focus of the story to Clark or their kids instead. I know that there is one story, "When the World Finds Out" by CC Aiken, where the portrayal of middle-aged Lois and middle-aged Clark is just wonderful. They have kids, but the focus of the story is on them, and Lois is just terrific in it. I love it. I was wondering if there are more fics like that, and then I mean fics about middle-aged Lois and Clark where the focus is on Lois at least almost as much as it is on Clark.

You are so right, Julie. It absolutely doesn't mean that!

I don't believe that our modern societies are "ideal", Julie.

Absolutely!

I would never say that. Never! Believe me, I don't think that human beings were "meant", either by God or by evolution, to be happy only in societies like our modern Western world. Of course not! If anything, you could probably argue that our modern world is a bit unnatural for us.

I don't doubt for a moment that there were women like Anne who lived in Anne's days who were very happy with their lives. But I still have to insist that Montgomery failed to convince me that Anne was happy after her children had grown up, or more specifically: "Rilla of Ingleside" didn't strike me as any sort of tribute to Anne's happiness. If a long fic about Lois and Clark's grown children had only given Lois a guest appearance where she mentioned, in passing, that she had found her first gray hair, then I wouldn't have felt that Lois at that point was very happy with her life with Clark.

The point I tried to make was that both Rousseau and Montgomery were trying to write books about "ideal" characters and situations. They both placed their characters in more or less patriarchal societies. Rousseau was such a horrible sexist that I'm sure it didn't bother him if all his female characters went down the drain, but Montgomery would have cared about her female character's happiness. She would have wanted, and tried, to make Anne happy even in a society that was fairly restrictive for women. I have to return to my movie metaphor - I think Montgomery "directed a movie" where the main character disappeared toward the end, because Montgomery couldn't come up with anything for her to do during the last fifteen minutes. In that way, I think Montgomery failed to show me that Anne got a happy middle age. But that doesn't mean that I think it was impossible for middle-aged women of that time to be happy!

I'm not saying that you should agree with me about my take on Anne and L.M. Montgomery. I know that probably none of you do! Oh well. I wrote this post mostly to emphasize that I definitely don't believe that women must live in our modern Western society in order to be happy. Heavens, no! Plese don't misunderstand me about that. I can see so many women being happy in the time of Anne, and I think that Anne's childhood friend Diana would probably be perfectly happy in it. Diana probably wanted nothing more in life that a good and loving husband, sweet children and a nice home. Oh, she would want good friends and neighbours too, and a calm and predictable life. I can see no reason why her own time and society wouldn't provide her with all of that. Yes, Diana would be happy, and many other women would be happy, too. But maybe, maybe women with intellectual ambitions, like Anne and possibly like L.M. Montgomery herself, just maybe found the restrictive rules about women in their society an impediment to their personal happiness.

Ann

It is a truth universally to be acknowledged that a woman's happiness in a patriarchal society is dependent on the kindness of her menfolk and real estate.

with apologies to Jane Austen and Tennessee Williams.

edit: hoping that this is no longer true in North America but not so sure. (btw I had to login again to add this edit - is everyone else finding this?)

c.

Okay, I've lost track of what exactly your point is. You've admitted people could be happy in any time period, married or not, children or not. So Lois could be happy in her middle age and on, easily.

Are you simply saying that Anne might have been happy all her life, but because she wasn't in the last book, it means she wasn't?

Well, Ann, no, all it means is that the focus was now on Rilla and not on her. Comparing it to a movie is not fitting - they're two very different mediums. If you insist, it's more comparable to an 8-part mini-series, where the last episode featured the previously-main character minimally, focusing instead on her daughter. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. I can't make you accept it, obviously - it's fair enough that you were disappointed. I love Anne as a character as well.

But assuming Anne had nothing to do after her children had grown up simply because it wasn't explained in detail is jumping to conclusions. Like it was said in the beginning of this thread - someone else's happily-ever-after is just not as interesting to other people.

Montgomery was not writing about an "ideal society". She was writing about the patriarchal society she lived in because she knew nothing different. She wrote a brilliant main character and made her an integral part of her community, someone valued by her husband, family, and neighbours, and someone satisfied with life.

I would say there is nothing more she could have done to convey Anne's happiness. If all that was missing, for you, was her participation in Rilla of Ingleside, well, I can't really argue with that... the truth is that she wasn't a huge part of that book.

But it does not mean that she wasn't happy "offscreen." I guess Montgomery assumed that after 7 books, we could conclude on our own that Anne would keep her personality and go on as she did without having to state it.

You keep insisting that if Anne was a man, it would not have happened. I'm not sure where you get this impression and in fact have to argue against it. Montgomery could have chosen to shift the focus of the main book on one of Anne's sons, but she didn't. Ruby and Joy (Anne's firstborn) may have died, but so did Matthew, Captain Jim, and other males to balance it out.

You act as if female deaths are more tragic than male deaths and should not be written about because somehow it automatically makes the author a chauvinist (or at leasts reflects the fact that the author values a woman's life less).

Well, Ann, "male chauvinism" refers to the world view of male superiority. Chauvinism in itself is a word that originally meant any sort of discrimination. And I'm going to say that you are being chauvinistic in your claims that female deaths should never be depicted in fiction, because they are somehow more tragic.

Julie

In the interests of not bringing up the Dreaded Deathfic Debate up again, Julie, I have to correct you. Ann is arguing that female deaths occur more frequently in literature and other media and that the writers seem to portray female death in a less negative light than male ones. I do not see that Ann has brought any more evidence to re-inforce this point after all the arguments to the contrary that we have presented in the various deathfic threads. However, let's please, for the love of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, NOT open up that can of worms, shall we?

(Hasini, who thinks that horses have a right to rest in peace too.)

I wasn't intending on bringing up the deathfic debate again, no way. Everything that could possibly been said already has been.

So, okay, in the interest of that, I retract what I said regarding death in the books. But everything else still stands.

Julie

Let's also be careful about reading what someone writes and not exaggerating what was *actually* written.

As well, let's not pretend that there is no gender discrimination in North America in 2008. But is life better for women than in 1908 Canada, when LMM wrote AoGG? Absolutely.

Although we've still got some distance to go.

As for middle-aged Anne Shirley. I suspect 'off-screen' so to speak she was doing what many small-town middle -aged feisty (and Anne was that )wives of the few professional men and successful businessmen in such towns did and often still do - she would be running the town (informally, of course, because as a penisless being she was not eligible to run for office or even vote in that time)

c.

And I don't want to discuss deathfics in connection with Anne of Green Gables, Julie, because it is true that "death happens equally" to both men and women in the Anne books, and in both instances it is equally tragic.

What I mean by saying that Montgomery portrayed the Anne books as "ideal" is that society itself is not seen as a problem or an impediment to the characters' happiness, and an important message of the book is that it is indeed possible to find great happiness in the world which is presented to us if you only obey the "right rules". Some books do say that society itself is wrong or unfair, and therefore it is impossible for some people to find happiness in them. Consider, for example, Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Of course that book is very idealistic in its portrayal of the slaves, particularly of Uncle Tom himself, but its message is nevertheless that those who were born slaves, or bought into slavery, can never live really good lives as long as they are kept enslaved. The message of Harriet Beecher Stowe's book was that the key to happiness was to be found outside the individual human beings themselves, and it required that the system of slavery must be abolished.

Let's compare that to Rousseau's book Emile. Rousseau didn't like the society he lived in at all, but to him the solution was that men - only men - must realize that they were born to be free, to be equals and to be brothers, and after they have realized that they must live the kind of lives where they fulfill their own potential. Emile, of course, has indeed been raised in order to be the best man he can to himself and to other men, and he does indeed find happiness and satisfaction. Basically, Rousseau's message is that men are stronger than the unfair society that traps them, and they can break free. Women can't do the same thing, but so what? They don't matter. It's not a problem if things go badly for Emile's girlfriend. There is a world full of women out there, and Emile can go out and graze his fill among them, like a happy horse.

The message of Emile is not that the existing society is perfect, but rather that it is perfectly possible for men to rise above their society and reach their full potential. Montgomery's message is rather that society is perfect, or rather, it is as perfect as it can be in view of the fact that it is an aspect of the imperfect world. I think Montgomery would have agreed, mostly, with Voltaire's comical character Pangloss, who insisted that we live in the best of all possible worlds. And I think that she would have agreed with Rousseau that it is ultimately up to the individual to make himself or herself happy. But where Rousseau insisted that man must break with the rules of society, Montgomery's message is that woman must obey the rules and the expectations of society. Because if she does that, she will be happy.

Let me return to the parable of Leslie Moore, which I consider a key to Montgomery's belief in how a woman can find happiness. Leslie married a man who was a mean drunk and who treated her very badly. This is certainly unfair to Leslie. She has done nothing to deserve the bad treatment her husband was giving her. But what can she do about it?

Today we would probably say that the best recourse for Leslie Moore would be to divorce her husband. But that was impossible for Leslie. If divorce was even legally possible for her in the society that she was a part of, then at least it was totally against the expectations of that society. And because it was condemned by society, Montgomery would have argued, it was also morally wrong. (If Leslie Moore had somehow managed to divorce her husband, she would almost certainly have been shunned by her society.)

Fortunately for Leslie Moore, her husband disappeared at sea. Now she was free from his meanness. But was she free to move on with her life? Was she free to marry again, now that she had met a young man that she loved?

Leslie Moore was not allowed to break the rules or disregard the expectations of her society. In Sweden at that time, a woman was allowed to remarry if her husband had been missing for a sufficiently long time. But what was a suffciently long time?

This summer there was a radio dramatization of a novel which had been very popular in Sweden in the nineteenth century. The story was about a young girl, Gabriella, who grows up surrounded only by her own family on a small island. When she is fifteen, she briefly meets and quite likes a young man from the mainland. However, her father dislikes the young man's father, so their possible romance comes to naught. Instead, just a short while later, a shipwrecked sea captain is rescued by the Gabriella's father and brother. The shipwrecked man, Captain Rosenberg, stays with the family on the island for months, and young Gabriella slowly learns to like him. And when she is sixteen, she becomes engaged to him.

The following years Captain Rosenberg tries to make enough money to marry Gabriella, which means he is out sailing again. He is away for months and years, occasionally writing letters. Sometimes he comes home for short visits, and then he leaves again. One day Gabriella receives a letter telling her to expect him to come home soon. If he had not come back within a year, he would not return at all. Then Gabriella could assume that he was dead, and she could considered their engagement broken.

During Captain Rosenberg's long absences, Gabriella had met the man from the mainland again. She really liked him a lot better than Captain Rosenberg, and she wished that she could marry him instead. But of course, that was impossible.

But then Gabriella received a letter telling her that Captain Rosenberg was dead. She resolved to wait for him, even so. She waited for a year. She waited for two years. She waited for almost three years. But then she decided that Captain Rosenberg was indeed dead, and she had waited for him considerably longer than he asked her to. So she started seeing the man from the mainland for real.

But wouldn't you know it? Just when things really start heating up between Gabriella and her new man, Captain Rosenberg returns. He is furious. How could Gabriella let him down like that? How could she be so faithless? Gabriella retorts that he has let her down by being gone for so long. Anyway, she no longer wants to marry Captain Rosenberg, and that leaves her with only one socially acceptable option. She will marry neither of her two men. In fact, she will never marry at all! And so Gabriella and her sea captain go their separate ways, doomed to spend the rest of their lives in horrible loneliness. But the man from the mainland met and married another young woman and was happy.

My point? My point is that Leslie Moore wasn't exactly free to marry Owen Ford just because her husband had been missing for years and was presumed dead. He might still return, and if Leslie had married Owen Ford while her husband was gone, the scandal would be unspeakable if he actually returned. And indeed the husband returned, or so it seemed. Now he wasn't mean anymore, but he was like a child who needed to be taken care of. And still Leslie Moore couldn't have what she wanted, a life with Owen Ford and a family.

Leslie Moore might have despaired, or raved against the powers of the universe. But L.M. Montgomery's message is that God has a plan for everything. The key to finding happiness is to accept one's lot in life and do the best with what you have, because then God will reward you. Let me quote a passage from the Bible:

1 Corinthians 7

20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. 21 Were you a slave [1] when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) 22 For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. 23 You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. 24 So, brothers, [2] in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.

What Paul the Apostle says here is that those who were slaves when they became Christians should accept being slaves as their lot in life, unless the opportunity presents itself to let them become free. Generally, however, they should not fret about being slaves, but accept it. Happiness will come to them anyway if they are good Christians. This is really quite different to what Harriet Beecher Stowe said in her book.

Leslie Moore was not technically a slave, of course, but it could be argued that she was a "slave" to her husband. He was free to treat her badly, and society did not intervene to stop him, because she was his "property". Interestingly, it seems to me that L.M. Montgomery accepts this situation, and instead she argues that God will intervene to right horrible wrongs, if the wronged party proves himself or herself worthy of a miracle. And Leslie did indeed prove herself worthy. She put up with her husband's cruel treatment of her without complaint. She did not file for a divorce or try to get rid of him in any other way. Her meetings with Owen Ford were totally innocent, and she never crossed any moral lines with him. When her husband disappeared and was presumed dead she patiently waited for confirmation of his death before she tried to get any closer to Owen Ford. When her husband was returned to her, she accepted him without complaint, and accepted that she could never have a life with Owen Ford. When her husband needed to be cared for like a child, she cared for him. When Gilbert Blythe told her that her husband's memory (and personality) could be restored, she accepted that it was her duty to help make her husband well, even if it meant that he would start treating her cruelly again. Always and in every situation, Leslie Moore acted humbly, meekly and unselfishly and never tried to get anything for herself that Fate or God had not already given her.

And because Leslie Moore was so humble, God granted her a miracle. Precisely because she agreed to let her husband have the operation, and because Gilbert Blythe did not let himself be swayed by his wife's unwise advice, Leslie Moore found the proof that she could otherwise never have found that her husband was indeed dead. Now she was finally free to slowly build a relationship with Owen Ford, and no one in her society could blame her or accuse her of being forward or immoral.

Like I said, I consider the parable about Leslie Moore a key to the message of the Anne books. The message is that if you accept your lot in life and make the best of it, then God will reward you and give you happiness.

I think the Anne books can be regarded as a tale about "the education of Anne", where Anne is really taught to be this humble woman who knows and accepts her station in life. That is something she doesn't know in the first book. The way I remember it, when Anne first arrives in Avonlea, one of the Avonlea women, Mrs Rachel Lynde, takes a look at Anne and proclaims that Anne is ugly, or something like that. That is a very cruel thing to say to a child, and Anne is rightfully furious. Except I don't think L.M. Montgomery thought that a child ever had the right to be furious. Certainly Montgomery believed that a child never had the right to be furious with an adult, and therefore Anne was properly chastised. The education of Anne had begun.

Consider Anne's hair. She hated the red color of it. When she was eleven or twelve, an itinerant salesman came to Matthew and Marilla's house and found Anne home alone. He tempted her by saying that he could sell her hair dye which would give her hair a lovely chestnut color. Anne fell victim to his temptation. She was vain. She was not happy with what God had given her. So God punished her. Anne's hair became puke-green, as Hasini put it, instead of chestnut brown. So she had to let Marilla cut her hair all off. Anne was properly chastised. But because she had learned her lesson and would never complain about the color of her hair again, God rewarded her. When her hair grew back, it had miraculously(?) become chestnut brown, just like Anne had always wanted.

When Anne was a child, she was full of energy and exuberance, and she had a natural sense of fairness. Her sense of fairness told her that she had the same rights to be treated well and have a good life as other people. But during the course of the first book her exuberance was bled out of her, and her sense of fairness was replaced with a sense of duty. "Don't ask what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Except Anne's duty was not so much to her country as to her family and to the mores of her society.

Because Anne learnt to do what others expected her to do rather than what she wanted to do herself, there were times when I thought she seemed lost. When she was a young married woman who had not yet had any children, she seemed a bit lost to me. What was she to do? She could not yet be a mother to children that she did not yet have, and her husband was away all day. Maybe she could do a lot of housework, but if so, L.M. Montgomery chose not to show us the housework she did. It is probably not a coincidence that Anne met Leslie Moore at this time. This was also, I think, the last time that Anne really tried to assert her own will and rebel against what she saw as unfairness. As a wife she was most certainly expected, both by God and by her society, to defer to the will of her husband. Yet Anne tried to talk Gilbert out of performing the operation on Leslie Moore's husband. As was fitting, and in accordance with what the Bible teaches us, Gilbert did not listen his wife's advice, but performed the operation anyway. And once again Anne was shown to be in the wrong when she had tried to assert her own will and rebel against the unfairness of life.

After this, if I remember it correctly, Anne no more rebelled. She soon had small children, and I agree that she was happy with them. She had been trained to be a mother, and she had learnt what wisdoms she should impart to her children. I have no reason to think that she was not happy during this this time of her life.

But when her children had grown up and did not need her in the same way anymore, what was she to do with herself? The way I see it, Anne had been taught not to ask what she wanted for herself, but to do what God and the mores of society expected of her. But what did God and the mores of society ask of her, when her children didn't need her anymore?

I don't agree that it is good for a woman to be taught never to ask for anything for herself, but only to ask what the mores of society expects of her. That doesn't mean I think that this kind of education must always be bad. I don't believe that a woman who has been given this kind of education must always end up being unhappy. I realize that human beings have an enormous capacity to adapt themselves to living in societies and to become parts of existing hierarchies, and that means that most of us must have an enormous capacity to subordinate ourselves to the will of others. In other words, being taught that you must always obey can't in itself be something that makes people unhappy.

However, since I don't necessarily and easily believe that this kind of unconditional obedience and subordination is a good thing, certainly not that it is always or even usually a good thing, I want anyone who advocates this kind of subordination to show me that it can lead to happiness. I want to see proof. Because I do think that Anne has been presented to us as an example of the happiness that a woman can find through submissiveness. That is exactly why I want to see Anne's happiness. I want L.M. Montgomery to follow through. You don't abandon a parable or a tale of morality before it is finished. And that is precisely why I was so shocked at "Rilla of Ingleside". Because to me Anne's absence in that book meant that L.M. Montgomery had no more proof to show me. Anne's happiness had been exhausted. Montgomery had taught Anne humility and submissiveness and subordination, and then she left Anne alone, rudderless, when her children didn't need their mother in the same way as they needed her before. I realize that you can simply assume that Anne's life went on much as before, and that her days were full of good work and that she herself was satisfied. But that is not something that I myself can accept just like that. I want to see how Anne turns her life's lesson about submissiveness into a good and happy life for herself. And therefore, if I see her fading into the wallpaper, then I assume that she has finally reached an impenetrable impasse, exhausted her source of happiness, and found herself unable to do anything more with her life and her person. I actually see her just standing there, mute and helpless, because the world no longer needs her.

That is why I use Martha Kent as an example. The way I understand it, Martha Kent has always been a housewife, but she has not learnt Anne's lesson to always subordinate herself to others and never ask for anything for her own sake. That is why she can find new things to do with herself when her son has grown up and moved out.

I'm not saying it would be impossible for Anne to be happy after her children have grown up and left her. But I am saying that because I question the lesson of submissiveness that Anne has learnt, I want to see how she turns that submissiveness into middleaged happiness. And L.M. Montgomery has nothing to show me.

Ann

Carol, there's no question that life for women in our modern Western society is better now than it was a century ago. And yes, I can definitely see Anne running the town, even informally.

Ann - I think the reason we're so divided in our views of the books is that you're looking at it in the context of the bigger picture, while I'm looking at it as a case unto itself.

There is no possible way for me to deny the fact that chauvinism existed, or that Leslie was dependent on Dick. Perhaps even tied to him in the way you describe, as he was gone a year before he was found by Captain Jim, and everyone believe him to be dead, except Leslie.

Even Anne, I would say, was lucky to have found a man who loved her and didn't change and turn abusive throughout their marriage, because she would have become trapped then.

And yeah, divorce was not socially acceptable back then, I suppose. Divorce rates in Canada were extremely low until WWII and Leslie was trapped by her disabled husband perhaps more than she would have been by a healthy one.

I suppose maybe Montgomery was idealising the world, but not in the way you've been saying. She wrote about good things happening to good people.

I don't think I see anything wrong with that message in the idealised world - it's not saying that you should sit on your butt and wait for the miracle, or that you shouldn't work for it, because it won't fall on your head from the sky one day without warning... but the idea is, again, that good things happen to good people (i.e. you don't try to murder the king and take his place). Of course this is a romanticised idea that doesn't always hold true in real life, but I like when it holds true in fiction!

Re: the education of Anne - well, don't we all go through similar lessons as we grow up? She learned not to be vain (her hair didn't miraculously become chestnut brown... the dye was supposed to turn it raven black, and went wrong. Her ginger hair darkened as she grew older and became auburn, but after she cut her hair, I think I only remember Diana remarking that it had darkened a bit, probably calling it "auburn" only to encourage Anne). She learned to respect her elders (for the record, I think if I had yelled at an adult like that when I was 11, I would have been punished too). As for her duties - she learned to have responsibilities, just like everyone as they grow older.

As for housework, I personally would have been bored with descriptions of that. We can assume she did housework without being told. Gilbert may have been busy on his job, but she had her neighbours and friends (a husband does not constitute a whole social life).

She wasn't taught not to ask for anything for herself. She learned responsiblity and yes, once she had children, she probably lived more for them than for herself - like Karen said, that's what happens when you have children. You don't give your life up, but your children are now part of every decision you make.

Well, I guess this is where we can truly agree to disagree, then. There's just nothing more I can say, since you accept all my arguments and still say those explicit descriptions are missing, for you. I like to think of Anne as a lively personality for the rest of her life, and I'm sorry you're having trouble picturing her that way.

Julie

Hmmm...

1) Life is not boring nor unfulfilling after marriage or kids nor does the occurrence of either or both mean that the plot, character or storyline in question has jumped the shark so to speak. If a writer wishes to and is able to, he or she can by dint of good writing make it interesting to a reader.

2) Montgomery lived in a time where such things/lifestyle was accepted by the women during that time simply because it was what they expected, what they were taught to expect and want and most of them probably did want that lifestyle. The thing is that they could not conceive of it being any different and those that could were probably in the minority and perhaps were excluded as result or perhaps not. Perhaps they went on rallies and marches, made their own way in the world and started trailblazing for modern feminism . Montgomery's text at times may or may not be didatic but she was writing from her own experiences at the time for an audience of that time. She gave them what they expected and perhaps somewhere in the midst of it also the courage to be women who could think independently but yet settle down to a traditional lifestyle if they so desired.

In the books themselves the gossip centers around other families, other couples who have problems and you can still see the fact that some women can't stand up for themselves and there is a sense that what Montgomery does is in a way force you to compare the way Anne chooses to live her life with the stories you hear about these women in order to make her point. Anne might have chosen to marry as these women did but the question is why is she happy when these other women aren't? Because she is who she is and she has not lost that sense of who she despite not waltzing off and conquering the world by herself. So perhaps you might feel she has lost something of herself there by opting to marry and become a housewife but I think instead she enabled Montgomery to have a subtle voice through her to advocate for the right for women to think of and for themselves. That is a feminist stance whether Montgomery realised it or not, whether it was deliberate or not and in the end it is the most subtle movements that win people's hearts over that win causes and have the most effect.

3) Even if you don't agree with that, may I point this out. When you want to rebel, you need something to rebel against. Maybe by Montgomery writing the way she did, she managed to ruffle quite a few feathers and so they could focus on her and other writers and start a movement for feminism. In that way, perhaps she could have instigated movement towards women's rights.

4)Even today you have to remember that despite there being an universal declaration of human rights, it is very hard to reach concensus on what those rights are and which ones are valid and so forth across the world. In the end quite often the women concerned are quite happy to continue on with life as they know it even if to outsiders it seems to breach their rights. The problem here is that they or their relatives make that decision for their families and they make it based on the information they have. The information they have will a) be limited (because you cannot have all of it no matter how hard you try) and b) be restricted by their perception of what they conceive to be the truth of the matter. Ultimately however, if you agree with idea of human rights, you must realise that they have the right to make that decision to remain as they are. That is democracy and yes it isn't perfect.

I did all that in points because otherwise my brain keeps getting mixed up. But it's been a interesting discussion so far.

Hope my two cents made sense.

The Little Tornado.