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

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.