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?
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.
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?
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
