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

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