Magic Island: The fictions of L. M. Montgomery is a “reader’s guide to all of Montgomery’s novels”.  It is also a companion to the biography The Gift of Wings by Mary Rubio, considering Montgomery’s fiction in light of new information about her complex, troubled life. Each chapter discusses one of Montgomery’s novels, looking at both Montgomery’s life and the novel itself.  Each chapter is illustrated by a carefully selected book cover.  Waterston also notes that Montgomery’s novels resist dissection, part of their magic.

Here are my notes, and comments, on Waterston’s analysis.

Anne of Green Gables

Ewan (Montgomery’s future husband)’s courtship gave Montgomery  stimulus to begin writing Anne of Green Gables.  A semi-orphan, raised by her grandparents, Montgomery had always felt the scrutiny and narrow-minded gossip of her hometown Cavendish, like Mrs. Lynde’s critical eye in Avonlea.  Montgomery had found time to work on her novel in 1905, since her Uncle Leander’s family did not come to spend their summer vacation with Montgomery and her grandmother.

Anne of Green Gables contains four main plots

1. The developing love between Anne and Marilla, as well as other women - Mrs. Lynde, Miss Jospehine Barry, and role models Mrs. Allan and Miss Stacy.  Marilla’s love for Anne is marked by her increasing sense of humour.

2. Anne’s imagination; her use of language reflects this.

3. Finding kindred spirits - Diana Barry and Matthew Cuthbert.  Matthew is the complete oppostie of Montgomery’s bullying grandfather or her uncles. He reflects the sympathy Montgomery found in her father and her male pen-pals.  Descriptions of Diana appeal to the senses:  Diana’s garden is filled with voluptuous flowers, she loves wine and rich deserts.  The name Di-ann-a has “Anne” in it, so she is a part of Anne.

4. Anne and Gilbert- this plot is the only one that is unresolved until the end.  Their relationship begins in a schoolroom focused on boy and girl relationships.  But the vague ending - with no romance - perhaps reflects Montgomery’s own, ambivalent feelings about her suitor Ewan.

Waterston shows Montgomery’s skill as an author by noting how Montgomery weaves all four plots into a single chapter (Chapter 15, “A Tempest in a School Teapot”, where Anne breaks her slate over Gilbert’s head).  The first ten chapters of the book deals with how Mrs. Lynde is “surprised”, shocked, and appeased.  The next chapters are paired, so that Anne gets into a scrape, and comes out victorious.

Comments

Waterston’s analysis of the structure of Anne of Green Gables makes you realize what a skillfully written book it is.  I marvelled, too, at the conditions that Montgomery wrote her book under:  if Ewan had not been courting Montgomery at the time, if her Uncle Leander’s family had come to visit - the world might never have had Anne of Green Gables.  However, I’m skeptical that Anne and Gilbert’s ending reflects Montgomery’s own feelings about Ewan.

Anne of Avonlea

At the turn of the century, it was common for bestsellers to be followed by a sequel -  Montgomery’s publishers stipulated a sequel in  Anne of Green Gables’s contract.  Anne of Avonlea has the following plots:

1. Anne as a schoolteacher - draws on Montgomery’s own teaching experiences, and her opinion on theories in education (such as Anne and Gilbert’s debate on methods of disciplining children), published in popular magazines

2. Davy and Dora - twins with contrasting personalities were popular in Victorian fiction (eg., The Bobbsey Twins Flossie and Freddy, Little Women’s Daisy and Demi).  Davy and Dora’s names recall David Copperfield and his gentle bride Dora.  Davy and Dora may represent two sides of Montgomery’s personality.

3. The A. V. I. S. - beautification and landscaping were popular topics in the magazines Montgomery read.  Ewan Macdonald “beautified” the Cavendish cemetary while he served as the Presbyterian minister of Cavendish.

4. Writing - Montgomery was excited to receive her copy of Anne in June 1908.  It is likely that she wrote the chapter where Anne meets her favourite authoress, Mrs. Morgan, soon afterwards:  this female author is not beautiful, but kind and insightful.  Soon after, inspiration strikes Anne when she is stranded on the Cobb’s roof, but Anne thinks her own story is too fanciful for publication.  Paul Irving, whom Anne considers very talented, is also full of fanciful, poetic thoughts.

5. Miss Lavendar’s romance - instead of resolving the romance between Anne and Gilbert, the sequel ends with Miss Lavendar’s wedding.  Her fairy tale is contrasted by the humourous return of Mr. Harrison’s wife.

Comments

This well-researched piece shows that this humourous sequel, written on a tight deadline, was influenced by popular trends in society and in fiction.  Some slight inaccuracies bothered me - Hester Gray was not an “abandoned spinster” but a frail and beloved bride, and Dora did not seem to reflect Montgomery’s domestic and conformist side to me, but seemed to be merely an underdeveloped character.

Kilmeny of the Orchard

Waterston compares Kilmeny of the Orchard to “Una of the Garden”, a magazine serial story Montgomery published in 1908, which Kilmeny is based on.  When Montgomery was editing Una into Kilmeny in 1909, she was reading Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales, and had become secretly engaged to Ewan Macdonald.  Kilmeny is a fairy tale of an isolated young girl rescued by a well-educated, handsome man.  This perhaps reflects Montgomery and Ewan’s love story.  The premise that Kilmeny is fated to suffer for her mother’s sin, perhaps reflects the discussions on theology and predestination Montgomery may have shared with Ewan. Kilmeny, Eric and Neil may be the anima, animus and shadow of Montgomery’s psyche. Gene Stratton Porter’s Freckles (1904) and The Girl of Limberlost (1909), bestsellers at the time, also have striking parallels with Anne of Green Gables and Kilmeny (respectively.)

Comments

I’m surprised and glad that there is a known copy of “Una of the Garden” in existence - a rare copy was found by collector Donna Campbell.  I wonder if it will ever be re-published.

Ths Story Girl

The children in The Story Girl are like Montgomery (The Story Girl) and her cousins Clara, Stella and George Campbell at Park Corner, and the two boys - Wellington and Dave Nelson - who boarded at her grandparents for a year.  The Story Girl and Felicity are two sides of Montgomery’s personality, and Peter Craig is a little like Herman Leard in social status and physical appearance.  Death and romance - thoughts which preoccupied Montgomery during the writing of the book - are subdued in the children’s lives, and reserved for the Story Girl’s stories.  Sara also tells many humourous stories about Presbyterian ministers, although Montgomery will soon be married to one.  There is a general sense that things will end in the novel, perhaps coming from Montgomery’s imminent departure from the Island.

Comments

I think it is very believable that characters in The Story Girl are Montgomery’s favourite cousins, uncles and aunts.  I find any intentional resemblance between Peter Craig and Herman Leard less likely - Peter is intelligent and earnest and honourable, while Montgomery’s portrait of Herman Leard is the opposite — nor was a respected farmer equivalent in status to a hired boy.

Chronicles of Avonlea

Montgomery had just reluctantly signed a contract with her publisher, promising him rights to all her work over the next five years.  She was, in fact, very busy in real life - with her grandmother’s death, her own marriage and honeymoon, and the move to Ontario.  She edited a selection of short stories for publication.  The stories focus on adult relationships, rather than on children.  Waterston discusses the short stories chronologically to show Montgomery’s development as a writer, and comments on the careful order which they were arranged in.  She also compares the changes from the original short stories, noting that sometimes the introduction of Anne marred the original version.  Chronicles, a title chosen by the publishers, has Biblical origins.

Comments

I thought Montgomery’s publisher made the final selection on the short stories, out of a larger collection that Montgomery sent him (thus, he was able to retain some of the stories for publication in Further Chronicles of Avonlea).  I wonder how much “say” Montgomery really had in the final order of the stories in the volume.  It would be very interesting to read her correspondence with her publisher.

The Golden Road

Montgomery had married and moved to Leaskdale, Ontario when she wrote The Golden Road.  Waterston finds the book more complex than The Story Girl.  There is a subtle interplay of romance and mockery of romance– perhaps reflecting Montgomery’s own feelings about marriage.  The delightful return of The Story Girl’s artistic father is contrasted with the return of Peter Craig’s father.  “Our Magazine” is a well-written spoof.  The Story Girl is in fact less of a heroine in this book, for we hear very few of her stories, and her recital is mocked.  Cecily King has a more “heroic” role:  she does missionary work, curls her hair with disaster, and fights off an unwelcome suitor.  The focus on Cecily will set Montgomery up as a children’s writer.

Comments

Very interesting that Waterston says The Golden Road is more complex - I have always dismissed it as a rushed job, inferior to The Story Girl.  Blair Stanley’s return is of course what Montgomery hoped her own father would do.  I’m glad Waterston pointed how large Cecily’s role is in this novel, because she is one of my favourite characters.

Anne of the Island

Anne of the Island is one of the first novels in a co-ed university setting — which Montgomery herself experienced for a year at Dalhousie University, the model for Redmond.  However, Montgomery focuses more on Anne’s love story than her classroom experiences.  At this time, Montgomery was caring for her one-year old son, was pregnant, and had many duties in the parish that she found petty and a waste of her time.  Anne of the Island is a cheerful story but the descriptions of Kingsport purport a shadowed undertone.  Graveyards and death is a theme in the story — WW1 broke out while Montgomery was writing, and she had a stillborn baby.   Flirtatious Philippa Gordon falling in love with a homely but inspiring minister is perhaps what Montgomery wished for her marriage.  Finally, Anne’s development as a writer marks her as someone entirely unlike Montgomery:  Montgomery published several pieces during her college days, but she mocks Anne’s two publications.  Instead, the centre of the novel is the homey warmth of Patty’s Place, presided over by five women.

Comments

I enjoyed Waterston’s comparison of Anne and Montgomery’s college experiences - and I admire Montgomery immensely for writing while she was pregnant and taking care of a one-year-old!  I rather like the idea of Philippa and Jonas reflecting a happier version of Montgomery and Ewan’s romance.

Anne’s House of Dreams

There are four houses in Anne’s House of Dreams which “match the four winds, and … the four personalities that Montgomery now began to create out of her own experience of self and others.”  [1]  Captain Jim’s tall lighthouse tower signals inspiration, Miss Cornelia’s neat and prosaic home is like Montgomery’s everyday life, Leslie Moore’s house is mysterious and imprisoning, like Montgomery’s marriage, and Anne’s house - where the bedroom own house has two windows looking seaward and landward - like those in the garret of Green Gables - reflects Montgomery’s happiness in having a home of her own.  Montgomery gave birth to her son Stuart just as she began writing the book, bringing about a period of happiness.  Anne’s House of Dreams has happy endings for all four characters - but Waterston wonders if these endings ring false?  She is uneasy that strong-minded Miss Cornelia is marrying, although her romance provides comedy to balance out Leslie’s sentimental ending.  Will Captain Jim really be happier - finding Lost Margaret as he expects to, in heaven - than in his cozy lighthouse?  Anne is leaving her House of Dreams because of Gilbert’s career demands.

Montgomery mocks female writers throughout the novel - but her book is a sophisticated adult’s novel.

[1] p. 77, Magic Island

Rainbow Valley

Rainbow Valley deals with the church’s position in society.  Montgomery mocks the ministry throughout, commenting on the discrepancy between a well-educated minister and his petty, small-town congregation.  Instead of discussing the position of the minister’s wife - who is often also more intelligent than her community - she paints a sympathetic portrait of an absent-minded, unworldly minister.  Rainbow Valley is largely told through John Meredith’s eyes, and his love story is the main plot of the novel.  The children’s antics are scattered throughout.  Faith’s honesty challenges the hypocritical gossips.  There are funny commentaries on Hell - while Montgomery’s own husband believed that he was eternally damned.  There is a focus on boys - Jerry, Jem and Walter are all heroic figures.  Mary Vance is an anti-heroine, the opposite of Anne and The Story Girl.

Comments

The isolation a highly-educated minister must feel in a judgmental rural community  is an interesting theme.  I never thought John and Rosemary were the main plot of the novel - Faith was the novel’s heroine to me.  I thought Jem and Jerry’s role in the novel very minimal.

Further Chronicles of Avonlea

Like Chronicles of Avonlea, Further Chronicles of Avonlea is made up of short stories Montgomery originally published in magazines in the early 1900s. These stories were edited to include references to Anne and Avonlea. The drafts that were not selected for Chronicles of Avonlea were released by Montgomery’s publisher as Further Chronicles of Avonlea, against the author’s will, resulting in a long lawsuit. [1]

Waterston groups these short stories according to seven themes:

1) Montgomery’s father, Hugh John Montgomery, was an unsuccessful businessman and abandoned her to her grandparents’ care. The stories “Her Father’s Daughter” (1907) and “The Education of Betty” deal with father-daughter relationships, while the stories “Sara’s Way” (1904) and “The Brother Who Failed” (1909) have happy endings for those who are considered failures by the community.

2) Friendship: “Aunt Cynthia’s Persian Cat” (1904) has two laughing young girls, who declare that “men are a nuisance.” Their friendship resembles Montgomery and Nora Lefurgey’s.

3) Old Maids: Montgomery was unmarried in her thirties, and close to becoming an old maid. “The Materializing of Cecil” (1907), “In Her Selfless Mood” (1904), The Little Brown Book of Miss Emily (1907) deal with old maids ostracized by their communities.

4) Conflict between women: in “The Return of Hester” (1909) a dominating older sister prevents her younger sister from marrying, a storyline which reappears in Rainbow Valley. “Jane’s Baby” and “Her Father’s Daughter” also feature a clash of female wills.

5) Religion: “The Conscience Case of David Bell” mocks church affairs. This theme reiterates in the conversation of minor characters like Miss Cornelia in Anne’s House of Dreams.

6) Motherhood: “Jane’s Baby” (1906), “The Dream Child” (1909), and “The Son of his Mother” (1904) deal with different aspects of motherhood, some of which oddly foreshadows Montgomery’s own experiences later on in life.

7) “Tannis of the Flats” (1904) is unique. The heroine is a Metis girl in Western Canada. The racial conflict in the story reflects Montgomery’s own complacently racist impressions from the year she spent in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The story uses dramatic imagery in describing the setting and love rivalry between the fair Elinor and the dark “breed” girl. Waterston analyzes this story of “passion and jealousy” [1] as the sole literary product of Montgomery’s sufferings out west.

Comments
I found the theme groupings intriguing. The analysis of “Tannis of the Flats” is very in-depth. In fact, Montgomery has written at least two other short stories that take place “out west”, including “The Genesis of the Donut Club” and “How We Went to the Wedding” (both republished in Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement).

Rilla of Ingleside

Rilla is nothing like Anne, with her lisp (not a chatterbox!) and her lack of ambition.  Rilla’s love story has no flowering scenes and no passion - her first experience of love is innocent and naive, and in the last scene she lisps childishly.  The love scene between Rilla and Kenneth is cut short by humourous Susan, and even Miranda Pryor and Joe Milgrave’s war wedding is a laugh.  The war news and turmoil come directly from Montgomery’s own experience, but the sentiment that war was divinely justified was not discussed in her journals, but rather one preached by most Canadian ministers, including Ewan. [2]  As Montgomery’s life was very troubled at the end of the war, with the death of her dearest friend Frede Campbell, lawsuits with her publisher Page, her husband’s first major mental breakdown etc., Montgomery had not been reading as heavily.  Waterston finds Rilla of Ingleside relatively flat, as much of it is a direct record from Montgomery’s journals.

[2] pg. 91, Magic Island

Comments

I’m surprised that Waterston finds Rilla lacking in style and structure compared to the other novels.  It’s also interesting that the strong pro-war viewpoint was not necessarily Montgomery’s own- will have to reread the journals for that.

Emily of New Moon

As Montgomery recopies her journals and recall her emotionally-starved childhood, she fills Emily’s world with full of adults who do their “duty” coldly, withholding love.  Living in a patriarchal society, women in Emily’s world gain power in subversive ways - with beauty, or money.  Emily does receive encouragement, however, from a number of male advisors, like L. M. Montgomery’s support friendship with her pen-pals.  Emily’s “flash” - an intense moment of creation - is given particular attention as something that has been very influential to other budding writers.

Emily Climbs

Waterston compares Emily’s life to Montgomery’s own high school days in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and finds few similarities.  The names Emily, Dean Priest, Ilse, Teddy, Perry Miller and Evelyn Blake all have literary and personal connotations.  A main theme in Emily Climbs is entrapment - she is trapped in a church, traps herself in a boot closet because of vanity, she has psychic dreams of a lost child trapped in a house, and is snow-stormed in the Old John House where she falls in love with Teddy and gets inspiration for “A Seller of Dreams.”  Emily has been rescued by her male suitors since New Moon: Perry, Dean, and Teddy.  Spying/eavesdropping is another theme, perhaps borne of Montgomery own feelings that she (like Emily) is alienated by local gossip.  Miss Royal is an example of what Emily (or Montgomery) could become - an eccentric, successful, single female writer- but Emily rejects Miss Royal’s offer.  Sexuality bourgeons in this book, but Emily also rejects the conventions of marriage, turning down several proposals.

Comments

I had never thought to compare Montgomery and Emily’s high school days.  I always thought Emily’s Shrewsbury days drew on Montgomery’s experiences as a budding writer at Dalhousie, and on the Halifax newspaper staff years later.

The Blue Castle

This excellent essay delves into records from Montgomery’s Muskoka trip in 1922 where she conceived of The Blue Castle, and Montgomery’s journals and what she read during the writing of this “adult” novel.  Valancy recalls the single female poet Valancy Isabella Crawford, but unlike Montgomery’s other heroines, Valancy’s only ambition is love.  Literature (in the form of John Foster’s books) does have the power to change Valancy’s life.  Valancy is inspired to rebel against conventions - first by not pining away like the stereotypical Victorian heroine when she finds out she is going to die, by befriending and working for the disreputable Gays, and finally by proposing to marry Barney.  She lives a fairytale life on the island with Barney - who may have been inspired by Rev. Edwin Smith, a friend of Ewan’s with whom Montgomery could “discuss everything.”  But a reverse-Cinderella scene shatters the fairytale when Valancy’s shoe gets caught in railroad tracks.  The fairy tale motif recurs with “Bluebeard’s chamber” and the fact that Barney is secretly wealthy as a prince.  The purple pills his father made their fortune on are among the myriad of painkillers and drugs Montgomery had begun to take.

Comments
An excellent, dense analysis, especially of the fairy tale motifs and their inversions in The Blue Castle.  Montgomery’s reading list circa The Blue Castle sounds fascinating!

Emily’s Quest

According to Waterston, Emily’s Quest most closely parallels Montgomery’s life.  The book explores Emily’s quest for success and love.  Like Montgomery, Emily is flirtatious.  Her suitors echo famous courtship literature like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.  Emily’s writing career is drawn directly from Montgomery’s experiences, although Emily has the leisure to write a full-length, idealistic first novel while schoolteacher Montgomery only wrote marketable short stories.  When Dean Priest tells Emily her book is no good, Emily physically and metaphorically falls and is wounded in the foot — in her weakened state, she agrees to marry Dean.  Montgomery gives Emily the fun of furnishing a house that means more to her than her fiance, just as at this time Montgomery moved to Norval and enjoyed setting up her new home.  Emily’s psychic ties to Teddy, like Jane Eyre’s to Rochester, makes her break her engagement.  She has long years of loneliness as a struggling writer at New Moon, like Montgomery in Cavendish.  Her fortune turns when her heel spikes a diamond, reversing the wounded ankle from her first novel, and like Montgomery, she writes the a gloriously successful novel.  But it is only through a Sleeping Beauty pattern that Teddy comes back to Emily very abruptly, and Waterston is uneasy that as the wife and muse of self-absorbed artist Teddy, Emily will not continue to write.

Comments

The foot motif is very interesting - the wounded heel, spiking the Lost Diamond with her heel.  I did not think there were glaring similarities between Emily’s suitors and the men in Pride and Prejudice.  I didn’t see any indication that Emily would stop writing when she got married - I thought it was always established that Emily can’t help writing just as Teddy can’t help drawing.

Magic for Marigold

Montgomery originally wrote Marigold as a series of short stories for publication in The Delineator.  She felt insulted when the second installment of these stories was rejected, so that she began to write a novel about Marigold.  The story focuses on the consciousness of a very young child, influenced by modern theories on early childhood development and Freudian psychology.  These ideas were emerging in books like the Winnie the Pooh stories(1924), and the writings of her friends Dr. Helen and Marjory MacMurphy (the former, a female doctor Montgomery consulted, influenced “Aunt Marigold”).  Marigold lives in an entirely female household, with four mother figures.  Marigold has to survive a number of hateful boys.  When Marigold loses Sylvia at the end, her real friendship with Budge doesn’t sound very reassuring:  instead, the only remedy is the beauty of nature and a mature tolerance of things.

Comments
An article in Harvesting Thistles discusses many of the same ideas.

A Tangled Web

Montgomery was finding life in Norval very pleasant as she began A Tangled Web.  After dealing with a very young person in her last novel, Montgomery writes of a very old person.  Aunt Becky recalls Rebecca Sharp, and most of the Dark and Penhallows have Dickensian and philosopher’s names.  The plot revolves around a possession, - possessions being very significant in a woman’s life — and all the characters are introduced as Aunt Becky taunts them what “possesses” them.  All the characters seem to reflect a facet of Montgomery’s life and desires.  Unlike Montgomery’s other novels, this book is full of passionate love affairs.  Waterston finds that Montgomery’s storyteller nature causes her to “tell” rather than “show” the various plot strands.  The plots are resolved humourously, twice involving the intervention of a pig - perhaps poking fun at her critics, who accused her of sentimental preference for beauty over “pig sties.”

Comments

“No child is to be seen in this novel.” pg. 165.  There are no little girls, but one of the plot “strands” is Brian Dark’s story.  Brian is an orphan boy who has precedent/successors in Jingle Gordon and the orphans in Akin to Anne.

Pat of Silver Bush

Friendship is a main theme in Pat of Silver Bush, perhaps invoked by Montgomery’s renewed friendships with Alec and May Macneill, Nora Lefurgey, and the obssessed fan “Isobel”’s accusation that Montgomery was incapable of friendship.  Judy Plum is drawn from Great-Aunt Mary Lawson, a storyteller and mentor whose stories Montgomery was copying into her journals.  Jingle is perhaps a little like ambitious Nate Lockhart.  Bets especially resembles Laura Pritchard, a friend from Prince Albert whom Montgomery recently reunited with, but when Laura dies, Montgomery abruptly writes Bets’ death into the novel - without reason or warning.  As Montgomery’s financial problems closed in on her, sad changes come to the Silver Bush family.

Comments

Although I never thought of friendship as the main theme of Pat, I’m glad this review focuses on the positive aspects of Island magic and friendship, rather than on depression.  I think there’s very little resemblance between poor, sincere orphan Jingle and (seemingly) teasing, flirtatious Nate.

Mistress Pat

Mistress Pat was written during many real-life troubles, but perhaps the consolation of friends like Nora, the Barracloughs, and Montgomery’s beloved cat helped her begin writing.  Pat’s disastrous Christmas dinner and Countess Medchester’s visit plays on Pat (and Montgomery’s) notable family pride.  Suzanne Kirk enters the novel at the same point Bets entered Pat of Silver Bush, and Suzanne sounds like Nora in personality and Frede in appearance.  She leaves the story just as abruptly when she marries.  Sid’s elopement is drawn from her son Chester’s secret marriage to Luella, but bold, crass May Binnie is nothing like Montgomery’s kind daughter-in-law Luella.  When Marion Webb, Montgomery’s guest from Cavendish marries Murray Laird in Norval, Montgomery writes a happy impromptu wedding for Rae.  Throughout the writing of the book, Norval parishioners had been trying to fire Ewan Macdonald and Montgomery was deeply hurt by their actions.  As she is forced to leave her Norval home, perhaps inspired by the fire at Norval mill, and other literary fires, Silver Bush burns down.  Earlier in the book, Uncle Horace said he liked happy endings — despite modern trends for realism.  Montgomery gives her readers an old-fashioned, happy ending when Hilary returns to marry Pat.

Comments

Knowing Montgomery’s state of mind when she wrote Mistress Pat, the parallels between her life and the abruptness of the plot are very enlightening.

Anne of Windy Poplars

Having finished the Anne series with Rilla of Ingleside in 1920, Montgomery returned to write another “Anne” book in the 1930s, to make money to purchase a house.  Anne of Windy Poplars was first published as newspaper short stories, then as a novel, to make double profits.

Although Montgomery taught school for three years near Summerside, she never had experience teaching higher-level education, so she drew perhaps on Frede’s experiences as well as her experiences as a popular guest lecturer at high schools near Toronto.  Originally titled “Anne of Windy Willows” like “The Wind in the Willows” it is a story of Anne’s quest away from home.  Anne has Montgomery’s own helpful nature, and battles adversity just as Montgomery did, both against the Norval parishioners and her literary critics.  Some characters resemble people in real life - Little Elizabeth has Montgomery’s own childhood, Katherine Brooke is perhaps like the bitter schoolteacher “Isobel”, sulking Cyrus Taylor like her husband Ewan at meal times, and the pompous Dr. Carter of Redmond is an exact portrait of Dr. MacMehan, a Dalhousie professor who dismissed Montgomery’s work a recent study of Canadian literature.  The anecdotal style of Windy Poplars is Montgomery’s forte.

Jane of Lantern Hill

The happiest parts of Jane’s story takes place on the Island, but Montgomery found a setting for the darker side of Jane’s life in the shabby and depressed areas of Toronto.  Jane’s childhood is like Montgomery’s own, but Grandmother Kennedy is also a self-portrait.  Montgomery was breaking up her sons’ relationships and was a snob to her neighbours. Jody is a waif of greater poverty than Anne or Mary Vance.  Jane is not romantic, so the dream world she finds on the Island is made of practical accomplishments: work and friendship.  Jane’s second summer on the Island has even more fabulous successes, in contrast to Montgomery’s increasing depression in real life.  As Montgomery’s horror over divorce and remarriage loomed - from King Edward’s divorce, to Chester’s, to Stuart’s interest in a girl she did not like - she struggled to write the fairytale ending of Jane.

Anne of Ingleside

Anne of Ingleside is a well-structured novel.  Although Montgomery was depressed and on medication as she wrote Ingleside, the book unfolds as a well-crafted family narrative with many sub-themes.  It begins happily at Green Gables, followed by Anne’s equal happiness in her family in Glen St. Mary.  But Aunt Mary Maria mars the family dynamics for many chapters.  Jem’s affection for his mother is perhaps an idealization of Montgomery’s older son, whose errings continued to grieve her.  The children’s stories of pets may be inspired by Montgomery’s grandchildren.  Nan and Di face mean little girls at school, very different from Montgomery’s loving heroines, and Nan, Di, and Rilla’s mishaps are more complex than children’s stories.  There are adult stories - Anne’s matchmaking, and the story of intense hatred for Peter Kirk, written at the worst of Ewan’s melancholia.  At the end of the novel, Christine Stuart’s malice recalls Aunt Mary Maria’s intrusion, but the novel ends in a sense of golden peace at Ingleside, like the opening at Green Gables.  In the centre of the novel is an obituary, written by Anne, mocked by her readers’ bad tastes - an ironic comment of Montgomery’s own on changing literary trends.

Comments

I really had not noticed how coherent, or how subtly “dark” Anne of Ingleside is.

Other notes

There are a number of glaring “typos” in my copy (2008 Don Mills, Oxford University Press Canada), that I hope will be corrected in the next edition.  I’ve made a list, not to criticize, but in hopes of helping to clear up confusion.

pg. 27 AoA - Dora is listed as “Daisy”
pg. 72 AotI - “Ruby Willis” instead of Ruby Gillis
pg. 123 EC - Teddy shares a name with the Little Women hero, Theodore Laurence, not “Edward Laurence”
pg. 159, MfM - Budge and Tad are mixed up: “Tad… is ready to go Grailing with Marigold.”  Marigold in fact never hangs out with Tad
pg. 169 AtW “… the two old boys move in together again, to enjoy the contnetious ’statoo’ [Aurora], now bronzed, in consideration of Big Sam’s prejudices.  It may be de-bronzed soon, in deference to Little Sam’s aesthetics.
pg. 209 AoI - “Shirley (the little boy born after the era of Rainbow Valley)”  huh?  Shirley was born between Anne’s House of Dreams and Anne of Ingleside.