The Truth Behind “Anne”

I just finished a fascinating and enlightening book: Mary Henley Rubio’s Gift of Wings, a biography of L. M. Montgomery.  Now as any working parent can attest, “reading” consists of snatching two or three pages here and there while your adorable offspring is momentarily distracted by a bite of food or the daily arrival of the UPS truck, so the fact that I finished a 600-page book in a week speaks to its compelling nature. 

For anyone who is not familiar with her, L. M. Montgomery is perhaps best known for authoring Anne of Green Gables.  Growing up in Canada, where she’s a major source of national pride, I devoured every book she ever wrote and, like many people, lines from those books have stayed with me to this day.  She died in 1942, but a new book by her was released in 2009 (well, new-ish; most of it had been previously published in abbreviated form) and I immediately ordered and read that too.  How to capture the appeal of L. M. Montgomery in a few words?  Her characters are spirited, intelligent, and good, yes — perhaps too good, as she apparently developed a reputation for writing sentimental saccharine prose during her day — but I think what most resonated with me was her innate understanding of human nature and emotions, and how funny her books could be when you don’t tend to think of early-1900s writing as being funny at all.  She expertly poked fun at the ridiculous things people regularly do and say, and always cut down supposedly mature and haughty characters to size.

My favourite LMM book is one of my favourite books of all time: The Blue Castle.  It describes in agonizing detail the misery of a 29-year-old “spinster,” Valancy Stirling, who is snubbed and beaten down by her overbearing mother and judgmental, opinionated family, who look down on her because she is nothing special: not married, not pretty, not smart, not rich.  A twist of fate gives Valancy a reason to break free, and she eventually goes on to find all the things she never had.  The skewering of Valancy’s proud family’s hypocrisy is still funny to me today, twenty years after I first read it: her wealthy uncle saying over and over, “Dippy.  She’s gone clean dippy, I say” and each time thinking vaguely that someone has said something like that before, and her grim mother going about the household chores because “Meals must be made ready though a son dies and porches must be repaired even if your only daughter is going out of her mind.”  Anne of Anne of Green Gables had her own source of humour in the inevitable “scrapes” she got into, and one of the things that made her story memorable to me was her relationship with Gilbert, a love story that was understated and, if not exactly believable, somehow still rang true.

Based on all these ultimately happy books, I’m still kind of reeling from the revelations in this biography.  L. M. Montgomery was miserable for much of her life!  Because of the Anne-Gilbert love story, and the love stories that were in nearly all her novels, I was shocked when I read years ago that LMM had written in her journal of her wedding day, “I sat at that gay bridal feast, in my white veil and orange blossoms, beside the man I had married — and I was as unhappy as I had ever been in my life.”  The biography goes into much more detail about this.  LMM’s husband Ewan had severe depression exacerbated by dangerous medications that were the only treatment at the time.  Additionally, her oldest son could probably be characterized as a psychopath (her younger son, a physician, actually diagnosed him as such.)  He was a thief, an adulterer, a liar, and worse.  And she herself had mood swings that might have been considered bipolar disorder today.  This is illuminating, given that a particular passage that hit home for me when I was ten years old and reading Anne of Green Gables was when Anne tells Marilla, her surrogate mother, that she feels emotions so keenly that happiness takes her soaring to the highest of heights and sadness plunges her into the depths of despair.  Marilla says dryly that she would much rather spend her life walking with her feet on solid ground, and Anne says earnestly that no, the lows are made worth it by the dazzling highs.  At the time, I could relate to this because I (especially compared to my dignified family) have always felt emotions rather deeply myself.  But now, knowing that LMM was in need of some serious modern antipsychotics, it colours how I look at all of her work.  LMM’s family revealed in 2009 that she had actually committed suicide (something so shameful in those days that the doctors covered it up so the stigma wouldn’t end her son’s medical career) and reading this, one might see why. 

And here are some other interesting facts for my fellow LMM-lovers out there.  Though she was so adept at depicting human nature and its contradictions in her writing, she apparently didn’t always see them in herself.  In Jane of Lantern Hill, a grandmother wreaks havoc by interfering with her grown daughter’s love life.  In LMM’s life, she did exactly that to her sons.  (I am, of course, going on the assumption that Rubio’s biography is accurate.)  Plus, the male love interest in The Blue Castle, Barney Snaith, may actually have been based on a secret crush the married LMM had on someone named Edwin Smith (about which her church and community gossipped) — because in her final version of the manuscript, there is one typo where “Snaith” is written as “Smith.”  And very embarrassingly, that typo was published.  The most disturbing thing I read in the entire book, however, was that the character of Leslie Moore, a haunted and tragic woman trapped in a nightmarish marriage in Anne’s House of Dreams, was based on L. M. Montgomery herself — and Leslie Moore’s initials are, of course, “L. M.”  If you have ever read Anne’s House of Dreams and you remember Leslie Moore, you’ll understand why this is rather unsettling.

Enthralling stuff, I tell you, for someone who read every word of her novels, and now I’m inspired to find all her books and reread them.  This biography was based on LMM’s private journals, which she recopied because she intended them to be published after her death (she was world-famous for the last 30 years of her life.)  The reliability of her journals is questionable because she herself altered them to make people and events seem as she wanted them to seem, and that’s such an interesting idea too … offering your private journals to the world because you know that whatever you write, whether it’s the full truth or not, will become the last word.  No one else in her life was famous enough to be publishing their journals, so only her side would be told.  Oh, these revelations about my favourite childhood authors.  First Enid Blyton, then LMM … who’s next, Dr. Seuss?

So anyway … read L. M. Montgomery!

I’ll close with a snapshot of Peanut and her best buddy, “A,” doing what they love to do best: stand at the front door and monitor the neighbourhood.  There is little funnier than two 19-month-olds harassing passersby.  A middle-aged man jogged by the other day and P and A inexplicably screeched “Baby!” after him.  And heaven help any creature of the canine persuasion who has the misfortune to happen by.  P and A love dogs, and they show their love by barking at them.  Peanut has also developed a new habit of, when throwing a fit, stopping mid-wail and saying reproachfully to us, “Peanut CRYING,” just to make sure her cruel, heartless parents have noticed.  She has also, however, started saying out of nowhere, “Peanut happy!” and giggling, which just melts our cruel and heartless hearts.