Writing a biography of a novel may seem a strange pursuit, yet if the novel is famous enough, the work itself almost becomes a living being in its own right. Canadian author L.M. Montgomery’s classic Anne of Green Gables certainly fits this category. The heroine, Anne Shirley, is a fully formed, three-dimensional character that leaps off the page.
L.M. Montgomery was so beholden to her own creation that she wrote a total nine novels chronicling Anne Shirley’s development and growth to adulthood. The ninth novel, The Blythes Are Quoted, was finished just before her death and was published in full for the first time in 2009. (An abridged version was previously published in 1974 under the title The Road to Yesterday.)
The Inspiration for Anne of Green Gables
English professor Irene Gammel holds the Canada Research Chair in Modern literature and Culture at Ryerson University, Toronto. She has published many books and articles on L.M. Montgomery. In Looking for Anne of Green Gables, Irene Gammel examines the literary, cultural and personal references that inspired the Anne of Green Gables novel.
Gammel has done some impressive reading, and exhibits a deep knowledge of the popular girls literature that the young Montgomery immersed herself in. The reader learns about the cultural importance of the orphan story, how these stories very often followed a formula, and how Montgomery managed to use the orphan formula but inject something new and refreshing into it.
The reader also learns how a dreamy photograph taken by Rudolf Eickemeyer of Evelyn Nesbit became the key visual inspiration for Anne Shirley.
The Real Life Anne of Green Gables
There is also a family connection for the inspiration of Anne Shirley. L.M. Montgomery’s cousin, Ellen Macneill, was an orphan adopted by the family. Two Cavendish farmers, Pierce Macneill and John C. Clark, had expected to receive two male orphans as help for their farms. Instead they were greeted by a little three year old girl and her brother. Pierce Macneill and his wife, who were childless, adopted the girl and named her Ellen.
A Complicated Novelist
Irene Gammel is also deeply read in L.M. Montgomery’s extensive journals, and can thus provide the reader with the intimate emotional heartbeats of the author of Anne of Green Gables.
L.M. Montgomery, it appears, was a complicated character, someone quite often divided against herself. While literature and novel writing provided a great escape and release, her private life was more often than not filled with pain and disappointment. Much of this she brought upon herself. The heir of a rich imaginative life, reality would always be a disappointment.
Montgomery toyed with the facts of her life, misled the loved ones around her, surprisingly showed little empathy for the suffering of others, was selfish, and liked playing emotionally irresponsible games with her male suitors.
Irene Gammel’s Literary Detective Work
The type of literary detective work employed in Looking for Anne of Green Gables often involves much speculation and conjecture, and the reader with a literary turn of mind will enjoy the many allusions that Gammel makes. This means there is much emphasis on imaginative interpretation, but less on cold, hard facts.
For example, Gammel states that L.M. Montgomery was an aesthete, then goes on to ask if she’s the spiritual kin of Oscar Wilde. As it happens, Wilde lectured on Prince Edward Island when L.M. Montgomery was a young girl.
Writes Gammel:
“Maud, who was seven going on eight years old when Oscar Wilde visited Charlottetown, would probably not have been allowed to attend the lecture, and so we should perhaps not make too much of this connection, but she certainly flirted with ideas of aestheticism and places her heroine in that tradition through the distinctive tint of her hair.”
The book has much more in this vein.
A Book Sure to Please Enthusiasts
Looking for Anne of Green Gables is a book that holds great appeal to the reader of the Anne books. There are many interesting revelations from Montgomery’s unpublished journals, and the discussion of contemporary popular girl’s literature is deep and knowledgable. This ‘biography of a book’ is written in Montgomery’s dreamy, literary style and pays great honour to the novelist’s unique gift while not glossing over her human failures.
Published by St. Martins Press, 2008
Chris Saliba - Chris Saliba is a freelance writer. Read more of his workplace articles at chrissalibafreelancewriter.blogspot.com
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