An Epoch in My Life

Ever since I gave birth to my first daughter Blythe, I have been waiting for the day when I would share my love of Anne of Green Gables with her.  When Brynne came along, I was thrilled to have a second daughter who would also share my love of Anne.  Those of you "who are of the race who knows Joseph" or who are possibly even "kindred spirits" will recognize immediately how my first daughter came by her name.  

My Mom first read "Anne of Green Gables" to me when I was fairly young.  I don't remember exactly when, but I do remember that she read to me out of a green hardback copy that had belonged to her as a girl.  I loved the story and eventually read every work of fiction by author Lucy Maud Montgomery that I could get my hands on.  I remember checking her books out of the library with photographs of "Anne" dressed in very '70's looking hair and '70's influenced dresses.  I also remember being very disappointed by the books "Chronicles of Avonlea" and "Further Chronicles of Avonlea."  I have recently learned the reasons why these books were such a let down to me.  However, I loved all the books in the Anne series and then I read the Emily trilogy and loved those just as much.  In 1985, Anne of Green Gables was made into a television movie which was shown on PBS in the U.S. in 1986.  My grandma recorded the movie for me and eventually the sequel Anne of Avonlea, which was made in 1987.  I loved the movies almost as much as the books and watched them over and over.   

Somewhere along the line I made the decision that I was going to choose the name for a child of mine from L.M. Montgomery's books, as a tribute to my love of them.  At first I thought I would use the name Rilla, which is the name of Anne's youngest daughter and a shortened version of Marilla.  By the time I was actually faced with the task of naming my unborn daughter my preference had shifted to Blythe; the last name of Gilbert and eventually Anne.  This name embodied all the romance that the series holds as well as literally meaning "of a happy lighthearted character or disposition."  I also felt that this was a more subtle tribute.  

Justin was initially opposed to using the name Blythe.  He felt it was too unconventional, so we settled on the name Hannah.  However, after 15 hours of labor with no epidural and two hours of pushing our baby girl arrived and Justin decided that I had earned the right to name her whatever I wanted.  I promptly christened her Blythe Kathleen, which I still think has a very nice ring to it with the "th" sounds in both names.   

My collection of books by L.M. Montgomery, including 

my mother's hardback copy and a UK first edition of 

"Anne's House of Dreams" that I purchased in England.

(With my Little House Books to the right and two

rows of antique Nancy Drew's behind them.)

Well a few months ago I decided that the time had come to read "Anne of Green Gables" to my girls.  I started reading a chapter a night to Blythe and Brynne at bedtime and at first I had to talk the book up to them.  Brynne was especially skeptical, but I promised that she would love the book.  The first chapter, "Mrs. Lynde is Surprised" unsurprisingly didn't do much to help my cause, but we persevered.  Before long the girls were begging for two chapters a night and by the end the girls were bringing me the book anytime I had a spare moment.  

About halfway through the book I mentioned that I had the movie of Anne of Green Gables and that we would watch it once we had finished reading the book.  They were very surprised to learn that I had the movie in my possession, yet they had never seen it.  In my infinite wisdom, I had decided years ago that I wouldn't let Blythe and Brynne watch the movie until they had first read the book because I wanted them to experience it the way I had.  So it had been years since I had been able to watch the movies.  We finished the book about mid-December and watched the long movie as soon as we could find the time.  It was as enjoyable as I remembered.  We had fun discussing the small ways in which the movie was different from the book.  

We went ahead and watched Anne of Avonlea soon afterwards and I even let them watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story, which came out in 2000.  Surprisingly, most of the original actors returned in this film, with the notable exception of Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla who passed away in 1991.  I don't think much of this film since the plot is a complete departure from anything L.M. Montgomery wrote.  It is also anachronistic because it is set during WWI and has Gilbert going off to war just after he and Anne finally marry, when in the books it is Anne and Gilbert's sons who fight in the Great War.  But I do own it along with the other two Anne movies.  

This dust jacket shows a scene from the very

end of Anne of Avonlea.  I just picked this 

book up at a thrift shop recently.

Even though I've been reading other books to the girls at bedtime, I decided to re-read the entire Anne series.  I'm currently on Rainbow Valley, but haven't been reading them straight through.  First, I delved into my copy of The Annotated Anne of Green Gables that my in-laws gave me for my birthday in 1997.  It has a lot of interesting essays on various aspects of Anne and L.M. Montgomery.  

Then I re-read Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs and Emily's Quest.  When I was at BYU and majoring in English, I wrote a paper about L.M. Montgomery and her Emily of New Moon trilogy, which are supposedly her most autobiographical works.  In researching this paper I read several volumes of the Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery.  I didn't read all five of them because volumes IV and V hadn't yet been published.  As I've become mildly obsessed with L.M. Montgomery, I thought about purchasing all five volumes for my personal collection.  I found it would be more economical to simply purchase her biography which was written by one of the two women who edited her journals, Mary Rubio.  The biography was published in 2008 and is titled "The Gift of Wings."  I bought it and quickly read all 600 pages.  It was fascinating to read about the difficult life that L.M. Montgomery had and how her writing allowed her to temporarily escape from her troubles.  The contrast between her real life and the lives of the characters in her books is striking.  The biography even indicates that there is strong evidence that she actually took her own life because she was so distraught at the end of her life by her husband, her son Chester and her loss of status as a writer.  

After finishing "The Gift of Wings," I began this book. . .

Before I began it I was wondering if it was going to be worthwhile to read it because I doubted I could learn anything new.  Happily I was proved wrong.  The author, Irene Gammel went to much lengths to research just how Maud Montgomery came to write Anne of Green Gables.  She has unearthed many influences and inspirations that would have helped Maud bring Anne to life.  It was interesting reading for the most part.  Gammel limited herself to discussing Anne and didn't delve into any of L.M. Montgomery's other characters.  So now you know what I've up to for the past couple of months. 

 I came up with the idea for this post in response to a post that I read a few weeks ago on my second cousin Nancy's blog called "Dear Blog."  It was a short post about how she only writes about her children and there isn't much interesting to say about her specifically. I kind of feel the same way most of the time and I had to really think about something I could post about that's about me and not my kids.  So I think I kind of failed because I did mention my girls quite a bit at the beginning.  But that was my attempt and Nancy if you are reading this I want you to know I wish I'd left a comment on your blog telling you that you aren't the only one who feels blah and uninteresting and I do actually read your blog and find it very entertaining, well written and witty.  We really ought to hang out sometime other than at the Peterson Reunion, which by the way is tentatively scheduled for June 2oth this year.