Hello lovely readers! Today I have a very special post prepared for you today. My dear friend Annabelle and I worked together to create a post about one of our favorite authors, Lucy Maud Montgomery! If you have not yet checked out Annabelle’s blog, you need to do so. It is called “Rays of Marigolds,” and she has so many good things to say!!! You can read it here! Without further ado, let us begin our conversation!
Annabelle: L. M. Montgomery is one of my favorite authors of all time! Ever since I first read Anne of Green Gables three years ago I fell in love with her writing style and have gone on to read the rest of the Anne books, the Emily of New Moon Trilogy, and a few others. She is definitely my favorite author, and I can’t think of a book by her that I haven’t loved!
Ella Rose: Yes! I am ecstatic to discuss this with a fellow Lucy Maud Montgomery megafan! I think perhaps Lucy Maud Montgomery is the author who has had the most airtime in my life. Some stories, like The Bunny of Bluebell Hill and The Little Engine that Could, are nostalgic of childhood. Others such as Great Expectations and Pride and Prejudice came along when I grew older. But the sweet hum of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s words has always been there. I remember my mom reading Anne of Green Gables in probably kindergarten when I hardly understood what was happening. I recall tunneling under the covers with a flashlight and Anne of Avonlea in third grade, and the Christmas when I received the whole series in fourth. I treasure the photograph from that day in sixth grade when I finished the series for the first time. Now the spines of every book in my Anne series are torn from reading (we even have some pages falling out in a couple of the books) and my collection of LMM books has grown from eight mass market paperbacks inscribed with the name of Anne to 36 volumes written by Lucy Maud Montgomery. And I am not done collecting. Or reading.
Annabelle: Haha, yes! You are probably even a bigger Anne fan than me, so this conversation is sure to be interesting! Have you noticed how all of the LMM’s books have very common themes of beauty and goodness, yet they never feel repetitive? Her writing is unique and I always know for sure it’s her I’m reading, but none of the writing ever gets old. At least, it never has for me, and I don’t see that ever changing. She could describe the haunting beauty of a forest or the calm glory of a sunset in every book (and sometimes she does 😉 ) but her descriptions never lose their charm and wonder.. It would be so easy to fall into repeating yourself when you write with her style, but it seems like LMM never does.
Ella Rose: It really is incredible! She has such a specific style and there is a feel to her books that I haven’t found anywhere else. Every time I open another book of hers, I find myself falling into that same, comfy place. Every story feels familiar, and yet most of them are completely new! I really appreciate that about her writing. In the Anne books especially, but also in a few others such as Jane of Lantern Hill and Magic for Marigold, she has such a clear grasp of what home is for her, and because of that, so do her characters. It’s really interesting to me because LMM led a rather troubled home life, living most of her childhood with her overbearing grandparents and ending up in a kind of sad marriage. It’s really quite bittersweet how she was able to infuse so much delight and hope into her stories. I mean, can you even tell that she was tragically depressed and utterly miserable when writing Anne of Ingleside?
Annabelle: I love what you’re saying, and it’s so true! All of her characters find a place that they adore and it becomes such a special thing in the stories. My favorite examples of this are in the Anne books and Jane of Lantern Hill. Anne comes into the story without a home or family, and she finds that at Green Gables. In a similar way, Jane is living in a place of loneliness and oppression, but through the book she is given the chance to pour herself into creating a home for herself. I know for me I’ve found these illustrations to be all the more true the older I get. Home is such a beautiful concept. It is a place where you love and are loved. It’s so sad and surprising that LMM didn’t have anything like that in her own life, because it really is so evident in her books. It’s almost as though she was using her writing as a way to dream about something she lacked. From her books you would think she had the most fulfilling life, abounding in joy and beauty, but based on what we know about her, that just wasn’t true. I wonder if she wrote these themes into her book knowing they were the truth that would be hers one day in heaven, or if she simply wished they were true then?
Ella Rose: It’s definitely a question to think on. In her private journals, Lucy Maud Montgomery actually shed a little bit of light on this. She wrote, “Thank God, I can keep the shadows of my life out of my work. I would not wish to darken any other life– I want instead to be a messenger of optimism and sunshine.” She did succeed in this, as most readers would agree. The really sad thing is that (with a few exceptions), the darker her life was, the brighter her writing. Anne of Ingleside is a great example of this. Published just three years before she died, the book is a precious record of the lives of Anne’s kids. Meanwhile, LMM struggled with a wayward prodigal son whilst trying to control the life of her better behaved son. Which is so interesting, because I can recall at least one short story in which she painted a mother acting the exact same way in an extremely negative light. I have read in more than one place that she did do what you’re saying– she wrote the life she could never have. She always insisted that neither the Anne books nor the Emily books were autobiographical, but that is because she wrote into them what she wished to have in her own life.
Annabelle: That’s honestly such a sad thing to think about. How did a writer so saddened and depressed hit upon so many truths in her writing?
Ella Rose: Okay, so I have a theory about this. Lucy Maud Montgomery was a staunch Canadian Presbyterian (as you’d probably deduce from her books) and she married a Presbyterian minister. But the sad, sad reality is that she did not seem to understand the concept of grace through faith. The adults in her books communicate deeply moralistic themes, emphasizing to children that if they’re good, things will be okay. So we have what she thought she believed. But then you look at the themes of her books. Adoption. Grace. Home. She had a yearning for something better. The actions of her characters speak louder than the words, because Jane does find a home. Emily does learn to belong. Anne does not remain an orphan. There is grace.
Annabelle: Oh yes, that’s so good! I find it so interesting that the parts of her books that speak loudest with truth are not what it would first look like. LMM was writing books with continuous religious themes and mentions, but I almost never found those to be the part that most spoke to me from her books. Not when there were pages upon pages of love and observation of nature and beauty. Not when you have such splendid characters such as Anne showing us good and joy and happiness. And yet these views always came from the young people, the girls who were looked upon as strange and out of step with reality, girls such as LMM (as a pastor’s wife) was not. You have to wonder why she so often wrote about people who lived a life she didn’t, for another reason than just hiding the darkness of her life with light. Why didn’t she write about subtle, normal characters who had happy lives? Perhaps she didn’t believe in all that her characters did, but at the very least she acknowledged it. In one way or the other, themes of beauty, love, home, and grace had found their way into her mind, and she had the words to express them, if not the heart to believe them fully.
Ella Rose: It’s funny, because I think she knew a lot of things deep down without accepting them or believing them. For example, take this gem of a quote from chapter 26 of Anne of Ingleside (which, again, was written while she struggled deeply with depression and anxiety), “God doesn’t make bargains. He gives… gives without asking anything from us in return except love. When you ask Father or me for something you want, we don’t make bargains with you… and God is ever and ever so much kinder than we are. And he knows so much better than we do what is good to give.” That quote, right there, tells me that she knew more than she realized she knew. Deep in her heart, she had some idea that God was not what the religion of the time said He was. I wish Lucy Maud Montgomery could have read her books through a completely fresh lense. Perhaps then she would have seen what can be seen by her readers, that grace will prevail.