Anne of the Century

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables, one of my favorite books growing up. Jen and I had the whole set of seven books then. Only a well-worn copy of Anne of the Island (the book I loved most out of the entire seven-book series) endures from that collection, but I picked up a brand new set at a tag sale a couple of years ago. It's funny that I couldn't bring myself to discard the old copy of Anne of the Island, when I had a perfectly new one in the very same edition, the same cover and typeface and everything, but there's a lot of history in that volume. Its spine is cracked, its cover worn, and so many pages dog-eared because of the number of times I read it and dreamed of being just like Anne--beautiful, spirited, and seeing the magic in everything.

The anniversary came to my attention because Gawker had an item mentioning that Margaret Atwood had written an essay on the book for a London newspaper (there's a link to it here. It's a good enough essay, but the best thing about it was that it made me want to read the books again, which I did tonight, at least two of them: Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island. Apparently for Atwood the other books couldn't come close to the original story, but for me it was that first trilogy that really sparked my imagination and remained warmly in my memory. This is probably due in no small part to that fact that Anne's friendship and semi-turbulent courtship with Gilbert Blythe takes place over the course of these three novels--spoiler alert, they get engaged at the end of book three! Rereading those pages tonight, I lingered on this paragraph at the end of Anne of Avonlea, which has caught my eye before:


Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself through seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music; perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from a green sheath.


Yes, there's some parts of the books where the nature imagery and the romanticism of it all forces me to skip ahead paragraphs or even pages--I can handle only so many descriptions of sun-dappled fields, so many exultations over fields of poppies or a formation of clouds, before I get a little impatient. It's also true that the movie versions of Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea (although the latter, for reasons of narration, was really a patchwork of the second and third books along with some made-up elements) did a great deal to cement the books, and Anne herself, in my mind's eye. There will never be another Anne for me but the actress who played her in those two movies; the Anne drawn on the bookcovers is merely an approximation. The handsome actor who played Gilbert, meanwhile, was probably one of my very first crushes in life, and I have to confess that if I had to choose between the Gilbert of the books and the Gilbert of the movies, I'll take the cinematic version, because he's just a little more spirited than his literary alter ego.

I guess it's hard to separate the magic of the books and movies in my mind, because both have been mutually reinforced by re-readings and re-watchings (last night, too tired to start one of the books, I watched clips from both movies on Youtube). The movies' score never fails to stir me, and I can't really describe the way I feel when I hear it, especially during those scenes when she stands on the cliffs of Prince Edward Island, and the wind blows the long grass behind her.

I've always wanted to see PEI, even though I know it's not the pristine, untouched place it was a hundred years ago when LM Montgomery was writing. I'm sure I'd be disappointed by the tourist spectacle that they've manufactured there--Atwood writes about the "Green Gables" they've tarted up, which apparently even includes the cameo brooch Marilla accuses Anne of stealing in the first book. I also have no interest in seeing the Anne of Green Gables musical. In fact, I'm kind of sad I even had to write that phrase. Anne was never a musical girl, she was a dramatist, a poet--I never forgot "The Lady of Shallott" or "The Highwayman" after she recites both of them in the movies. Probably the more so for the former, because of the whole Elaine floating down to Camelot stunt. Come on, did anyone who read that book NOT want to hop in a skiff, make like a corpse, and float downriver till you spring a leak and have to cling to a bridge pier until your erstwhile enemy sexily rescues you? That was the stuff of daydreams when I was younger, I tell you!

That's what's amazing about these century-old books, the way they still have the power to affect me. I still feel close to Anne when I read them (she would have said "kindred spirits"); I still laugh when she pulls off a particularly clever reply or when Davy asks hugely inappropriate questions the way little kids do, and I still cry at some parts, especially when Ruby Gillis dies in the third book. She was a girlhood friend of Anne's and they've grown apart because Ruby is really only interested in guys, but everyone knows she's dying of consumption and she's too terrified to talk about it to anyone but Anne. It's just so heartbreaking to read as Ruby, who Anne later reflects has really stored up all her treasures here on earth, talks about her struggle with fate: "I'm so young, Anne. I haven't had my life. I've fought so hard to live--and it isn't any use--I have to die--and leave everything that I cared for."

You know, I always go back and forth on whether I want a daughter or a son (because, as you know, Sean and I only want one; we're like Communist China) and usually I'm all for the son, having been a daughter already, but tonight after re-reading those books it strikes me that I want to give those to another little girl someday, and watch them ignite the tinder of her imagination like they once did mine.