Rae and I started talking about L.M. Montgomery's books (of which the Anne of Green Gables series is the most famous) this evening, and she was surprised by the minutiae that I remembered from the books. They were, without a doubt, my favorite books as a child, and the whole Anne set still adorns the top of my bookshelf. It's actually a replacement set; the only volume that survives from the original DiMarzo collection is a very well-worn Anne of the Island, which happens to be my favorite.
Our conversation got me started thinking about my favorite moments in Montgomery's books, and the events that really stuck with me, like Emily's dream that reveals the truth about the death of Ilsa's mother in Emily of New Moon. Another is in the later Anne books, when she gives birth to a baby girl that dies. It's in that scene that Anne quotes a line from Proverbs, "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." I've always associated that line with Anne, and with that moment, even knowing where it ultimately comes from.
One of the most moving moments in the Anne books for me is the death of Ruby Gillis, a pretty, flirty girl who was one of Anne's childhood playmates. She has consumption, but she and everyone else pretend nothing is wrong, even as her life is slipping away. Finally, alone with Anne, Ruby confesses her terror of dying, and even of heaven, because it won't be what she's used to. She talks about the life she so desperately wants to have, the man she wants to marry, her children, and how she knows, in an awful way, that she will never have any of it. It's such an emotional scene, but what comes in the next chapter always gets me even more:
"That good night in the garden was for all time. Anne never saw Ruby in life again. The next night the A.V.I.S. gave a farewell party to Jane Andrews before her departure for the West. And, while light feet danced and bright eyes laughed and merry tongues chattered, there came a summons to a soul in Avonlea that might not be disregarded or evaded. The next morning the word went from house to house that Ruby Gillis was dead. She had died in her sleep, painlessly and calmly, and on her face was a smile -- as if, after all, death had come as a kindly friend to lead her over the threshold, instead of the grisly phantom she had dreaded.
Mrs. Rachel Lynde said emphatically after the funeral that Ruby Gillis was the handsomest corpse she ever laid eyes on. Her loveliness, as she lay, white-clad, among the delicate flowers that Anne had placed about her, was remembered and talked of for years in Avonlea. Ruby had always been beautiful; but her beauty had been of the earth, earthy; it had had a certain insolent quality in it, as if it flaunted itself in the beholder's eye; spirit had never shone through it, intellect had never refined it. But death had touched it and consecrated it, bringing out delicate modelings and purity of outline never seen before -- doing what life and love and great sorrow and deep womanhood joys might have done for Ruby. Anne, looking down through a mist of tears, at her old playfellow, thought she saw the face God had meant Ruby to have, and remembered it so always. "
In so many ways, these books were my first experience with the terrible, as well as the wonderful, things in life. Ruby is the first of Anne's school friends to die, and it opens for her the knowledge that they will all grow up, grow old, and pass away. That's a really difficult thing to think about as a child. It's still hard to think about now.
Throughout the series Anne's friendships also grow and change, and sometimes they even end. She and Diana, who have always been very different, grow progressively apart, though they always remain in some ways "bosom friends." The possibility of losing friends is another hard thing to face as a kid, especially during transitional moments. I remember being afraid that Sara and I wouldn't be friends anymore once we went to NWC, and before we left high school for college, I worried that my friends and I might not stay close as life pulled us in different directions. (Things turned out well in both cases, I'm happy to say!) Other friends in the books marry and move away, even off Prince Edward Island, which in that time period virtually meant saying goodbye forever. Parents and loved ones die, sometimes tragically: Matthew, Anne's adopted father-figure, dies of a heart attack early in the series, and her son Walter, the shy, sensitive one, dies in the trenches of the Great War.
In a lot of ways, these books did for me what I think the Harry Potter series has done for a younger generation: provide a spectrum of life, happy and sad, funny and horrifying, that lets the reader experience those new emotions and events in the books (hopefully) before ever experiencing them in real life. Anne of Green Gables lacks the battle against ultimate evil, of course, but her smaller struggles--whether against prejudice, snobbery, or just that nosy Mrs. Lynde--are, in the long run, more relate-able for me than the adventures of a boy wizard. I think both series will stand the test of time (Anne, at 102 years since her first book, has certainly proved herself), but if I had a choice between offering one series or another to a child, particularly a girl, I think I would choose Anne.
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