Children's Literature

Since 1994, when biennial conferences sponsored by the L.M. Montgomery Institute began, numerous edited collections have appeared that have developed out of and expanded on conference themes. Such collections include L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture (after the 1996 conference; edited by Irene Gammel and Elizabeth R. Epperley, U of Toronto P, 1999), L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture (after the 2000 conference; edited by Gammel, U of Toronto P, 2002), The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery (after the 2004 conference; edited by Gammel, U of Toronto P, 2005), Storm and Dissonance (after the 2006 conference; edited by Jean Mitchell, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), and Anne Around the World (after the 2008 conference; edited by Jane Ledwell and Mitchell, McGill-Queen's U P, 2013). L.M. Montgomery and Gender, with its genesis in the 2016 conference, is thus the latest in a distinguished line of edited collections that build on conference [End Page 214] discussions to disseminate scholarship on various aspects of Montgomery's works and life.

As the introduction by the editors E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson makes clear, Montgomery's writing invites consideration of gender representation, in part because her most famous novel's protagonist, Anne, is initially unwanted at Green Gables because she is not a boy. The timing of this collection of essays investigating Montgomery and gender—it appears just after a century of women's suffrage in Canada—speaks to ongoing concerns over women's rights and roles, and as many of its articles suggest, Montgomery's own views of such rights and roles were neither static nor simple. The goal of the collection is thus to provide "an exploration of the variety of gender analyses possible in the early twenty-first century" in order to extend the feminist and genderstudies perspectives that have informed much Montgomery scholarship in the past and "to examine how Montgomery's constructions of gender reflect her own historical moment, shape later understandings of gender, and potentially transmogrify when examined through new perspectives" (2). The collection seeks to fulfil its goal through articles that examine constructions of femininity and masculinity, not only in Montgomery's novels, but also in her short fiction and journals.

The introduction, "'You Don't Want Me Because I'm Not a Boy': L.M. Montgomery and Gender," establishes context for the articles that follow. Striking about this context is the way it invites consideration of the myriad ways in which the terms "Montgomery" and "gender" intersect. Pike and Robinson provide evidence of Montgomery's attitudes to suffrage and gendered responses to her work (3), such as the recurrent use of "charming" in reviews (4); they also survey the male modernist Canadian literary scene and its response to—and, one might say, its deliberate exclusion of—Montgomery (4–5). In addition to this attention to the way gender informed the context within which Montgomery wrote and within which her writings were received, Pike and Robinson trace the importance of feminist scholarship in the reevaluation of Montgomery and the obstacles faced by early Montgomery scholars, many of them women working within a patriarchal academic establishment in the late 1970s to early 1990s. The introduction then situates the collection within a theoretical context by reviewing Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and Karen Barad's theory of "the materiality of identity" (10), which productively suggests "the agency of all actors," whether author, reader, or critic (11). Such agency may conflict, however; Pike and Robinson importantly recognize the [End Page 215] resistance that critical readings of Montgomery can face, if such readings counter the desire of fans (and governments and tourism industries) to maintain Anne of Green Gables, in particular, as "the perfect Canadian female archetype" (8). The introduction thus articulates the collection's concern with the ways social constructions of gender affected Montgomery and continue to affect the reception of and the scholarly conversation about her work, as well as investigating representations of gender within the texts themselves.

After the introduction, the collection is divided into five sections, each of which begins with a brief introduction setting up the theoretical context and situating the subsequent articles in relation to the theme. The first section, "Masculinities and Femininities," has three articles. Kazuko Sakuma's "The White Feather: Gender and War in L. M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside" provides historical context of the role of women in the white feather campaign in Britain and Canada and its effects on military recruitment as part of a reading of the representation of Walter Blythe's masculinity. Lesley D. Clement's "From 'Uncanny Beauty' to 'Uncanny Disease': Destabilizing Gender through the Deaths of Ruby Gillis and Walter Blythe and the Life of Anne Shirley" draws on theorists of the gendering of death as well as the historical context of the social meanings of tuberculosis to read Ruby's and Walter's deaths in Anne of the Island (1915) and Rilla of Ingleside (1921), as well as Anne's resistance to death in the Lily Maid chapter of Anne of Green Gables (1908). Ashley N. Reese's "Barney of the Island: Nature and Gender in Montgomery's The Blue Castle" investigates the gender complexity of Barney/John Foster as male personas for Montgomery's writing about nature, and the bridge this masculine/feminine character provides for Valancy's encounters with nature.

The second section, "Domestic Space," likewise has three articles. Bonnie J. Tulloch's "The Robinsonade versus the Annescapade: Exploring the 'Adventure' in Anne of Green Gables" uses a postcolonial lens to demonstrate the ways Montgomery's protagonist "translat[es] concepts of domesticity and adventure into her own terms" (91). Mavis Reimer's "Soliciting Home: The Cultural Function of Orphans in Early Twentieth-Century Canada" uses examples from a number of Montgomery novels, putting these examples in the context of the work of the Children's Aid Society; reports, advertisements, and photographs from the John Joseph Kelso archive make visible the discourses of adoption in Montgomery's time. Rebecca J. Thompson's "'That House Belongs to Me': The Appropriation of Patriarchal Space [End Page 216] in L. M. Montgomery's Emily Trilogy" performs a close reading of the parlor, Aunt Ruth's house, the Lookout Room, and the Disappointed House to demonstrate ways that Emily subverts patriarchal control as she grows as a woman and writer.

The third section, "Humour," again has three articles. Pike's "Cross-Dressing: Twins, Language, and Gender in L.M. Montgomery's Short Fiction" applies Butler's theories in reading the instability of gender norms in five magazine short stories using boy-girl twins; this instability is emphasized when considering revisions of these stories that facilitated their incorporation into novels. Wanda Campbell's "'I'm Noted for That': Comic Subversion and Gender in 'The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham's' and 'Aunt Philippa and the Men'" likewise compares short stories from magazines with later revisions for book publications, in this case by tracing strategies of repetition, reversal, and reciprocal interference. Vappu Kannas's "'Nora and I Got Through the Evening': Gender Roles and Romance in the Diary of L.M. Montgomery and Nora Lefurgey" analyzes humor in the co-authored diary to contrast female intimacy with conventional heterosexual romance, suggesting the diary's critique of the latter in its celebration of the former.

The fourth section, "Intertexts," contains four articles. Catherine Clark's "The Blue Castle: Sex and the Revisionist Fairy Tale" reads Montgomery's "adult" novel in the context of fairytale scholarship to suggest that despite its following of romantic formulas, the novel undermines gender norms, as both Barney and Valancy act as Cinderella- and prince-figures. Carole Gerson's "L.M. Montgomery, E. Pauline Johnson, and the Figure of the 'Half-Breed' Girl" considers the 1904 story "Tannis of the Flats" as well as other references throughout Montgomery's oeuvre in comparison with Johnson's poems and short stories to show "gaps and intersections between Canada's two major female literary celebrities" of the period (251). In contrast to Gerson's focus on a contemporary of Montgomery, Christina Hitchcock and Kiera Ball look back to Augustine's theological writings in "'Orgies of Lovemaking': L.M. Montgomery's Feminine Version of the Augustinian Community," arguing that Montgomery reverses Augustine's all-male community by valorizing female communities in the Anne series. Heather Ladd and Erin Spring's "Feminizing Thomson's The Seasons: Identity, Gender, and Seasonal Aesthetics in L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables" argues for the influence of James Thomson's 1730 The Seasons on Montgomery's early writing and poetry and in the creation of a "feminine" aesthetic in her first novel (although exactly what constitutes a "feminine" aesthetic might be more clearly articulated). [End Page 217]

The last section, "Being in Time," opens with creative non-fiction by Jane Urquhart. In "Her Reader," Urquhart imagines a scene from her mother's life, where the quotidian Ontario farmscape is seen anew because of reading Montgomery's novels; it powerfully communicates the impact Montgomery's fiction can have on readers (then and now). Two more conventional essays follow. Tara K. Parmiter's "Like a Childless Mother: L.M. Montgomery and the Anguish of Mother's Loss" builds on Rita Bode's exploration of the impact of Montgomery's mother's death; Parmiter, in contrast, considers Montgomery's experience of the death of her second child and the way that experience shapes the representation of Anne as mother in Anne's House of Dreams (1917). Elizabeth Rollins Epperly's "Magic for Marigold: Engendering Questions about What Lasts" rethinks the ending of Marigold's story in the context of Elizabeth Freeman's concept of "temporal drag"; the article pays close attention to publishing history as well as reflecting on Epperly's own changing reading of the novel.

The division into sections allows the editors to group articles and to provide additional context for each part; that division does not create silos, however, as articles reference each other across sections and in some cases could easily switch sections. For example, Pike's article on twins, with its recognition of metafictional references to the conventions of magazine romance stories, or Reimer's study of advertisements for the Children's Aid Society, would fit as easily into "Intertexts" as in their chosen places. These divisions have the advantage of emphasizing certain threads in the collection (particularly visually, in looking at the Table of Contents) without compromising connections between articles.

The collection's aim to explore "the variety of gender analyses possible" can only be fulfilled by its authors applying different theoretical perspectives to issues of gender in a selection of primary texts (2). To a certain extent, the collection succeeds in this goal. The diversity of historical context—military recruitment strategies and reactions to them (Sakuma); discourses of gender, disease, and death (Clement); discourses of fostering and adoption in Canada (Reimer); Canadian literary celebrity and Indigeneity (Gerson); publication context (Epperly)—provides much useful information for teachers and students of Montgomery's texts to understand the author's social milieu as it relates to her settings and characters. Diverse theoretical perspectives are also brought to bear; while Butler's theories of gender performativity are most frequently invoked, theories of representation of death (Clement), postcolonial theory as it relates to children's literature (Tulloch) [End Page 218] and to the representation of Indigenous women (Gerson), Bakhtin and Bergson's theories of humor (Campbell), fairytale scholarship (Clark), theology (Hitchcock and Ball), motherhood studies (Parmiter), and queer theory (Epperly) also provide lenses through which Montgomery's engagement with gender discourses can be read. Many articles situate themselves within a tradition of Montgomery scholarship, which—in conjunction with the bibliography at the end—makes the collection a useful resource for previous work on Montgomery.

In some respects, however, the collection could be more diverse. Although essays address lesser-known Montgomery works—such as magazine fiction, the co-authored diary, or the posthumous The Blythes Are Quoted (2009)—the privileging of Anne is noticeable: nine of the articles have novels of the Anne series as their primary texts. That focus may be explained by Anne's experience of unwantedness due to her gender, the number of novels in the series, and the perennial popularity of Anne of Green Gables, but the presence of only one article close-reading settings in the Emily books was disappointing; the focus there on the growth of the female writer suggests it would be productive to apply to Emily books the theoretical or historical approaches that were used with the Anne books. Another gap in the collection's diversity is acknowledged by the editors; although its authors range from new scholars to established names in Montgomery studies, "As far as we are aware, the writers all identify as women … and the analyses emerge primarily from what are usually called Eurocentric or Western viewpoints" (12). In recognizing this "gap," the editors invite future scholarship to bring "more racialized perspectives to come to bear on Montgomery's works and studies" (12), perhaps a hope that will be fulfilled in future collections.

Many essays in the collection pay attention to readership, something that scholars of children's literature will find useful. As Pike and Robinson note, Montgomery's reputation as a writer for girls affected her literary reputation (5), and although some of the primary texts discussed—such as The Blue Castle (1926) or the co-authored diary—are not addressed to child readers, such a distinction, for the novels at least, is now often lost. Parmiter, speaking of Anne's House of Dreams, notes that "Even though Montgomery may have imagined a more varied readership when she wrote the novel … [it] is regularly marketed today to child and teen readers" (318), and that holds true for novels like The Blue Castle as well. In the case of Anne's House of Dreams, Parmiter sees the blurring of audiences as productively allowing the [End Page 219] presentation of Anne as different from other mother-figures common in children's literature (318); other articles—by comparing Valancy to other Montgomery or fairytale heroines, for instance—address children's literature even when talking about adult books. Because of its consideration of readerships and the diverse approaches taken to the study of gender, this collection contains many thought-provoking essays that will be useful to scholars and students of Montgomery's works and of children's literature.