Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery / Karen Savage

Here is a comfort book which, for once, I actually have read fairly recently. I believe I read it within the past twelvemonth – but not via the Librivox recording by, yes, Karen Savage. (I’m a fan. Sue me. I accidentally downloaded a different version from Librivox, which was fine until chapter 3 turned out to be read by the same person who read the unfortunate Pride and Prejudice of earlier last year. Couldn’t do it.) Here her British accent is gone, replaced with a more North American one – and, indeed, at times her Anne sounded like Megan Follows. Well done indeed.

I don’t think I trust anyone who doesn’t love Anne. Female, at least; males have the innate can’t-read-a-book-about-a-girl block that sort of excuses them. The males I just feel sorry for, having been thus deprived.

Mine

I don’t remember exactly when I first read Anne of Green Gables. My original copy is a lovely jacketless hardcover with an olive green cover (I somehow used to blank on the actual descriptions of the house, and always pictured Green Gables as that color) with an oval photograph of a quite good Anne stand-in, inscribed by my two favorite aunts, Jean (my mother’s twin) and Rita (youngest of the family), and dated 1977. (It took quite a while to find the cover online. I could, of course, just have scanned mine, but that would have been easy.) I don’t know if I tried it when I was eight; I doubt I was in the habit of letting books sit about at that stage in my life. I do remember setting myself up in the living room with Anne in my lap and a dictionary beside me, with the belief that it was full of big words (as indeed it is, at least to an eight-to-ten year old). I remember the dictionary being completely forgotten within a chapter or so; anything I didn’t figure out through context remained a mystery for the time being, or became for me something like Anne’s concept of diamonds (“I do not think it means what you think it means”). It didn’t matter.

I also remember being completely knocked out of the book by the surprise that Matthew and Marilla were brother and sister, not husband and wife. There is very little textual evidence to that, and I assumed the usual. In Chapter 1: “‘It seems uncanny to think of a child at Green Gables somehow; there’s never been one there, for Matthew and Marilla were grown up when the new house was built–if they ever were children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them.’” This could (if one tries, or isn’t paying attention) (or is eight years old) be overlooked or mistranslated; it isn’t specific. The first time Marilla is referred to as “Miss Cuthbert” is in Chapter 6, and by then my assumptions were pretty deep-set; I just figured it was a colloquialism, not that I knew the word then. Then, later in the chapter: “‘And mind, Matthew, you’re not to go interfering with my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn’t know much about bringing up a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor.’” I don’t know if that’s when I surfaced sputtering “Huh-wha?”, but I remember experiencing the feeling. Funnily enough, paying attention to the matter for possibly the first time ever, at no point in AOGG is either Matthew or Marilla referred to as a sibling of the other. I wonder why.

Somehow, it’s taken an umpteenth read-through, and that in a different format than I’m used to, to bring out some depths I don’t know that I’ve ever really experienced before. Reading, I have been known to skim, my eye glancing over a line without capturing every word. Not an indication of boredom, that, just an eagerness to be getting on and a familiarity with the book which breeds – not contempt but casualness. Listening to the book being read aloud, I don’t miss a word. And Anne’s circumstances at the beginning of the book – as described as she rides to Green Gables with Matthew, and then to Bright River with Marilla the following day – moved me as they don’t seem to have ever done before. She has been starved for her entire brief life. Her parents are dead: perhaps this isn’t a source of sharp grief, as she never knew them; she can more mourn for the idea of them than for the mother and father she has never experienced. She has been shuttled from place to place, with never anything that could be called a home in all her eleven years, being forced to learn to cope with drunkards and terrible neglect and far too much responsibility even in that time of responsible children. No one has ever wanted her as anything but a workhorse from the time she was but months old – and she knows it. This would be an evil thing for any child, but for one of the intelligence and quick sensitivity of Anne it’s stunning that she came out of it still bright and funny and capable of love and trust.

The ride to Green Gables: happier than she has ever been, excited, finally for the first time since she was three months old actually wanted by someone, filled with love she wants only to give to something, someplace, someone, the deep thirst for some sign of affection from someone else, and to put the hell she’s gone through for eleven years behind her once and for all … and all the while unbeknownst to her Matthew and the reader are aware that this flight of happiness is going to come dropping from the sky like a bow-shot swan. “When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something – much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.” This is where not only the reader’s loyalty to Anne is built – for a child to be still so open and willing to love after all she’s been through is remarkable – but also the reader’s loyalty to Matthew and Marilla both.

Marilla, I think, took longer to gain my absolute affection; I love her much more now than when I was Anne’s age, I think. Now I can enjoy watching her sense of humor brought back to life like the Tin Man, one creaky joint at a time receiving oil, until finally Anne has had at least as much of an impact on her as she has on Anne.

Matthew won me over fast and hard, from the first time I read this – the shy, silent man who finds Anne an “interesting” creature, and who recognized in her something shining that he cannot identify but cannot bear to destroy.

“What good would she be to us?”
“We might be some good to her,” said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.

“There, there, Marilla, you can have your own way,” said Matthew reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to her as you can without spoiling her. I kind of think she’s one of the sort you can do anything with if you only get her to love you.”

My adoration for Matthew is second only to Anne’s own, I think. I came very, very close to skipping over Chapter 37. I knew what it would do to me. And it did. But it was not a bad thing. My heart broke, yes, but there was no unfairness to it, no need to rail against an unjust world. It was sad, sorrowful, and yet sweet.

Ah, now, see, that word – “sweet” – it’s so ill-used now. The Doctor had it right, in one of my favorite lines: “Sweet, maybe. Passionate, I suppose. But don’t ever mistake me for nice.” Sweet, nowadays, almost automatically makes the jaded world roll its eyes and mentally substitute “saccharine” –

- overly or sickishly sweet
- ingratiatingly or affectedly agreeable or friendly
- overly sentimental: mawkish

I object. I can’t help feeling that if this book makes you sick with its sweetness the problem lies more in you than the writing. I read with a much more critical eye than when I was eight, and I still see nothing “affected” or “mawkish” about L.M. Montgomery. There was a piece in one of the Emily books which I’ll need to paste here about types of books and what they do to you. For me it’s like how I feel after eating a salad for lunch as compared with having gone to McDonald’s: the latter might taste pretty good with all its wonderful fat and salt, but afterward I will not be happy with myself, physically, emotionally, or mentally.

“Sweet” should mean the sight or scent of a wild rose, or the taste or scent of a strawberry. It should mean the feeling of being told you’re loved or wanted, or the feeling of loving. There’s nothing artificial about the sweetness encompassed in Anne. It saddens me that Anne is seen as on a par with those pink-dripping big-eyed round-featured squeaky-voiced …things that romp through what much of what passes for cartoons in the past couple of decades. This is a gentle book, even in its pain; it prefers to linger on loveliness, and heal with it. It tries to show that it might not be impossible to live a life colored with optimism and enthusiasm, and to resist the temptations of cynicism or uncharitable impulses. Anne isn’t perfect. She’s not the embodiment of original sin she’s led to think she is (I’ll come back to that), but – for one thing – she does like a good gossip. When friendship with the minister’s wife underscores for her how wicked gossip is, she therefore tries to avoid it. This isn’t saccharine – this is a girl trying to be a decent human being.

Here again word meaning has become degraded: “wicked” is much more trivial than it once was. Now it feels closer to something like “naughty” (another old-fashioned word). What it means is “evil or morally bad in principle or practice; sinful; iniquitous”. Gossip is usually malicious, can cause horrible pain and damage, can destroy lives, and is never something most people want to be the subject of. Sin didn’t used to be something to take lightly; blood-and-thunder-fire-and-brimstone preachers were more common and better tolerated a hundred years ago, and everyone in a community like Avonlea would know for certain that sinning led to hell and hell was unthinkably awful. It’s unfashionable nowadays to be a good Christian, and so perhaps that’s why Anne’s teeth-gritted determination to avoid uncharitable remarks even about the Pyes might be seen as saccharine. I think it’s rather heroic.

Something else that makes a mockery of the idea of this story being saccharine is the humor, which – especially from Marilla – is not infrequently sarcastic. (“I’ll risk it.”) Marilla single-handedly could rescue AoGG from saccharine; her commentary on the causes of Diana’s episode of drunkenness are acerbic (and dead on).

This time through I was surprised, and dismayed, at how often Anne is labeled a bad child, and how thoroughly everyone allows her to agree with the label. She is accident-prone, and makes mistakes, and is the very definition of flighty as a child – but none of what she does is done out of badness. Intent is everything, and while

it’s not desirable to wander off into a dream and forget to cover the sauce for the pudding, it wasn’t as if she put the mouse in herself – or as if she refrained from saying anything and just said “No, thank you, I don’t want any sauce” when it was passed around. She was as horrified as Marilla – more, because no one of any intelligence

enjoys making mistakes. Especially silly ones.

One of my favorite pieces:
“Mrs. Spencer says–oh, Mr. Cuthbert! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!! Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!!!”
That was not what Mrs. Spencer had said; neither had the child tumbled out of the buggy nor had Matthew done anything astonishing. They had simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the “Avenue.”
- And then she was silent for three more miles. I have a peculiar tendency to use this …

I’m a reader, a book addict. I read everything from history (not as much as I ought) to cozy mysteries (though I hate that category name), from epic to urban fantasy, memoir and pop science and writing and art and Shakespeare and all points in between. I own an idiotic number of books of all genres. Out of all of them, when I need something to ease my soul or refresh my spirit, it is Anne I turn to.

Related articles

• Emily Climbs – L.M. Montgomery (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)
• Emily of New Moon – L.M. Montgomery/ Susan O’Malley (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)
• Emily’s Quest – L.M. Montgomery (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)
• The Story I’m Living… Minus Prince Edward Island (kathrynleighaz.wordpress.com)

 

Emily’s Quest – L.M. Montgomery

Reading Emily of New Moon I began to have an idea of why I’ve never loved and spent time with Emily Byrd Starr as I have with Anne Shirley or Pat Gardiner. I began to suss it out then, but I loved the book and it still seemed strange to me. With Emily Climbs it began to seem clearer – that dark streak running through it, I said, and left it at that. But it is only on finishing Emily’s Quest that I fully understand – and that is partly because I know, on closing this book, I will be leaving it closed for possibly another twenty years. Whether I have the moral courage to read it then will be interesting to see – almost like Emily’s fortitude in reading her letter from her fourteen-year-old self to herself at twenty-four, except unlike the very young Emily I know the pain within the pages aimed twenty years ahead.

There is pain in the other books, deep and seemingly impassible, and I always cry over the other books (Matthew…). I recognize myself in Valancy, heaven knows, and Anne and Pat, and so their pain is very real to me. But it is their pain. The pain that laces through Emily is personal. I have never read L.M. Montgomery’s journals or memoirs or letters, so I don’t know if my reading is true, but it feels as though a great deal of Emily comes from Lucy Maude. I find it hard to believe, for one thing, that the snippets of reviews Emily reads to her staunchly supportive family aren’t true to life. My feeling is that while the specifics of the circumstances of the years spanned in Quest are wholly fictional, wholly Emily’s own, the emotions are not in the least fictional. Fictionalized.

After decades loving Anne and Pat and Valancy, still I can’t help but identify most strongly of all with Emily – and it is the Emily in this book that brings me to tears. Alone, and left alone, and in no small way responsible for that aloneness, but knowing that there was no other action or set of actions that would have ever been tolerable in any given situation. “I have not heard even from Ilse for a long time. She has forgotten me, too.” I know that feeling well. That was the feeling – of having been forgotten in general, compounded with actually being told by someone I held dear that he had forgotten about me, that caused me to – as someone wise recently said – be still and lock the gate from the inside. I walked away then and made some decisions and will hold to them. My locks might get a bit rusty.

Facing the daily struggle against the inner demon editor who insists that every word written is trash, or worse, that no one will read this nonsense, that … well. She was, obviously, far more successful in ignoring or silencing that voice than I ever have been, or, at times, ever hope to be. It’s funny, though, and I apologize for a spoiler, but even Emily’s greatest literary triumph to date was painful to me; I haven’t finished a book, much less had it rejected by uncounted publishers, but I know that if I did, and gave up as Emily does, there is no Uncle Jimmy figure in my life to pull it out of storage and send it out again.

So I wonder, in a way, that I didn’t love these books more when I was the age of Emily (book two). An artist of extraordinary talent, when I wanted to be, planned to be an artist; a writer heroine, when I already was scribbling a little here and there; hard

work leading to success and happiness. It should all have appealed, then. Now … the pain is too real, and the abruptly happy ending not as easy to swallow. It’s a beautiful book, and a beautiful trilogy … but not for the young and hopeful, or the … what? Not-so-young and futile-feeling. Perhaps it’s for those who have been through the pain and persevered better than I have. For me? I think Emily is going to go into a box, and the box is going to be set at the back of a shelf, and the dust will collect on it, and – no. I won’t even express the hope that one day I’ll read them again without the ache. On the shelf they’ll stay.

Related articles

• Emily of New Moon – L.M. Montgomery/ Susan O’Malley (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)

My review of Emily Climbs

 

Emily Climbs – L.M. Montgomery

I did some reflecting in my (review? Essay? Piece?) thing on Emily of New Moon about why I don’t love Emily as much as Anne, why I haven’t read the trilogy in many years when I won’t let a year go by Anne-less. Emily Climbs clarifies the matter a bit more.

There is a great deal more cynicism in Emily’s world than in Anne’s. I was astonished reading the first chapters at Emily’s perceptiveness – and, like any perceptive person moving among the unimaginative and less incisive, she has, very young, developed an almost inevitable shell of jaded sarcasm. Mr. Carpenter doesn’t call her “Jade” for nothing. I don’t class myself with Emily (or Anne) in terms of intelligence or sensitivity, but still, I am of their ilk. Emily weeps over David Copperfield – oh, how I understand that. Aunt Ruth (notof the race that knows Joseph) upbraids her for the tears – crying over people who don’t exist! And, with Emily, I protest that of course they exist. In a meta moment, Emily tells her they are as real as Aunt Ruth is – and so they are, of course. But Ruth is part of the force that demonstrates daily for Emily how flat most people’s lives are – none of the terrible deep dark moments for them, but also none of the marvellous highs – nor even the small secret pleasures a combination of being able to see and being able to appreciate can bring. Aunt Elizabeth is Marilla without the sense of

Queen Alexandra and her dog collar

humor, and with a solid layer of scarring – from the accident with Jimmy to, probably, the fact that she is single in a time and place where spinsterhood is a wretched condition – to prevent most softer emotions … Aunt Laura has her moments, is loving and more willing and able to share it, but is prim and easily shocked. Uncle Jimmy is wonderful – but not comfortable, always; there is the occasional glimpse of what he might have been, of what was all but killed in him by the fall into the well, and you never quite know when it will make an appearance. Dr. Burnley has gone from bitter and cynical to … rather less bitter and cynical, and somewhat excessive. Aunt Ruth … Were I Emily, I think of the two conditions going to school in Shrewsbury, that I would lodge with Aunt Ruth and that I could not write any fiction for three years, the Aunt Ruth half would be worse. Fiction will still be there when it’s over; the scars Aunt Ruth might leave will linger forever. Writing fiction is a passion which would not die in three years; living with Aunt Ruth would be torment. And so it was.

The idea of the wild, dark vein that exists here but not in most of the rest of L.M.M.’s work intensified as it went on. Emily has a mean streak – not very big, and not well-developed, but expressed now and then in

Lord Byron - still dying

sarcasm and cutting remarks which send people off bleeding and vowing never to mess with her again. And she has an understanding for darkness; she hears goblins as well as wind spirits, and the thought is inescapable that she could have easily gone either way. Had she been raised by Uncle Wallace … I can see her at the age she is ending the trilogy, with a career as a viciously funny writer, slashing more tender folk to shreds and making millions doing it, but treasuring more the string of scalps at her belt than all the money.

I think I was too young to get hold of all of this the last time I read Emily, and so

Giovanna Degli Albizzi

these three books were not as enjoyable as the sweet and lovely place that is Anne’s Avonlea. Anne has her moments – but compare her handling of Josie Pye to Emily’s dealings with the evil Evelyn Blake. Anne wins by taking the high road, and Josie Pye, Pye-like, would never recognize her victory; Emily routs Evelyn foot and horse and leaves her bleeding in the dust.

I loved this tale of the teenaged girl beginning to make a mark for herself. The tangled webs, to reference another LMM work, are beginning to tighten, but they aren’t too heavy yet; the future is still completely unwritten, or seemingly so, and hope is high. There is a savor of the time and place, not so very long ago or very far away except in everything that matters; good companionship; wonderful writing; pathos in its best sense and moments that made me laugh aloud. Middle books are often maligned and disregarded things, but this is by far my favorite of the three. I’ll never again be able to leave Emily out my list of the Montgomery girls I love.

Related articles

• Emily of New Moon – L.M. Montgomery/ Susan O’Malley (agoldoffish.wordpress.com)

My review of Emily’s Quest

 

Emily of New Moon – L.M. Montgomery/ Susan O’Malley

I read through just about all the L.M. Montgomerys last year, except for Emily. The main reason was that I simply couldn’t find Emily of New Moon (still can’t find the book). There was a small, faint secondary cause in that I never loved Emily Byrd Starr as much as Anne Shirley or Pat Gardiner or Valancy Stirling. I don’t know why. Perhaps the proto-sixties name? Perhaps the more strongly emphasized “queerness” of the girl – where Anne is queer in her intelligence and dreaminess, Emily is all that and more. (I always wonder if there really are children like Emily – or Anne, or Paul, or, straying outside of LMM, Jane Eyre. I mean, I think I can safely say I was what LMM often calls a “queer” child, but I don’t think I attempted the vocabulary these kids do.) Perhaps it is the tendency toward first-person narrative through Emily’s letters to her father; even when I was a child I was not fond of a child’s point of view.

Or it might have been the whole story’s beginning. It’s not fun, and it’s not fast. Young Emily’s father is ill; before he can tell her properly, Ellen Green (the Help) announces to Emily that he is dying; he spends a sweet week or so assuring her of his lack of fear and propping up her courage, and then dies. And the next several chapters dwell on the days that follow, on Emily’s pain and others’ inevitable misinterpretation of her brave front, and the negotiations amongst her mother’s kin about who will take charge of her. Six chapters later she arrives at New Moon (not a spoiler, since, you know, it’s in the title), and begins her new life. It was beautifully done, but where Anne’s story starts with hope and suspense and Pat’s starts with security and love, Emily’s starts with fear and death. And yet it isn’t a death like others in the Montgomery canon: we get to know Douglas Starr just a little before he’s gone. It’s a loss – he would have been a terrific character to spend more time with, especially since fathers are scarce in LMM’s PEI – and I confess to being moved by his explanation to Emily about what was happening, but if I cried (and I’m not saying I did) it was more out of sympathy for the bereaved child and the beauty of the writing than the grief that is such a part of other losses in Anne’s and Pat’s worlds.

Or, perhaps, it was the foreknowledge that however things work out, there will be pain for someone. Emily is the object of two of her friends’ affections: Teddy and Perry both, in their own ways, intend to marry her one day. And then of course there is Dean. (One of my favorite moments in anything I’ve read this year is when Dean tells her he will wait for her – and Emily interprets this in a much more immediate setting.) At least two of these as men will be disappointed, and it is fairly clear that it will not be a minor disappointment. The stage is set for a tragedy of anxiety on Emily’s part and crushed hopes for two people that she loves but is not in love with … Happily, while I have my strong suspicions, I can’t remember how it all does play out, and I can hold out hope for the one I think will be hurt most if he is not the one. (It is rather spectacular reading this as if for the first time – new Lucy Maude Montgomery! Rare and wonderful.)

I do like Emily, although … no. No, I don’t love her as I love Anne (or Valancy or Pat). I wonder if they would like each other; I think they both have the gift of friendship (as Anne is somewhere described) – Anne rather more than Emily – but I don’t somehow see them being deeply bound kindred spirits and bosom friends. They are, perhaps, too much alike while still – thank goodness – being very different. L.M.M. did not repeat herself. Despite the vocabulary, the cleverness, the orphan status, the dreaminess, the poetry, Emily is still very different from Anne, and it sets some expectations on their heads. What would have gutted Anne and kept her out of school for months or forever just makes Emily mad and determined to not be gotten the better of: she is knocked down, but bounces back up at once, writes about what happened in an outpouring of a letter to her father, and puts it behind her. (I wish I could do that so well.) Anne never lacked for courage, but her spirit was over-sensitive (I know whereof I speak). Perhaps it is partly her adversarial friendship with vivid, ferocious Ilse that helps Emily to put conflicts aside and move on; Anne’s best friend is mild and willing to follow where she leads, and not as quick and sharp as she. The two heroines’ trials and tribulations are not wildly different in essence – each has teacher issues, each has hair issues, each has a frightening experience in a spare room bed (leading me to wonder if Emily grew out of discarded drafts for Anne) – but the details and circumstances are very different.

I do love Emily’s companions, both imaginary and flesh and blood. I was never this creative in invisible friends; I had an invisible horse (in appearance and name taken from a book, I admit) who ran alongside the car when we went anywhere, and I could see her following the topography of the verge, jumping over obstacles and keeping up easily. I’m surprised I didn’t steal the Wind Woman. Emily’s flesh-and-blood friends, Ilse and Teddy and Perry, are well-realized and realistic, and I enjoyed all three of them: Ilse Burnley, the poor wild child whose mother vanished so long ago and whose father won’t forgive anyone for it, especially his daughter; hired boy Perry Miller (poor in a different way) who says he’s going to be Prime Minister one day and who is confirmed in this prediction by the narrator; Teddy Kent (poor in yet a third way), the dreamy sweet boy who draws even more fluently than Emily writes and whose mother is extremely alarming in this age of Criminal Minds and CSI.

Something that shocked me a little was how high kitten mortality is in this book. I don’t remember this in other LMM’s; I remember the cat Anne & co tried and failed to euthanize (Rusty), but otherwise all deaths are of natural causes. At New Moon and its surrounds, though, there is carnage. I don’t remember being bothered by it as a teen or tween or whatever I was when I read this first, though, which surprises me; I would have thought it would leave scars.

As the drowning of superfluous cats is a commonplace in this setting, and unthinkable here and now, so are a few other things through the book. Hopefully, for one, Mrs. Kent, whose attitudes are commonly known, would, today, have been helped or separated from Teddy. Another: the teaching methods of Miss Brownell would – hopefully – have been checked long ago. And for another – and this is not, I think, so positive as the rest – the amount of time Dean Priest spends with Emily wandering the countryside would be looked askance upon today. A thirty-six year old man simply can’t spend hours upon hours alone with a twelve year old girl without raising eyebrows, if not alarms. And it’s horrible that it has to be so – and it really does have to be so. Then, there was never the hint of a suspicion of an insinuation that the relationship was anything other than wholesome and happy and nurturing. Now the police and child welfare services would have been alerted after the first visit.

The writing is still a source of great joy for me. I’ve decided my attachment to adjective and description (and italics) goes back to early and prolonged exposure to (along with Tolkien) L.M. Montgomery:

Blair Water people thought Cousin Jimmy a failure and a mental weakling, but he dwelt in an ideal world of which none of them knew anything. He had recited his poems a hundred times thus as he boiled the pigs’ potatoes. The ghosts of a score of autumns haunted the clump of spruces for him. He was an odd, ridiculous figure enough, bent and wrinkled and unkempt, gesticulating awkwardly as he recited, but it was his hour. He was no longer “simple Jimmy Murray” but a prince of his own realm. For a little while, he was strong, and young, and splendid, and beautiful, a credited master of song to a listening, enraptured world. None of his prosperous, sensible Blair Water neighbors ever lived through such an hour. He would not have exchanged places with one of them.

Emily listened to him; felt vaguely that, if it had not been for that unlucky push into the New Moon well, this queer little man beside her might have stood in the presence of kings. But Elizabeth had pushed him into the New Moon well, and as a consequence he boiled pigs’ potatoes and recited to Emily.

Well, if over-using adjective helps me approach what LMM accomplished, so be it. The books would not be the same without the profusion of flowers and trees, of sunsets and seascapes, and I would never want them to be different.

As for the audiobook… Susan O’Malley is not my favorite of narrators. I’m wondering if her older Emily is a more pleasant voice than her eleven-year-old Emily, if she recorded the other books in the trilogy (note: she did not – the other Emily books are not up on Audible); I’m afraid I don’t admire her children’s voices. Or her men’s. Laura’s is nice, I have to say. Overall, though, I’m sorry to say she reminds me of someone I speak to fairly often at work, whose response to a courteous “how are you?” is always “*sigh* Oh, okay…” There’s an inherent discontent to that tone, and it doesn’t fit.

There are some audio typos which are extremely unfortunate, and I’m puzzled as to why a publisher’s recording was not … er, proofread. Errors like this in Librivox I can understand and pardon, but in something created for sale I don’t get it. I wonder, though, how it works; does it ever happen that some lackey with the publisher listens to the audiobook with the text in hand? Or does it all depend on whether errors are caught at the time of recording? Examples: Instead of “a can of bait” she says “bat”. A sky is powered with stars rather than powdered with them. One mistake which illustrates the desirability to use different initials for major characters was a reference to “Emily Green” instead of Ellen Green – that was startling. So was an instance of “Rhoda Starr” instead of Rhoda Stuart (and oh why are the only Stewarts or Stuarts in LMM this nasty little bint and Christine?). Other times a sentence’s meaning is shifted by emphasis: she inserts a pause after “autumn” in the phrase “her first autumn there”, which makes it sound as though it is Emily’s first autumn ever rather than her first at New Moon. Where a line ought to have been “He would not have exchanged places with one of them”, instead it is “He would not have exchanged places with one of them”, and feels unfinished. There is a great deal of that throughout, a sort of lack of conviction at the end of a sentence undermining the conclusion of it; it’s just short of the obnoxious habit of a great many teenagers to end all sentences on an upward, questioning inflection.

Even so, I became used to it and I’m rather sorry there is no audiobook for Emily Climbs or Emily’s Quest. But … the book is still not one of my favorites among the LMM’s, for some reason I still can’t put a finger on. I love Cousin Jimmy. I love Dean Priest. I enjoy the foursome of children, and Aunt Laura. I came to admire Aunt Elizabeth. But somehow none of it connects as deeply.

I won’t make this a bi-fold review, but I watched the first episode of the Canadian TV series based on Emily, and it was bizarre: Emily befriends an Indian boy and protects him at school, and her father falls from a ladder while fixing the roof and slowly expires from that. Her mother haunts her, and so do other apparitions, and altogether it made me wonder what book the program’s writers were referencing (and whether they were mixing medications). Emily is a solitary and strange ten-year-old, and does not go to school. Her father is consumptive, and has been slowly dying for years. Her mother is a distant lovely memory, and her imagination never supplies such creations as shown. (And Stephen McHattie plays Uncle Jimmy – ? Whoa.) (Apropos of nothing, he was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. I’ve been through there – I love that name.) I do wonder why folk undertake to make films out of books when the films bear almost no resemblance to the books. And how on earth do people go from the lovely, warm, humane prose of L.M. Montgomery to the travesties I have seen on television? It is – pardon the jump to another old favorite – inconceivable.

(Well for heaven’s sake – why didn’t I find this when I was hunting? Emily is available on Project Gutenberg Australia.)

My review of Emily Climbs
My review of Emily’s Quest

 

Anne of Avonlea: In defense of Miss Lavendar

 

I mentioned in one of the other posts that Miss Lavendar has always been one of my favorite characters in the Anne oeuvre.  Now that I’m an old maid myself, I take her as something of a patron saint.  “Some are born old maids, some achieve old maidenhood, and some have old maidenhood thrust upon them.”

In the Kevin Sullivan Anne films, there was no Miss Lavendar, and in a way perhaps that’s just as well.  When I realized that the BBC version of Anne of Avonlea was including the whole Echo Lodge storyline I was excited, and, of course, nervous.  Long ago when I was posting about the Sullivan things, I mentioned how extraordinarily important casting has been to me with the Lord of the Rings films, and how it has been even more worrying to me with Anne projects.  These characters – Frodo and Sam, and Anne and Diana – have been part of me since I was eleven or twelve.  If they’re given faces and voices, they need to be the perfect faces and voices, or there’s no point to the whole thing. 

Kathleen Byron is the BBC’s Miss Lavendar.  She looks the part, if perhaps a little too old.  (to the ‘net: the mini-series was made in 1975; Kathleen Byron was born 1921 (oh, dear, and just died in 2009): she was 54 at the time of filming.  FWIW Anthony Ainley was 11 years younger.)    She sounds the part, in terms of delivery - except for the accent, though hers doesn’t seem as … quirky as others’.  She’s not, perhaps, perfect – but she’s good. 

She was a little lady with snow-white hair beautifully wavy and thick, and carefully arranged in becoming puffs and coils. Beneath it was an almost girlish face, pink cheeked and sweet lipped, with big soft brown eyes and dimples … actually dimples. She wore a very dainty gown of cream muslin with pale-hued roses on it … a gown which would have seemed ridiculously juvenile on most women of her age, but which suited Miss Lavendar so perfectly that you never thought about it at all.

However. 

Where she looks the part, and her voice is unobjectionable, what is given to her to say in that voice is … terrible.  (For one thing, it’s not “Charlotte the Fourth”.  It’s Charlotta.  Why would you even bother to do that?)  I said in the last post that it seems like while Anne of Green Gables goes smoothly (and I’m half relieved and half really sad that the BBC AoGG is lost), once the later books come into play some sort of brain rot sets in.  Miss Lavendar wasn’t so badly done by in the first disc of the miniseries - but in episode four Stephen Irving comes back to Avonlea, and back into her life. 

 OK, I’m enough of a grown-up to get over an actor’s past roles. (Except for the guy who played that pedophile in Without a Trace.  And that guy who kidnapped Scully in X-Files and called her “girly-girl”.  Those poor actors are marked for life in my brain.) Except … in Ainley’s Master’s first story, he took over the body of Nyssa’s father, wiping his brain.  After a few minutes it seems like that’s what happened here.  He tells Miss Lavendar, and I quote:

Stephen Irving: You’d be astonished how much I’ve learned about forbearance.
Miss Lavendar: Stephen, I’m glad you’ve learned forbearance – but I don’t want you to start practicing it on me. I want you to tell me the things about me that you don’t like.
SI (protesting feebly): Ohh…
ML: There must have been things.
SI: Well, there was one thing. You were just a girl then; it was a line of talk you indulged in, about flowers having souls, and stars singing hymns. That really used to shrivel me up. (Miss Lavendar is clearly shocked) Oh, I’m sorry – I’ve hurt your feelings. I shouldn’t have said that.
ML: No, no, I asked you to – but – well -
SI: Yes?
ML: If poetry ‘shrivels you up’, Stephen, then -
SI: Yes?

And here, where the poor woman should have gotten up, and put out a hand, and said “If poetry, which has helped me survive all the long years since you went away and which means more to me than anything I’ve had in all that time, ‘shrivels you up’, then – it’s been lovely to see you again.  When do you return to America?”

But instead she says this:

Then I shall keep it out of earshot of you, that’s all.  I shall talk very soberly about the price of cheese. (They both laugh) But I warn you: the moment your back is turned, I shall slip away to the book cupboard and have a little swig of Shelley or Swinburne – and nobody’s ever going to cure me of that!

Something must have taken over Miss Lavendar’s body too. Because that’s … not right.  Poetry is not something anyone needs to be “cured” of.  That’s a problem throughout the mini-series, that attitude, and the reason I can’t rate this thing too highly despite some good aspects.

I need to quote the book again:

[Stephen Irving] did not ask Anne to translate her remark into prose. Like all kindred spirits he “understood.”

See?  Paul wasn’t a total anomaly.  He had a father who understood, whom Anne considered a kindred spirit.  Anne’s not an idiot: she didn’t hand out the sobriquet “kindred spirit” to just anyone.  Obviously evil influences are at work in the film.  If poetry in the girl he was courting “shrivels” this person up, how on earth must he feel about it in his pre-teen son? 

And I just have to say – “shriveled me up”? Really? This is the best vocabulary you could come up with? Wow.

In the book, CharlottA adores her.  In the film, she humors her and talks about her behind her back:

Charlotta: She goes on like that all the time. Trees and all.
Anne: What do you mean, “trees and all?”
She talks to ‘em.
Oh, well, that’s just an imaginative way of talking, like – like poetry.
We take no notice, ’cause we know her.

And Anne’s not exactly being a pillar of strength supporting her there. 

What in the world did the scriptwriter (Elaine Morgan) have against Miss Lavendar??  I keep going back over the online editions of the book, trying to see if there were seeds for the creature Miss Lavendar becomes here.  Because there’s more than just the wrong name for the girl and the willingness to give up poesy.  As if that wasn’t bad enough.  Oh, no. 

The wedding is on, and there’s ever so much to be done for it, of course. 

Charlotta flutters about the room, in a right tizzy.
Marilla: Come here!
And it turns out that there’s a tremendous amount of cleaning and cooking to be done in the next couple of days, and Charlotta is the only one to do it all.
There’s the bride, isn’t there? (Her tone of voice, as always, is priceless)
Oh, Miss Lewis – No, you can’t trust her to do a thing.  Ever since her beau
came back, she doesn’t rightly know where she is.  …

How the scene actually reads:

“Praise be to goodness you’ve come,” [Charlotta] said devoutly, “for there’s heaps of things to do. . .and the frosting on that cake WON’T harden. . .and there’s all the silver to be rubbed up yet … and the horsehair trunk to be packed. . .and the roosters for the chicken salad are running out there beyant the henhouse yet, crowing, Miss Shirley, ma’am. And Miss Lavendar ain’t to be trusted to do a thing.  I was thankful when Mr. Irving came a few minutes ago and took her off for a walk in the woods. Courting’s all right in its place, Miss Shirley, ma’am, but if you try to mix it up with cooking and scouring everything’s spoiled. That’s my opinion, Miss Shirley, ma’am.”

First of all, Anne – and Diana - went happily, having volunteered, with no coercion of any sort, no bargaining.  And Charlotta was not the little slavey the mini-series would have us believe.  In other words, Miss Lavendar would be in there cooking and cleaning, and in fact was in the trenches until Stephen came for her – and she could not keep her mind on her work.  There is nothing at all anywhere in the book to even raise the flicker of an inkling that Miss Lavendar Lewis was the indolent airhead shown in this film: quite the opposite.  I can’t fathom why the screenwriter would make the choice to show her as such.

Charlotta the Fourth: A lady like Miss Lavendar – she sees things the way she wants to see them and nobody can alter that.
Marilla: Well, Leonora – you don’t know me.
Charlotta IV: No, ma’am – but Miss Marilla ma’am – you don’t know her!

Miss Lavendar: To keep happiness alive in one corner of one’s heart – that’s the most impor -
Marilla:  Lavendar. I want to talk to you.
L: Aren’t those roses beautiful – just the color of dawn.
M: Well, you’ve got a good memory, at any rate – I’d say it was a good ten years since you last saw the dawn. … Charlotte, fiddlesticks. I’ve known women who had cats and called them after each other, but not people.
L: … I’ve offered to help, she’ll tell you herself, but she’s said I’ll only be in the way, so what can I do?
M: You could put your hand in your pocket and hire someone to help her! … It wouldn’t break you to pay the rate of a grown woman! Goodness, gracious knows there’s enough work! If it were me I couldn’t stand by and see a half-grown child like that drive herself while it was in my power to prevent it!
L: I was sure you couldn’t. That’s what I always said, Marilla was so warm-hearted, she was never one to put her own interests first, I said. (rings bell; Charlotte comes in)  Charlotte, such good news Marilla has brought us.  You remember how Anne said what fun it would be if she could come and spend the next two days and nights here? And then she could spend every minute of the time helping you with the chores for the wedding?
Charlotte: But she said she didn’t want to leave this lady alone with the children.
L: That’s right! And now Marilla has come all this way to tell us that she’d be the last person in the world to stand by and see you cope with it all by yourself!  (Marilla stares at her, watching in amazement as her words are twisted)
C: Is this true, ma’am? Oh, thank you thank you, ma’am! Anne always told us you were a lovely person!
L: I always say that inside every one in this world is a lovely person – if only we have the hope and faith to show us how to find it.

This left me speechless.  I know, it’s hard to fathom, but it did. 

The Miss Lavendar of the book knows she’s not ordinary – how could one not?  But she’s not the flaky creature this shows.  She is self-aware, and content to take herself away from society and live out her days with her echoes and her trees and her Charlottas.  She has little money, and that’s why she brings in young teen girls – she can’t ”reach into her pocket”.  This might be one reason she wears inappropriately young dresses, though LMM doesn’t say that, and by the Ehren Ziegler rules (Chop Anne!) if the author didn’t say it, it didn’t happen. 

The Miss Lavendar depicted is … unspeakable, by the time they’ve done with her.  I was delighted to see her; then I was disappointed by how she reacted to “shriveled me up”.  And then I watched in horror as she manipulated Marilla into letting Anne come and skivvy.  This Miss Lavendar is either oblivious or outright Machiavellian, shamelessly taking advantage of the letter of what Marilla says and letting the rest roll right by her.  I wish the actress, the director, or the writer had let there be some kind of clue as to what was in her mind during this scene.  Was it truly supposed to be “Oh, how nice, Marilla’s removing the only obstacle to getting what we want”?  Or “I’ll show you, you interfering woman, daring to lecture me”?  Or “Ha ha!  You fell into my trap and said exactly what I wanted you to say, knew you would say!”  There’s no indication; Miss L is placid and serene. 

Oh, and this Miss Lavendar is also lazy and entitled. 

Marilla: Well, Leonora, you can tell Miss Lavendar that I want a word with her.
Charlotta: Oh, ma’am I can’t – she never comes down until she’s had her egg and toast and the place is all spic and span!  (Charlotta has nice flat North American A’s, I must say)
Marilla: I suppose she thinks the fairies wave a wand over it in the night.

I’ve skimmed, at least, through all the Miss Lavendar passages, and there is no indication of any of that.  Lingering in bed of a morning was one of the cardinal sins in a community like that; I would love to know why the screenwriter decided to make that one of Miss Lavendar’s failings.  And far from entitled – my impression of the Miss Lavendar Anne-of-the-book was dear friends with is of a woman who lives apart partly by choice and partly out of necessity, and who would do everything herself if she could. 

This is what I pulled out of the book.  Miss Lavendar:

- is reputed to be peculiar

- dresses too young, but it suits her

- is ashamed of her pretendings if found out
(“But what is the use of being an independent old maid if you can’t be silly when you want to, and when it doesn’t hurt anybody? A person must have some compensations. I don’t believe I could live at times if I didn’t pretend things. I’m not often caught at it though, and Charlotta the Fourth never tells.”)

- knows perfectly well what Charlotta (CharlottA) the Fourth’s real name is, but come on – I am called, variously, Sharon, Nicole, and Daisy – - and that’s by my mother.  If the four sisters looked alike (and “They all look so much alike there’s no telling them apart”), then there’s no insult implied in Miss Lavendar’s faulty memory.

- Marilla: “She’s lived in that out of the way place until everybody has forgotten her.”  That will have an effect on how one lives. 

And here’s the story of the Charlottas:

 ”You see, it is this way. When mother died ten years ago I couldn’t stay here alone … and I couldn’t afford to pay the wages of a grown-up girl. So I got little Charlotta Bowman to come and stay with me for board and clothes. Her name really was Charlotta. . .she was Charlotta the First. She was just thirteen. She stayed with me till she was sixteen and then she went away to Boston, because she could do better there. Her sister came to stay with me then. Her name was Julietta. . .Mrs. Bowman had a weakness for fancy names I think. . .but she looked so like Charlotta that I kept calling her that all the time. . .and she didn’t mind. So I just gave up trying to remember her right name. She was Charlotta the Second, and when she went away Evelina came and she was Charlotta the Third. Now I have Charlotta the Fourth; but when she is sixteen. . .she’s fourteen now … she will want to go to Boston too, and what I shall do then I really do not know. Charlotta the Fourth is the last of the Bowman girls, and the best. The other Charlottas always let me see that they thought it silly of me to pretend things but Charlotta the Fourth never does, no matter what she may really think. I don’t care what people think about me if they don’t let me see it.”  – “I couldn’t stay here alone” - I don’t know if that means simply she couldn’t bear to, or that for propriety’s sake she needed another female presence. 

- “I was vain and coquettish and liked to tease him a little.”  She’s aware of her own faults, and knows full well what she did wrong. 

- “I’m sorry to say” … Miss Lavendar dropped her voice as if she were about to confess a predilection for murdering people, “that I am a dreadfully sulky person.  … Pride and sulkiness make a very bad combination … My relations try so hard to make an old lady of me and it has a bad effect on me.”

My conclusions are these.  As I said, Anne is not an idiot, and does not give her friendship lightly.  And Miss Lavendar Lewis is a very dear friend to her.  Anne is a decent judge of character; while she is prone to believe the best of people, I’ve always believed that she could sense insincerity.  Miss Lavendar made some mistakes when she was twenty, and has paid for them for years, and has reached a stage in her life where she is has worked out the best way to survive the life she has been dealt.  She has spent a long time regretting the past, but has had time to forgive herself for behaving in a way that cost her the life she might have had - she’s reconciled herself to live as she is, and is able to take pleasure in it.  That’s a great deal more maturity than this screenplay gives her credit for.  She acts youthfully, and thinks youthfully, but she knows full good and well she’s not youthful, and that’s one thing she does not pretend.  Before Anne comes into her life, she can see her life ahead of her: growing older, growing old – alone, scraping to find a way to cope once the last Charlotta leaves her, and clinging more and more to the echoes and the pretending and the dreams.  Forgotten.  She is a true kindred spirit to Anne, who would not tolerate anyone using her at the expense of her dear family.  She is who Anne might have become had Gilbert not won her.  She is a far cry from the character written into the BBC mini-series – and I don’t understand it.  Part of it is something I’ll expound upon more later; but part of it seems like some bizarre personal grudge, like the screenwriter Elaine Morgan (how ironic) for some reason hated Lavendar Lewis as much as I love her.  Why else would she slant the script in such a way as to change not so much her actions but the character?  From poetic and whimsical bosom friend to manipulative, lazy, entitled false friend – where did that come from? 

Unfortunately, Miss Lavendar isn’t the only one whose character is given an unpleasant slant.  It seems like “nobody’s safe, for we care for none” – the Avonlea in this mini-series is a far less pleasant place than what L.M. Montgomery created.  And it’s a deep pity.

 

Anne of Avonlea — and not (episode 4)

I was going to go on as usual and write a post about the remainder of the BBC Anne of Avonlea, but … there’s too much.  (I don’t even have the heart to make that a Princess Bride reference.)  My usual posts are ridiculously long, and this would have been a tome. So I’ll break it up. I’m actually a little angry about this, so this is going to be fun.

What, exactly, happens to people when they try to adapt the Anne books to the screen? Is there some buried trigger in the work, some booby-trap that is sprung when someone says “I think I’ll make a screenplay of that”, causing some drastic change to their brain chemistry? I’ve gone on at length about Kevin Sullivan, and won’t go there again – the post is here – except to say that Anne of Green Gables was beautiful. Go rent it.  Seriously, it’s wonderful.  Just stop there – really, do.  Because then Sullivan lost his mind – it’s as though he took all the words to all the books after Green Gables, put them in a big vat, and stuck an immersion blender into the thing.  It started out as a disruption to the space-time continuum of Avonlea – people disappeared, other people spoke their words, time compressed in one place and expanded in another.  But it wasn’t so bad at first.  And then someone must have killed a butterfly in one of those space-time hiccups, because it all went kaflooey.

The BBC version is in six parts; I talked about the first half over here, and while there were redeeming qualities, the detractions were many and hard to get over. Still, I hate leaving something unfinished… and I really do like Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Davy and Barbara Hamilton’s Marilla. And I wanted to see how they handled the rest. I want to see Patty’s Place and Phil and Gog and Magog as they move on to Anne of the Island.

Oops.

Don’t do it. Seriously. Watch the first three episodes if you’re in a forgiving mood, the first disc, but if you care at all about Anne – or Miss Lavendar - don’t do this to yourself. I think this might actually be worse than the Sullivan travesty; that left my Miss Lavendar out entirely. Maybe watch the last two episodes – but not #4, and – seriously – turn off the last episode when Anne is standing at the window. Trust me on this.

They polish off Anne of Avonlea in episode four, pretty much. Oh, look, there’s Paul’s father – and – he … looks familiar. He looks like … Oh. You know those Worlds Collide moments I talk about, especially with BBC programs? Stephen Irving is played by Anthony Ainley. Anthony Ainley, who has been in my consciousness for more years than I care to think about as the Master on Doctor Who … He was the third to play the role, though he was the first one I encountered, and like his liveslong adversary the Doctor, your first is the one who means the most to you… He killed Nyssa’s father. He was, in all seriousness, one of my early influences to help define what evil is.

And here he is playing Paul Irving’s father. Oh my stars and garters.

I’ll come back to that. Miss Lavendar is getting a post all to herself.

There are good things in the mini-series, even a few which are not of the book: Mrs. Morgan was lovely. I liked the line “They must think I’m ravin’ mad or a secret drinker!” I still love Davy, and Marilla. They have some scenes, particularly together, which are not LMM, and which still work nicely.  Some full transcriptions are on the TV Quotes Page, so as to try to keep this a little shorter, but:  Davy asks Marilla why she never married, and tells her Milty Boulter’s pa said men were crazy to have left her on the shelf. Marilla’s reply, especially in the astringent tone of voice Barbara Hamilton excels at, is beautiful: “Did he by any chance mention the nature of this mass insanity among menfolk that has resulted in me being left on the shelf?” It’s actually an impressive scene. The upshot is that Davy wants a piece of plum cake. He also really does want to know why Marilla’s not married, but he figures he can talk his way into a piece of that plum cake… The whole scene uses the passage from the book – here, and scroll down to L.M. Montgomery – up to and including the chickens, uses it to its own ends, and does a nice job.

So, good on ‘em for that; I am actually quite fond of that scene, and one or two others.  But.

The affair of the willow pattern plate was turned into something bizarre involving Charlie Sloane and, of all people, Mrs. Blewitt, who began casting aspersions on Anne’s character because she’s an orphan.  Paul Irving is brought in again to have tea with Miss Lavendar – and is made to look even worse than before.  This is a child who a) did not come from America, b) is frequently beaten up in school, and c) is in big trouble when he sees his father again.  I think I’ll have to have a Paul post as well.

The scene of Anne’s First Proposal was a jagged, ill-fitting combination of good and bad.  Of course, it’s placed entirely wrong; here it’s in the midst of the Anne of Avonlea content, when it didn’t actually happen till Chapter 8 of Anne of the Island.  And of course it wasn’t supposed to be Ruby Gillis bringing her brother Billy over to … ew.  What they were alluding to, I suppose, was in a way better and in a way worse for Anne than what they produced here; it was supposed to be Jane proposing on behalf of her brother Billy while staying the night at Green Gables.  This had its humor – Billy: “You were real loony!  Real loony!!”  Anne: “I still am.  I’m not normal at all.” – and her reaction to his trying to kiss her, but it was creepy - ”Show her the whip!  That’ll calm her!” and … well:

“When you first come here I used to spy on you … when you weren’t lookin’.  I used to hide behind your hut. [hut??] You useta lean outa the window and talk to the tree there.”

“Ew” doesn’t quite cover it.  This one little speech bothers me almost as much as the massive character violations elsewhere in the series, because I know Anne.  Being told … that … knowing that this oily, earthbound creature was sneaking about and covertly watching her – and simultaneously mocking her and, I suppose, in his own nasty way, admiring her – would retroactively taint all of the beautiful moments of her childhood, and her communions with the Snow Queen; it would have destroyed something beautiful.  It’s another reason I question the sanity of the screenwriter here.   What a terrible thing to do to Anne.

One odd thing which may have been part of the book but wasn’t as obvious was the benefits arising from deaths.  Davy and Dora’s uncle dies, and that means that Anne and Marilla can keep them, to the joy of all.  Thomas Lynde dies, and that sends Rachel to live at Green Gables and allows Anne to go to college – to the joy of all.  It’s … I used “creepy” already, didn’t I?

I need to compare the book and the film in regards to another scene, and – well, let’s see if you can spot the difference.

Book:

There was more romance in the world than that which had fallen to the share of the middle-aged lovers of the stone house. Anne stumbled suddenly on it one evening when she went over to Orchard Slope by the wood cut and came out into the Barry garden. Diana Barry and Fred Wright were standing together under the big willow. Diana was leaning against the gray trunk, her lashes cast down on very crimson cheeks. One hand was held by Fred, who stood with his face bent toward her, stammering something in low earnest tones. There were no other people in the world except their two selves at that magic moment; so neither of them saw Anne, who, after one dazed glance of comprehension, turned and sped noiselessly back through the spruce wood, never stopping till she gained her own gable room, where she sat breathlessly down by her window and tried to collect her scattered wits.

“Diana and Fred are in love with each other,” she gasped. “Oh, it does seem so … so … so hopelessly grown up.”

… Diana came to Green Gables the next evening, a pensive, shy young lady, and told Anne the whole story in the dusky seclusion of the east gable. Both girls cried and kissed and laughed.

BBC:

Having been apprised of Diana’s engagement in a set of scenes presented like a bad attempt at madcap comedy, filled with interruptions, and during which she managed to mortally offend Diana by saying aloud worse than what Book Anne privately thought in her weaker moments and would have died before saying (and which was foolish in several ways – as if Anne would not have seen her ring immediately), Anne is strolling, carefree, through the woods when she comes to a scene the viewer has already been treated to: by a lake (Barry’s Pond? Never the Lake of Shining Waters) Diana and Fred are lying together among the ferns, kissing. The actual dialogue:

Diana: Oh, Fred!
Fred: Oh, Diana!
Me: Oh, my God!

I want to pull one word in particular out of each scene description, one word which makes all the difference in the world:
Book: standing together
BBC: lying together

Never, never, ever, to save their immortal souls, would any main character of LMM be found lying in the woods (or anywhere else) making out. Ever. To paraphrase Amanda in Lost in Austen: “Hear that sound, George? ‘Lurrgh’? That’s Lucy Maude Montgomery spinning in her grave like a cat in a tumble dryer.” I came within half an inch of walking out of STV because of extreme character violations. This … this would have had the same effect in a theatre. This is not only character violation, put together with the Miss Lavendar/Stephen Irving scene (which I’ll come back to) and what they did to Gilbert (ditto) it goes against just about everything the books are about.

My frequent refrain with adaptations is “I understand why changes must be made to the original material, but”.  In this case, I understand why some of the changes were made; if I dug into it I might be able to make sense of the messing about of the timeline, which after all doesn’t trouble me too much.  It doesn’t hurt the characters, and the characters are the most important aspect of L.M. Montgomery’s books.  The reason the books have remained known and loved for over a century is that there is a sweetness to them which is easily mocked, easily sullied, and hard to capture; I can’t compare with LMM in descriptive language, but here’s my attempt: there is a gentleness in the books, coupled with an intelligent, clear-sighted humor, occasionally self-deprecating but never mocking.

With the Kevin Sullivan version I was angry because he treated the first book with great respect, and then decided he could do so very much better than the rest of the series and changed everything. I think this is actually, bizarrely worse: they kept the plot details much as they are in the book (though not necessarily in the right order), but they put a spin, an inflection on everything – everything - that reminds me of Mordor’s influence on Middle-earth.

 

Plum puffs won’t minister to a script diseased

It’s not a good sign when one film is about one book and the next takes in … three.  It’s also not a good sign when the producer “didn’t think there was ‘enough dramatic material for a film’ and the lead says something about how, well, the rest of the books weren’t all that good.  !  Well, neither is this sequel, sweetie.   

I had thought I remembered Anne of Green Gables: the Sequel, and approved, of it; I don’t think I ever saw it before, though.  And I generally do not approve.   If you had to condense three books into one four-hour film (mini-series, what ever), then I suppose it was well done; they kept an astonishing amount of key elements intact.  While laying waste to the rest.  I contend that they did not have to smoosh it all together. 

Now, some of it was lovely: the characterizations of Emmeline Harris, Jen Pringle (so wonderfully evil), and Katherine-with-a-K Brooke (so wonderfully bitter and bitchy) were excellent.  I couldn’t find any fault with the Mary Queen of Scots parts, or the Katherine Thaws parts (except that Anne took her home to Green Gables for Christmas, not summer break… but Anne was otherwise occupied at Christmas.  I’ll come back to that.)  They actually did quite a creditable job of combining the Old Mrs. Pringle/Pauline and her mother/Little Elizabeth stories; they maintained the kernel of them while  altering nearly everything else…The seams showed here and there.  And there were holes in the quilt.

What I most decidedly did not like about the new mushed-together story was  the change in how Anne’s presentation of the diary was perceived.  Rather than that being the cause for all of the Pringles to suddenly regroup and accept Anne, it was only the impetus behind Mrs. Harris’s change of heart; she required it to be kept from everyone, especially the Pringles.  No, it was Mary Queen of Scots that won over the clan to Anne’s cause; and to that I say hooey.  Jen Pringle’s comeuppance was done nicely; the adaptation of the fireworks-in-the-stove was fun (though why did they insist on making it a school for wealthy girls?) – but what in the name of hoolies was the whole thing with the bike and the shed and falling through the roof?  Was that supposed to be a reference to Anne going through the shed roof while she and Diana were out collecting subscriptions?  I feel a little unhinged for not remembering anything remotely like it in the books… and then wondering if I’m wrong.  I want rather badly to give the film producers the benefit of the doubt – even though they don’t entirely deserve it. 

Fred Wright was a stick.  A short, annoying stick.  Anne!  Stop her!  Don’t let Diana … Oh well.  Yech.  And Minnie May Barry was played, not at all nepotismishly, by a deeply annoying niece of Kevin Sullivan who spat out all of her lines in one lispy breath.  And I said it before and I’ll say it again, and this time I’ll back it up - I haven’t had the chance to check it, but if Josie Pye married Moody Spurgeon in the books, I’ll go a month without chocolate.  My ear she’d marry a Spurgeon.

And Anne would never, ever have invited a horde of schoolgirls to use someone else’s grounds for a picnic.  Wouldn’t happen.  While the Pauline’s Mother story in the book might not have made for good tv – an old lady yelling at Anne all day, and Anne’s only triumph being getting her to go out on the porch – it didn’t deserve that mangling.  It was silly. 

One of the things I found most bizarre was the erasure of Mr. Harrison, the Green Gables neighbor, and the transplantation of a vast number of his lines into the mouths of others: “red-headed snippet” went to Mrs. Rachel Lynde, which actually suits but which led to the unfortunate incident of the death of Thomas Lynde in the middle of a rip-roaring fight between Rachel and Marilla and Anne during which Rachel ignored his piteous cries from the next room.  Not pretty – and not Montgomery.  What was more bizarre was to hear things about “high-falutin’ language” and that whole section of dialogue put into Gilbert’s mouth.  “And look at that sap Percival who sits around mooning the entire time. He never lets a girl get a word in edgewise. In real life she’d have pitched him.”  That was weird.  (And he hits her with his crop?  Really?  Real Anne would have murdered him.)  I do understand the excision of Mr. Harrison (and the cutting of Davy and Dora – they weren’t really all that essential to the story, I suppose), I don’t have to like it. 

The part of the Old Mrs. Pringle/Pauline and her mother/Little Elizabeth blended story I hated was the whole element of Captain Harris.  I guess they had to give the story a Royal Gardner (sp?) without actually having Royal Gardner – making him Emmeline’s father (Emmeline being the stand-in for Little Elizabeth) tied up one more loose end in their crazy-quilt.   I didn’t like him, but that’s okay… Anne didn’t behave too terribly well, I suppose, but then she didn’t with Roy either.  But – - Christmas in Boston??  Seriously??  I don’t care how many grandmothers and students were there, that was not appropriate.  Good grief.  Anne went home to Green Gables every chance she had – I think weekends while the weather permitted, and certainly at Christmas. 

I do wonder why they decided to make Anne an authoress … leading to the climactic scene where she rushes to Gilbert’s near-deathbed to shove her book’s dedication under his poor nose.  Was her book supposed to be Anne of Green Gables?  AND Gilbert never should have been engaged to Christine Stuart – breaking an engagement was serious business in those days.  He would never have heard the end of it, and nor would Anne, and nor would Christine.  Ever.  He certainly wouldn’t have been accepted practicing medicine in Avonlea.

There were a couple of other things that bothered me… The language.  I really don’t remember Anne saying “good grief”, though I could be wrong.  I do know that when Marilla said “I suppose it’s just as well you sold the darn cow” my eyes popped wide open.  “Darn” was next to “damn”, and Marilla would no more have ever, ever have said either of them than she would have danced a tarantella on the main street.  There were a few things like that – bits of language that made me sit up – but what bothered me the most in a small fashion was Anne’s hair.  Holy mackerel.  It was HUGE in places.  She’s a little thing – not nearly the height that Anne should be, but I forgave them for that long ago – and that mountain of hair looked like it would topple her – or swallow her – a few times.  It was absurd.  I had been thinking how well the styles of the period suited Megan Follows, and then they perpetrated those monstrosities on her… Whoof.  It was hard to pay attention when I was sitting wondering whether they’d padded her hair, and if so with what, and for the love of God why…

Another distraction here and there – and especially *there* – was the use of bizarre quotes or near-quotes.  In the first film I think it was Miss Stacey who said “The truth shall set you free”, and I expected the “I have a dream” speech to follow… This time I think there were a couple of them, but the worst was:

ANNE: No. It’s just that I went looking for my ideals outside of myself.  I discovered it’s not what the world holds for you, it’s what you bring to it. The dreams dearest to my heart are right here.

And then she picked up Toto and got into the hot air balloon to return to Avonlea, waving goodbye to the Tin Man and the Lion and the Scarecrow…

I don’t know.  Surely they made enough money and garnered enough viewers to justify making faithful adaptations of all the books?  Surely they had enough praise for the fidelity of Anne of Green Gables that they should have known to keep fidelity at the top of their To-Do list?  And surely (*snert* – and surely… say it out loud)  they got enough flack for what they changed in The Sequel that they should have known that wholesale rewriting wouldn’t go down well?

And yet it seems to be acceptable to some fans out there.  I don’t get it.  The man Kevin Sullivan goes from a brilliant and respectful, even loving, film of Anne to a completely nose-thumbing story that bears no resemblance in the universe to anything L.M. Montgomery ever wrote… and that doesn’t bother folk? 

Huh.

 

Anne of Green Gables, and … not

I’ve been posting a great deal more lately on the TV/movies side of the blog than here; I haven’t had a lot to say about what I’ve been reading: Anne McCaffrey and Jill Churchill.  I’m letting a couple of ideas marinate, but that’s not where I want to go right now.  Tonight Mom and I watched the rest of the CBC production of Anne of Green Gables, and the post goes here because I wrote about rereading – and needing to watch – Anne a little while ago.

Megan Follows is Anne.  She was 16 at the time of filming, playing Anne from 12 to 16, and she was brilliant.  For me the casting of Anne is an even more perilous decision than the casting of Frodo and Sam; they mean the world to me, but Anne … Anne is one of the most important people in my life.  So if they had failed here, it would have been colossal – and the success the casting directors and Megan Follows made of it is proportionately huge.

The rest of the cast does a truly beautiful job as well; in particular, Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth are pitch-perfect as Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert.  I sobbed at Matthew’s death; he is a quietly essential character, and his death is one thing that sets Anne apart from other “children’s” books – his death, and the choices and difficulties it brings, as well as the deep grief in and out of the book. The portrayal of all of this on film was perfect.  It hurt.  It’s supposed to.

Schuyler Grant hit exactly the right not-quite-dumb-brunette notes as Diana; Josie Pye was adequately hateful (though too much with Gilbert); Gilbert as played by Jonathan Crombie was lovely.  And I was content with everyone else, from Ruby Gillis to Miss Stacey (with an “e”).   (Though I’m puzzled as to Mrs. Allen being German…)

It’s remarkable how faithful the mini-series is to the book.  This was the other main criterion: casting Anne and staying true.  With everything else there was wiggle room, but there I would be completely unforgiving.  And they did a remarkable, beautiful job.  They got nearly everything in, if not quite in the book’s sequence, to the point that the only tiny complaint that I had was that Gilbert didn’t pick up a rose lost from Anne’s hair at the recitation.  (Oh, and Anne didn’t say “Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!  Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!  Oh, Mr. Cuthbert!”  I missed it.)  I’ve read the book many, many times, and (obviously) recently, and I was happy about the whole production: it’s one of the most perfect adaptations of a book I’ve ever seen.

Which makes it all the harder to accept the garbage that followed.  ”Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel” is, as far as I remember and as far as I can tell from the descriptions, faithful to parts of Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and I think Anne of Windy Poplars, and a worthy second adaptation … But it is followed by “The Continuing Story”, during the making of which Kevin Sullivan apparently lost his mind and about which I can only say something of which Marilla would deeply disapprove: WTF?? This is “a television miniseries whose script was very loosely based upon the novels”.  Um.  Beg pardon, but for something to be even loosely based upon something else, it has to bear some glancing resemblance to the original source material. This, apparently, doesn’t.  I believe we watched it – which may be one reason we haven’t watched any of this again for about ten years; we were too scarred.

From Wikipedia:

It borrowed characters from the Anne of Green Gables novels by Lucy Maud Montgomery but not actual plot lines. Instead it served as a sequel to two mini-series produced by CBC Television in the 1980s. It was the most controversial and heavily criticized of the three film adaptations written and produced by Kevin Sullivan.

The miniseries was criticized principally because unlike the 1985 Anne of Green Gables and its 1987 sequel Anne of Avonlea, the screenplay was not based upon Montgomery’s works, but instead used Montgomery’s much-loved characters in a wholly original World War I story by Sullivan and Laurie Pearson. Montgomery had written an Anne novel set in that same period, Rilla of Ingleside, a story focusing on Anne’s youngest daughter, and in which Anne was a mother whose three sons were fighting in Europe. The new storyline places a childless Anne in the role of a woman on a quest to find her husband, Gilbert Blythe, who becomes a doctor and disappears behind enemy lines.

The film was also criticised for introducing a continuity problem. Following Colleen Dewhurst’s death in 1991, Marilla Cuthbert’s death was written into the series Road to Avonlea. At Marilla’s funeral, Hetty King refers to Gilbert and Anne Blythe; some viewers assumed they were married. Anne does not appear in the Avonlea episode because she is sick with scarlet fever. In ANNE: the Continuing Story, which takes place five years later, it is revealed that Anne had scarlet fever while she was teaching at an orphanage in Nova Scotia.

I … don’t even know where to start.  She – - dead – - scarlet fever – - enemy lines??  Nova Scotia??  Childless???  What?

And – if they’re referred to as “Gilbert and Anne Blythe”, isn’t it somewhere beyond the level of “assumption” that they’re married??

From Netflix:

In director Kevin Sullivan’s third movie based on the books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne Shirley (Megan Follows) leaves her beloved Prince Edward Island behind and heads to New York with her true love, Gilbert Blythe (Jonathan Crombie). But soon World War I interferes with their new life and sends Anne on an adventure she never anticipated.

Holy crap. New flipping York?? Did anyone get the plate number of the truck that apparently hit Kevin Sullivan and left him with severe head trauma? It’s the only explanation I can think of for such a drastic change in attitude.

And it gets worse. I hadn’t seen this until now, and I wish I hadn’t. The flack that came from that nonsense apparently taught them nothing, and last year they proceeded to make a fourth … thing: “A New Beginning”. Uh oh.

Anne, now a middle-aged woman, is troubled by recent events in her life. Her husband, Gilbert, has been killed overseas as a medical doctor during World War II. Her two daughters are preoccupied with their own young families and her adopted son Dominic has yet to return from the war. When a long-hidden secret is discovered under the floorboards at Green Gables, Anne retreats into her memories to relive her troubled early years prior to arriving as an orphan at Green Gables and being adopted by the Cuthberts.

The impact of this difficult period has a far-reaching effect on this older woman, once she discovers the truth about her real parents. She begins a delicate search for her birth father. It is a journey through a past fraught with danger, uncertainty, heartache and joy. In the parade of humanity Anne encounters she also faces the root of her desire to find true “kindred spirits”, an inspired imagination and the impetus to use her talents as a writer to inspire others.

He – killed?  What??  WWII??  Two daughters and who the hell is Dominic?  Search for who now? Danger?  WHAT???

And, not that this even compares to the rest of it, but in the cast list I find:

• Zack Ward – Moody Spurgeon
• Miranda de Pencier – Josie Pye Spurgeon

Josie Pye marry Moody Spurgeon?  As if!!

A poor adaptation is one thing – this … I can’t even think. Words like “travesty” and “abomination” and “tar and feathers” come to mind.

I feel sick.

 

The wisdom of Anne & Co.

I was looking for something – two somethings, in fact, quotes I jotted down in my work notebooks. I found one – that’s a whole ‘nother post – and the other is still MIA, but in the search – as always – I’ve found other things. As I said recently, I read through all (almost) of the Anne books (L.M. Montgomery, of course) last year, and I made notes as I went. There’s real wisdom in here, which belies the reputation the books seem to have of fluffy saccharine books for children. They are none of the above: they are thoughtful, sweet – genuinely, not artificially – books for anyone with a functioning heart. Which, of course, is not all that many people these days.

“Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” … “Oh, don’t you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

I use this one often, and think of it more often. I’ve felt the same way, especially during some periods at work when it seems like I can’t do anything right. It’s surprising how much the thought helps – a) I’m not the only one to ever ball things up on a regular basis; 2) tomorrow is another day; III) someday, maybe, I’ll reach quota and all will go smoothly. Sadly, adulthood brings with it the knowledge that there’s no upper limit – there are always new mistakes to be made, or old ones to revisit. But there’s still a mistake-free tomorrow, even if that other red-headed orphan did go and tart it up with a song.

“If you went to your own room at midnight, locked the door, pulled down the blind, and sneezed, Mrs. Lynde would ask you the next day how your cold was!”

Oh, lord. That is so completely Mrs. P that I laugh whenever I read it. A woman who notices when my brother-in-law’s car doesn’t leave the driveway a couple of days in a row, and remarks on it to my mother… A woman who compares the relative lawn heights in every yard she passes… A woman who mentions that our town paper (a freebie of little use to us) is still sitting at the end of the driveway. A woman who has absolutely no business passing our house at all in the normal course of things – it isn’t en route anywhere for her – but who, as Bobbie across the street puts it, comes putt-putting along down our street quite often. Not that she’s spying. No. Of course not.

Eliza was sewing patchwork, not because it was needed but simply as a protest against the frivolous lace Catherine was crocheting.

I love that. It’s a perfect encapsulation of the two ladies, their characters, and their relationship to one another. If I can write a sentence like that someday I will feel I have accomplished something.

“I was just trying to write out some of my thoughts, as Professor Hamilton advised me, but I couldn’t get them to please me. They seem so stiff and foolish directly they’re written down on white paper with black ink. Fancies are like shadows… you can’t cage them, they’re such wayward, dancing things…”

And then, as I recall, Anne lapsed into a reverie, caught by her own words, about fancies like dancing shadows. I think this is lovely – again, it catches perfectly that feeling of the thought being completely unwilling to be translated to words. It was bright and clear and perfect – you thought you knew exactly how to write it – and then … either the words that come don’t match the thought, or the words simply won’t come and you sit there chewing your pen trying to find them.

This is marvelous:

“… You must excuse me, Anne. I’ve got a habit of being outspoken and folks mustn’t mind it.”
“But they can’t help minding it. And I don’t think it’s any help that it’s your habit. What would you think of a person who went about sticking pins and needles into people and saying ‘Excuse me, you mustn’t mind it … it’s just a habit I’ve got.’ You’d think he was crazy, wouldn’t you?”

Yes, you would. It’s something that’s always driven me a little wild: these people who say or do the most horrendous things, and who are excused by others: “It’s just her way.” That is insufficient. I was taught as a child that one does not say things to offend others, that in fact one tries very hard to avoid hurting others. For someone to go about excusing the pain they cause by saying “it’s just my way” – or “it’s my habit, don’t mind me” – is … inexcusable. I’ve seen it too often – including in the aforementioned Mrs. P; it’s a little like being a wife beater. You can’t make up for the stupid behavior with a greeting card claiming all kinds of affection, or by being extra nice after.

“True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed,” said Mrs. Allan, “and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity. I fear the name of friendship is often degraded to a kind of intimacy that has nothing of real friendship in it.”

Amen. Recent(ish) experiences have taught me this very well indeed. The internet has led to a whole new phenomenon of illusive friendship. A couple of years ago I was buying into it wholeheartedly, and scoffing at those who looked askance. I learned better. I have gained true friends through the internet – real, honest-to-Montgomery friends… but not nearly as many as I would have said two years ago. There is a long and pitiful post that could come out of this … could, but won’t.

This is one of the quotes that deepen the books for me, raise it beyond the level of saccharine:

“…How sympathetic you look, Anne… as sympathetic as only seventeen can look. But don’t overdo it. I’m really a very happy, contented little person in spite of my broken heart. My heart did break, if ever a heart did, when I realized Stephen Irving was not coming back. But, Anne, a broken heart in real life isn’t half as dreadful as it is in books. It’s a good deal like a bad tooth … though you won’t think that a very romantic simile. It takes spells of aching and gives you a sleepless night now and then, but between times it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut-candy as if there were nothing the matter with it. And now you’re looking disappointed. You don’t think I’m half as interesting a person as you did five minutes ago when you believed I was always the prey of a tragic memory bravely hidden beneath external smiles. That’s the worst … or the best… of real life, Anne. It won’t let you be miserable. It keeps on trying to make you comfortable… and succeeding… even when you’re determined to be unhappy and romantic…
- Miss Lavendar

Anne, the ultimate romantic, a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old, was indeed disappointed – and the speaker, through a lady Anne greatly admires, gently makes fun of her discomfiture. And her youth. Early on, the breaking of a heart is the end of the world. (*cough*Romeo&Juliet*cough*) The most telling line here is “even when you’re determined to be unhappy and romantic” … Even when you’re trying to be true to the belief that this disappointment has shattered your life, left you nothing to live for, and while it may not kill you you will never smile again, never move on … It’s not possible. Not for anyone with a healthy sense of humor, anyway, or – dare I say it – an imagination. The people who do wind up blighted by huge disappointments – the Miss Havishams of the universe – must be lacking in those departments; it’s the only logical explanation. There is a certain forgetfulness that brings up a smile at a puppy, or laugh at a brother’s idiocies, or a sigh in appreciation of a crescent moon; these things will bring joy, whether you want them to or not. Bad tooth, indeed.

This book also left me confused for a long time in my youth about how “lavender” was supposed to be properly spelled; apparently from what I’ve seen it isn’t spelt with an “a” in the British any more than it is in the American. But I do love it with the “a”.

(The “l” word back there (logical, not lavendar) just reminded me that I still haven’t written about having seen Star Trek. I will have to do that before long… I wish I could see it again first.)

For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to mood, at her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would not behave properly. Diana could not understand this.
“Make them do as you want them to,” she said.
“I can’t,” mourned Anne. “Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.”

(Thence came my early love of italics, I think…) That, apparently, is one of the marks of a true writer. It’s happened to me, I am humbled to say – here, now, you – you weren’t supposed to do that! But the character did, and there’s nothing that can be done but write around it. Trying to write it any other way leaves the words flat and cold on the page; this may be harder, but it’s necessary. One of the characters in my primary work-in-progress was never supposed to have the past he does, much less the future – but he insisted on being more prominent than intended, and on having his story told. Another character … well, I never intended that he die. Apparently some characters know when their ends will make sense for the story, which makes him rather self-sacrificing and heroic. Makes me unhappy, because I didn’t want to write that death scene – or the mourning after, and I didn’t want to do that to the other characters right then. But once he was dead, he was dead – and, again, nothing to be done.

There’s a YouTube video of Megan Follows’s audition for Anne – which is kind of fascinating (yes, I do need to write that Star Trek post). She’s nervous (says so), and doesn’t seem at all ready, flipping the pages of the script, clearing her throat – and then her facial expression changes, and then Anne’s sitting in the chair. She’s sixteen years old. Remarkable.