Waterston, coeditor with Mary Henley Rubio of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volumes I to V (University of Toronto Press), draws on her intimate knowledge of the Montgomery canon, as well as the novelist’s scrapbooks, diaries, photographs, correspondence, and even business ledgers.
As a result, she has produced “A Reader’s Guide” to
twenty-two books of fiction by Montgomery, accompanied by twenty-four black-and white
illustrations; Notes, Appendix Containing “Additions to the Manuscript of Chapter 15,
Anne of Green Gables”; Works Cited: “Books Read by L.M. Montgomery”;
Secondary Sources in “Interpretations and Backgrounds; and Acknowledgments. With a critical “Introduction” and
“Conclusion”, Waterston fashions a portrait of an “
Beginning with Anne of Green Gables (1908, Waterston outlines the biographical origins of the orphaned Anne Shirley, as well as the many literary antecedents of this character, based on examples of the orphan motif. The sequel Anne of Avonlea (1909) found a place in the genre of children’s literature; it contains details of teaching techniques, but its author was leading a double life. She suffered from depression despite her commercial success as an author. The next title Kilmeny of the Orchard (1910) was first published as “Una of the Garden”, a five-part serial, in a “women’s magazine” in 1908. In revising the text, the novelist incorporates her interest in psychology and experiences of her broken romances. In The Story Girl (1911), Montgomery was working through her memories of family anecdotes. In Chronicles of Avonlea (1912) she tries her hand at fiction for adult readers, by domesticating Biblical archetypes. In The Golden Road (1913) she compensates for her less than ideal marriage by employing writing as an emotional outlet she will increasingly require. In Anne of the Island (1915), Montgomery set out to write a bildungsroman, about the status of women. The model for “Redmond College” was Dalhousie University, an institution which awarded its first B.A. to a woman in 1885. In Anne’s House of Dreams (1917), the heroine reveals she is pregnant. (Montgomery, then forty-one years old, discovered that she had become pregnant again.) In Rainbow Valley (1919), there is reflected the conflicts of organized religion. Montgomery sought escape from her delusional husband. (It is thought that he suffered from a bipolar disorder or manic depression.) As for Further Chronicles of Avonlea (1920), a culling of stories by her previous publisher caused a dispute over royalties and a lawsuit on behalf of the author’s intellectual property. Waterston examines the stories closely as part of Montgomery’s published fiction, but also in terms of their recurring motifs, their re-use in her later writings, and in relation to stages of Montgomery’s own life. In Rilla of Ingleside (1921), Montgomery recorded her impressions of the horrors of World War I, from the point of view of the Canadian response. In Emily of New Moon (1923), she introduced a new heroine to question patriarchy and socialization. Sequels appeared in Emily Climbs (1925) and Emily’s Quest (1927). The latter is a künsterroman. Montgomery used her dreams as material for The Blue Castle (1926), when she focused on adult rebellion against conformity. In Magic for Marigold (1929) Montgomery attempted to overcome a shift in reading taste, after she was paid a kill fee for some stories. She was interested in the new theory of child psychology offered by Jean Piaget. In A Tangled Web (1931), she was inspired by her grandmother’s old Woolner jug to write an adult story. In Pat of Silver Bush (1933) she recalled her great-aunt Mary Lawson, “Judy Plum”, the mainstay of the Silver Bush household. Book sales were down. The Great Depression had intervened. Montgomery lost investment of her royalties in the stock market crash of 1929. Family and friends did not repay her for their loans. Nevertheless, her immediate family was depending on her to pay for tuition fees, for example. In Mistress Pat (1935), she relied on her faithful older readers and this book was written while Montgomery’s husband was hospitalized. In Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), the author capitalized on the success of a 1934 moving picture of Anne of Green Gables and the public’s enthusiasm for a new sequel. The film had brought no royalties to the author, due to the fact copyright belonged to her previous publisher. When Montgomery lacked raw material, she re-used her stories published in the Family Herald. Waterston explores the epistolary form, old-fashioned but popular. In Jane of Lantern Hill (1937), Montgomery used a portrait of herself as recorded in her journals. The Canadian Home Journal published her short story called “Tomorrow Comes” a prototype of Jane. By Christmas 1936, Montgomery felt “imprisoned and smothered.” (p. 204) She managed to write the last chapter..., “my heart bleeding at every word.” (p. 205) In Anne of Ingleside (1939), Montgomery used her own home at “Journey’s End” for a fictional home called “Ingleside.” This was the last work that the author finalized and saw through the press. She was nearly suicidal due to family problems and reiterated a cry, “Oh, motherhood is awful---motherhood is awful!” (p. 208) Furthermore, she was “manoeuvred out” of a leadership role in the Canadian Authors Association. No more Montgomery novels were published after 1939. Montgomery died in 1942. The fragmented stories she left behind were posthumously published, as The Road to Yesterday, in 1974.
Waterston is fully familiar with her subject and conversant with how those autobiographical persons, both great and small, figure in Montgomery’s fiction. Of Anne of Windy Poplars,
Tension is heightened by the fact that the young suitor is “the new head of Modern Languages Department at Redmond and dreadfully clever.” Dr. Carter comes to dinner, “undeniably handsome and distinguished-looking, with crisp dark hair, brilliant dark eyes and silver-rimmed glasses.” It is a recognizable picture of Montgomery’s former professor at Dalhousie University, Dr. Archibald MacMechan. In his Headwaters of Canadian Literature (1924) MacMechan had paid small attention to the former student whose writings were very much better known than his own. Now Montgomery lets Anne dismiss him, recalling memories of her days at Redmond, where he seemed “a rather pompous young bore.” (p. 196)
Waterston ably situates Montgomery’s vision within the novelist’s growth as an author, as well as the historical background of war and economic collapse.
Of Anne of Ingleside,
The last stage of the process of producing the book was tainted by real unhappiness...Montgomery wrote,...It is surprising how one can grow used to intolerable things---and tolerate them.” She survived...Immediately she added in an ominous return from fiction to fact, “Hitler has seized Czechoslovakia and a new scare is in the offing.” (p. 214)
As such, Montgomery epitomizes a woman struggling with disappointment, at times, even despair. The descriptions are unflinching and visceral.
Spasms of depression recurred. She [Montgomery] called for help from the doctor who lived across the street. He gave her a hypodermic injection in the hip, “to tone up the nervous system” (May 3, 1938).More hypodermics, May 8 and May 16, did little to allay her trouble: “I am possessed with a desire to die,” she wrote part way through the treatments (May 5, 1938). May ended: “A terrible, terrible May.” (p. 208)
Waterston not only recreates the shifting moods of her subject, but also draws out the cyclical stages of writer’s block and “flashes” or bursts of inspiration (epiphanies), moments of clarity and insight. Of A Tangled Web,
Montgomery had reached this point in her novel around midsummer of 1930. Her work had stalled. “I cannot write and that unfinished book haunts me,” she wrote in her journal on July 5, 1930. In August she was still admitting “Am trying desperately to catch up with my new book.” Like Drowned John, she must have muttered rhythmically “By asterisk and by asterisk” and “by more asterisks and very lurid ones.” (p. 167)
Waterston is author of Kindling
Spirit: Anne of Green Gables (ECW Press: Toronto, 1993).