No longer just of the gabled house.

Publisher: N/A
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult/Children’s
ISBN: N/A (Vintage Classics: 978-0-099-58265-6)
First Published: 1909
Date Reviewed: 5th March 2019
Rating: 4.5/5

Having decided to stay on in Avonlea, Anne prepares to become the new teacher of Avonlea’s school. Marilla goes to visit a distant in-law; with the lady on her deathbed, Marilla and Anne decide to help, and have her twins sent to live with them. Dora is quiet and good, but Davy turns out to be more trouble than Anne ever was. With new pupils at school, the forming of the Avonlea Village Improvement Society, and a new next door neighbour, there will be plenty to keep Anne busy while she continues her studies at home.

Anne Of Avonlea follows directly on from Anne Of Green Gables and is set in the two years following, ending with Anne at 18 years of age. Though a somewhat forced publication¹, it reads as a well-planned sequel.

“Priscilla says Mrs. Pendexter’s husband’s sister is married to an English earl; and yet she took a second helping of the plum preserves,” said Diana, as if the two facts were somehow incompatible.

This book is, for many reasons, better than the first: the use of language is better; it’s got a strong comedic aspect to it; and, most importantly, it has a proper plot. Montgomery seems to have come into her own; she even breaks the fourth wall a few times.

The plot – well structured and nicely balanced between the predictable and the not so – fits together with the same use of community and spirit as before. Anne’s sense of purpose is well-defined, and in her role of teacher, Montgomery has the opportunity to create a plethora of new characters.

The new characters are super, especially the twins. Like Anne, you know they’re going to need time and patience. The humour from Davy is top-notch.

“Milty drawed a picture of Anne on his slate and it was awful ugly and I told him if he made pictures of Anne like that I’d lick him at recess. I thought first I’d draw one of him and put horns and a tail on it, but I was afraid it would hurt his feelings, and Anne says you should never hurt anyone’s feelings. It seems it’s dreadful to have your feelings hurt. It’s better to knock a boy down than hurt his feelings if you must do something. Milty said he wasn’t scared of me but he’d just as soon call it somebody else to ‘blige me, so he rubbed out Anne’s name and printed Barbara Shaw’s under it. Milty doesn’t like Barbara ’cause she calls him a sweet little boy and once she patted him on his head.”

As Anne is back home, we get to see more of Diana, and Gilbert returns often. (Suffice to say Anne uses his name in this book, and that promise of romance starts to lay down its foundations.)

Theodore White’s was the next stopping place. Neither Anne nor Diana had ever been there before, and they had only a slight acquaintance with Mrs. Theodore, who was not given to hospitality. Should they go to the back or front door? While they held a whispered consultation Mrs. Theodore appeared at the front door with an armful of newspapers. Deliberately she laid them down one by one on the porch floor and the porch steps, and then down the path to the very feet of her mystified callers.
“Will you please wipe your feet carefully on the grass and then walk on these papers?” she said anxiously. “I’ve just swept the house all over and I can’t have any more dust tracked in.”

So you’ve plot, excellent jokes, fabulous characters, and even some winning subplots. The only thing at odds is Anne herself. Anne’s talkative nature is subdued from the very first pages and Montgomery rarely pays it attention. Likely the reason for the change was down to that idea of growing up and maturing and in its day that probably worked; nowadays we’re more apt to question it. Technically the lack of talk (there is some, and there are some day dreams, too, just not many) means you can focus on the rest of the content, but the reality is you spend time wondering where Anne went. You might want her back.

Anne Of Avonlea is a wonderful book, and a lot more adult-orientated, but that does come at a price. Nevertheless it is still entirely worthy of your time; it’s surely one of the finest books of its day.

We make our own lives wherever we are, after all… college can only help us to do it more easily. They are broad or narrow according to what we put into them, not what we get out. Life is rich and full here… everywhere… if we can only learn how to open our whole hearts to its richness and fulness [sic].

Footnotes

¹ Montgomery’s publishers had said that if the first book did well, she’d have to write sequels. In 1908 she wrote in a letter: “I’m awfully afraid if the thing takes, they’ll want me to write her through college. The idea makes me sick. I feel like the magician in the Eastern story who became the slave of the ‘jinn’ he had conjured out of the bottle.” In the next letter she sent, she calls Anne ‘detestable’ (Montgomery to Weber, 10th September 1908, and 22nd December 1908, cited in Lefebvre, 2013, p. 410).

References

Lefebvre (ed) (2013) The L.M. Montgomery Reader, Vol 1, University Of Toronto Press, Toronto

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