Just a random ask but I was curious what you thought of LMM and her life as opposed to her books? I keep meaning to read her bio but haven’t yet. But it sounds like her life was actually pretty challenging in some ways and she was very prone to depression.
It’s interesting to me how idyllic the books are but also there are tougher themes especially as they go on…like the series kinda misrepresented the reality of the books and a lot of people assume it’s a lot fluffier than it really is?
Highly recommend you read her bio, The Gift of Wings! Her journals are also very interesting, but unreliable. She's the ultimate unreliable narrator haha!
This is a really interesting question, and I'm not sure I have an interesting response to it. You're right in that LM Montgomery's life was full of hardship, although she herself said she always found life too interesting to be willing to give it up. I've always found theorizing on the cause of her death distasteful in most contexts, but suffice to say that it was thought to be suicide but some people, notably Rubio, have questioned that.
Reading LM Montgomery's journals/letters is both an enjoyable and a tragic experience. It truly does feel like you've curled up with a cup of tea and a friend for a long soul-sharing gossip session--but as time progresses, the tone changes. In some ways, you can see her really find her voice; the difference between her journals as a young woman and her journals as an older woman is huge. It might be odd to analyze the writing quality of a journal, but I think the difference is noticeable! With it, though, is this undercurrent of tragedy that grows worse and worse. I've said it before, but her final letters can be really difficult to read. They're clearly by someone who is very mentally unwell and suffering deeply.
You're right that LM Montgomery's general reputation as an author is that she's the epitome of #cozycore . Quotes from Anne - sometimes taken out of context, never forget the "tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it" - pepper the internet in whimsical curlicue font and cheery backgrounds. However, I would hazard a guess that most people are only familiar with Anne of Green Gables, and maybe the next few Anne books, rather than the rest of LM Montgomery's work. It's long been my opinion, although I find this hard to articulate, that Anne of Green Gables isn't really similar to the rest of LM Montgomery's work stylistically. It's almost as if AOGG is clearly reads as a children's book, while the rest of her book (except perhaps the Story Girl) doesn't. If you read the rest of her books, as you point out, the subject matter can get darker in a way that doesn't jive with the idyllic perception. Her style is (almost) always still very warm and very human and very lovely, but the subject matter and the tone matures.
This stands in sharp contrast to the realities of her life, which in some ways seemed pleasant enough (I believe she said at more than one point she was content enough?), but which was also marked by struggle. The most obvious example was her life long struggle with her mental health and her husband's mental health at a time when resources to support long-term illness like that were scarce. She also struggled with lawsuits, professional disrespect and bullying from her peers, amid even harsher realities such as WWI and the flu epidemic. She lost her dearest friend, imo her platonic soulmate to it, then endured years of her husband being mentally unstable. (There's a story in the biography recounted about him entering a guest room and holding someone at gunpoint!) That's before (and during, really) her eldest son began exhibiting behaviors that were incredibly disturbing - masturbating without a care of who else was in the room including young children (her younger son began sleeping outside because of this), lying, stealing, and generally being psychopathic. I don't use that word lightly - Rubio herself theorizes that he was a psychopath.
As you can see, the world she experienced and the world she painted in her books was much different. The Maudcast goes into this as well - one of the early episodes gave an example that's always in my head about how during the time of AOGG, there would have been long stretches of being isolated on a remote farm during really bad weather. Hardly the cozy community life we see! LM Montgomery herself said she got tired of writing in the style she did. I can't remember how she put it, but she essentially discussed how she felt she had to live up this style established in AOGG, even if it felt unnatural to her decades later. She always wanted to write an adult novel (Priest Pond- fascinating if we consider Dean Priest) and did with A Tangled Web, but it's hardly the quality of her other novels.
The thing is, despite the upbeat style of her books in contrast to her struggles, imo LM Montgomery's real life heavily - heavily - influenced her books. There are obvious parallels there such as the Emily series, which is about a young writer finding her voice, but there are other connections too. She'd straight up copy passages from her journals into her books, whether for the narrator or for different characters. Anne's thoughts after Joy dies in House of Dreams are from her journals after the death of her infant son. Lines from Emily are from her journals. Gertrude's dreams are from her journals. Susan's quips are from her journals. Rilla of Ingleside is a treatise of her feelings on WWI; The Blythes are Quoted is a treatise of her rejecting it.
There are also less evident examples, but examples that are still there. LM Montgomery (@gogandmagog come karate chop me if I'm wrong about this) wanted to go to college, but couldn't; meanwhile, her books frame women's scholarship as natural. There's no question that Anne should go to college; the most we get is a cranky professor who hated co-eds, but whom Phil Gordon masters. LM Montgomery had a husband who was [editorial comment] a giant man baby about being married to a successful woman; all of her heroines have partners marked by their support of their wives' talents.
There's also her voice herself. Lucy Maud Montgomery, if I do say so myself, was a hater beyond belief lmao XD if you ever want to get a good insult one-liner, read her journals; they're stocked to the brim with them. Bitchy Maud Montgomery was a real thing. If you read her novels, this often comes through! See the mocking of fat people in Anne of Ingleside. Also, and I'm desperate to find this journal passage again so I can represent it honestly, one time a very married Maud chose to go to a costume party as a widow in mourning LMAOOO. Talk about a subtle message.
What also comes through is her increasing cynicism with the world, especially post WWI. I know the Rilla book club has discussed her jingoism at length, but it's a jingoism you see disappear. There's an example Benjamin L. mentions, about how in a draft of TBAQ, she wrote The Great War- and then crossed out Great and replaced it with First. She frequently referenced the death of the old world post WWI. Even in her work you see this contrast; in Rilla, we have Una, who 'keeps faith' for Walter. In A Tangled Web, however, LMM rather ruthlessly mocks war widows who don't move on from their husbands. I think the best example, however, will always, always be the difference between Anne Shirley in AOGG, and Anne Shirley in TBAQ, specifically The Aftermath where she says she's glad her son died in WWI so he wouldn't have to live to see what the world
So, basically, yes haha, as the Anne series goes on, you can see it get darker. Anne of Ingleside has a really chilling funeral scene that I think gets overlooked, that's a haunting picture of abuse. I think as LMM got worn down by life, we do see that weariness seep into her work. Instead of Anne, we have Katherine Brooke, for example. The Grandmother in Lantern Hill could be seen as an LMM self-portrait of hatred, according to Rubio. It's tragic, and I wish her story could have ended differently (for one, she should have been able to go to college! She was brilliant! Her cousin got to go because he was a dude!) But I do appreciate her for giving us the great gifts she did, in a way that often questioned the status quo in a clever, unobtrusive way.
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