Thanks so much for everyone who voted in my silly little poll. It had some hiccups. I put in "Sparrow" when Emily's only called that in the show, not the books; I forgot that Dean Priest calls her "Star"; it completely escaped me that her dad also calls her "Emilykins". And, to my frustration, I forgot all about Rae "Cuddles" Gardiner.
Obviously, there are no wrong answers in a poll like this, and I really enjoyed hearing people's takes on why they did or didn't like a given nickname. This past month, I'd heard people twitting Valancy's "Moonlight" as so cringey, but when it came down to the ballot, most people accepted it as at least Not As Bad. To my surprise, a lot of people disliked "Anne Girl". (Should I have also included "Queen Anne", as Philippa calls her?) Sara Stanley's extremely literal "the Story Girl" came under fire, no surprise. In my opinion, the context of a nickname can add a lot to how "bad" it is, and while Emily's "Jade" sounds cool, at least one voter agreed with me that having it come from her middle-aged male teacher reeeeeally affects how I hear it.
And the winner? "Rilla-My-Rilla!" I wasn't surprised, though I'd be curious to know why people thought it was the worst -- and why they didn't think it was the worst. Is it forced? Is it saccharine? Is it melodic? Is it tender? Is it twee?
But more importantly, let's vote on the actual dorkiest LMM character nickname.
Who has the dorkier nickname?
Rilla -- "Rilla-My-Rilla"
Hilary (the boy from Pat of Silver Bush) -- "Jingles"
Voting ended onJul 13
Giving this another three days. Please vote, reblog, and enjoy.
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 havenât yet. But it sounds like her life was actually pretty challenging in some ways and she was very prone to depression.
Itâs interesting to me how idyllic the books are but also there are tougher themes especially as they go onâŚlike the series kinda misrepresented the reality of the books and a lot of people assume itâs 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.
  How do you think a mother would feel if she found her child tatooed all over with baking powder advertisment? I loved my story, and I wrote it out of the best that was in me.
  Ah, youâre just tired. Besides, why should you care?
Crimson peonies, not poppies, thank goodness, because I suppose that would be much too heavy-handed! Something that makes me laugh, right out the gate, is Susan wearing a new black silk blouse, âquite as elaborate as anything Mrs. Marshall Elloitt ever wore,â and therefore âhad all the comfortable consciousness of a well-dressed womanâ as she opened the âGlen Notesâ column in the Daily Enterprise... ergo, you may recover some self-respect by at least looking quite upright and proper, when succumbing to something as reprehensible as shameless gossip?
Jack Frost, the poem that is, fits rather spectacularly with the overall vibe of Montgomery (who is meticulous enough to have chosen Jack Frost for a reason), and especially the Ingleside kids. Thereâs a bit of ominous undertone, for all its imaginative factors, and itâs very Victorian in that way, and YUH, idk where I was going with this other than to say that itâs super relatable that some of the Ingleside kids named their cats after contemporary pop culture like Jack Frost and Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde. Itâs like if your fave big bother re-named your newly diagnosed bipolar kitten âHulk Smash.â
Faith Meredith being âthe most handsomest creatureâ Miss Cornelia ever saw effectively dethrones Leslie Moore on this area, and that must be a considerable feat, though loyal (biased) Susan seems to refute this, and goes toe-to-toe and suggests Rilla is the prettiest girl in the Glen.
SPEAKING of Susan, thereâs that line that Susan detests any reference to her age lmao, ânot from vanity but from a haunting dread that people might come to think her too old to workâ... and this is where I find I stand, because... how old is Susan, exactly? Probably she should be retired! Probably she should! I get that sheâs down with being useful and wanting to work, but holy cow, sheâs... a spritely 80? At least? When we first met her, twenty-two years prior in House of Dreams, she is already described as âelderly.âÂ
Anne saying, âwhen I look at those two tall sons of mine,â on the heels of realising that Walter and Jem are grown up is very cute to me, because this implies that she still thinks of brown boy Shirley as her still non-grown baby son. Â
Miss Cornelia and Susanâs discussion of Mary Vance, from âparents that were not what you could call aristocratic,â awoo... there are so many areas of classism in these novels, but one (me, Iâm one) wonders how Anne (another former ânameless nobodyâ) really feels during these kinds of peripheral conversations, owing to the idea that there are innumerable ties between Anne and Mary, down to sharing history with the Hopetown Asylum. Â
Miss Cornelia btw:
âBut there, it would not do to let Gilbert hear me hinting such heresy.â đ This is soooooy on brand for Gilbert, son of practicality, and reminds me of that slip-in in the Blythes Are Quoted, when heâs invited to spend the night in a âhauntedâ location, thatâs been plaguing its owners with creeping steps and sounds, only to have good ole Dr. Blythe be the only fellow to almost-catch the very corporeal prankster (hiding between blankets in an old trunk in the garret, iirc) thatâs been causing the mysterious disturbances. If Iâm understanding the chronology of TBAQ, this event would have occurred before the opening of Rilla here. No doubt he is prone to skepticism! Heâs like, okay bet, prove it đ.
modern gilbert going to dadâs weekend at redmond u to hangout with + support freshman jem, only to â come sunday sendoff â mysteriously be handed a cheap but shiny plaque from a girl representing x sorority. the plague says â#1 redmond DILF 2025â, and the girl cheerfully tells him the decision was unanimous.
he thanks her and graciously (allbeit somewhat confusedly) accepts, supposing the âdilfâ acronym probably stands for âdoctors intercollegiate leadership fellowshipâ or something.
Do you think Anne and Gilbert went further than kissing before getting married?
Yes, I think they went further too far this.
No I don't think they went too far with this
I'm undecided.
other
Voting ended onApr 25, 2024
I saw that there were different comments in the fandom regarding this situation. What do you think about this situation? You can share your ideas if you want.
Thank you to everyone who will vote. I will wait for the result with curiosity.
@diario-de-gilbert-blythe I'm very curious about your thoughts on this subject. I would be very happy if you shared it with us.
I realized that the question of my poll was not very clear. If they going too far, I ask if they have had s*x or something close to it. I wanted to explain it to those who haven't voted yet.
It's been over a year since we did this poll and discussion, but I'm curious to read what @gogandmagog thinks about it if that's okay :) I know these kinds of things aren't talked about much in the fandom so I was hesitant to ask and still am. I'm a bit shy about discussing these things. And the people who are interested in this topic can share their thoughts too. I'd love to read them :)
Wowwowow, tysm for the tag. đŤĄđ I have no idea how I managed to miss this last year â this is such an interesting and enigmatic subject, one Iâm clearly sat for, and tbh re: this poll, Iâm actually super happy/agree with the results... although in fairness, I mightâve been happy with any result, since each of these options are equally as reasonable as the next!
Meanwhile, I totally wouldâve voted âyes, I think they went further than kissing.â
But... if Iâm understanding this correctly and âtoo farâ means to ask if readers think Anne and Gilbert had actual proper intercourse? I mean⌠just for me, no, I do not believe so. I dooo, however, suspect (as is natural) some careful decision making and some close calls (certainly yes, what Maud referred to as âpreliminaryâ lovemaking in her journals) in the summers and holidays of their engagement, or any time in which Anne and Gilbert were able to close the gaps of their separate locations.Â
All for a few reasons, really... and apologising in advance for the disorganised thoughts that Iâm about to lay down in your replies. đŤŁ
To start (and in the matter of âmore than just kissingâ), and begging to be acknowledged is, duh, the sexy and inviting nature of Anneâs letters to Gilbert. Whatever the [redacted] parts may be, theyâre clearly unsuitable for childrenâs lit -â and these are btw letters that are already unfurling a brand new flirtatious Anne to the readership. From what is left in these letters, we can irrefutably deduce that Gilbert is kissing Anne places other than her mouth. And itâs worth mentioning that when this comes up, it isnât in the third and final year of their engagement... this is where theyâre at year O N E. Itâs literally only been six-ish months of togetherness, and itâs giving every appearance of a full-throttle progression; these two are miles and miles away from the mere best friends they used to be. (What acts they mustâve graduated to by year three is for you to guess!)
Iâll also bring up that I have seen other suggestion from other readers, with the Windy Poplars letters, that these [redacted] parts mightâve just been sugary sweet love letters, ones of a more innocent nature, simply too un-plotty to include in the novel... but I frankly personally reject this notion (lmao), on account of that infamous and highly telling Maud quote (which seems to be in direct conversation with this topic)⌠one that she reflected on in at least three times in three different places⌠openly lamenting her inability (the âpublisher and public wonât allowâ) to represent young women in fiction as she felt young women truly are in real life. Which is to say, as creatures of great/vivid passions in their love affairs. Maud also has another published essay, advising mothers on their teen+ daughters, which acknowledges how often Much More Than Kissing happens between grown boys and girls. Maud pretty much shares her opinion that parents ought not be too hypocritical about such things, instead essentially gracefully counseling mothers to remember their own past selves, and to be generally accepting that sensuality comes hand and hand with love. Because thereâs no use trying to stop it. And I hugely doubt Maud would hold Anne exempt from this rule.
Actually here, let me add some of that essay:
Iâve highlighted the blue especially (sorry itâs so tiny, I hope no one passing by this post has to squint at it), because in this section, we get an Gilbert and Anne alignment ⌠there in the area of âboth his arms were continually employed in driving the horseâ⌠like okay, letâs compare that to this section of Rilla of Ingleside:
đđđđ
(While Iâm here Iâll point out that the horse Anne and Gilbert have in Four Winds is called Grey Tom. Not Silverspot. Silverspot therefore mustâve been a predecessor, likely Gilbertâs Avonlea horse â which together with use of âsweetheartâ and not âwifeâ strongly indicates that whatever handsy memory Gilbert and Anne are having? Occurred prior to their marriage.)
Anyway, and still on the subject of more than kissing, but also finally drawing in why I think there was a firm line not to be crossed, thereâs this one part in House of Dreams thatâs kind of blink and you miss it. Itâs a lasting niggle for me, and one Iâve always wanted to get other opinions on, so I thank you again @pinkenamelheart for the opportunity to air it out. Maybe someone will let me know if I sound insane or not. Itâs in Chapter 8, and Anne and Gilbert are, of course, in the deeps of enjoying their honeymoon and Gilbert teases Anne (waxing poetical about how perfect everything has been) that they âhavenât even quarreled yet.â Anne says, Â
Because to me this is a subtle tip off. THE tip off.
Historically in Maudâs works, she has zero problem utelising contemporary or everyday sayings/proverbs/axioms without needing to reiterate to the reader âyes hello, this is a quoteâ... youâre smart, you just know it is (e.g. when Anne mocks Gilbert in the same work, in House of Dreams, saying to him, âthus sayeth the preacher!â). When deliberate quotes do occur in the text, 9 out of 10 times itâs because itâs a direct literary allusion (e.g. âIâve come up to ask you to go for one of our old-time rambles through September woods and âthe hills where spices growâ this afternoon,â from Anne of the Island, being a citation of Isaac Watts). So who exactly is Anne quoting here, and why even take the effort of letting us know that Anne is quoting something, if itâs nothing more than a common phrase? It just doesnât track. (And mind you, this is not a string of words that we see in any previous books in the series [or any going forward, for that matter], I checked.) WELL. đ§ I propose that this is Anne quoting Gilbert back to Gilbert (something they love to do btw). And why again, might it be significant, while in the middle of this lover-talk of their own honeymoon, bring up a reference to âdeferred pleasureâ? 𫣠I really think weâre meant to connect it. I offer to you that maybe when there were those off-screen moments of Preliminary Closeness, when going further or âtoo farâ or past a particular threshold had to be sharply curbed (for a multitude of obvious reasons), that Anne and Gilbert consoled themselves and pacified their unsatisfied impulses by reminding each other that their marriage bed would be worth the wait, âa pleasure all the greater for being deferred.â Said often enough to the point that it becomes this kind of easy-to-recall and only-to-be-said-in-private joke, a joke just for them.
THIS aside, I also think itâs fair to say (we can logically conclude) that the one thing Gilbert Blythe wants more than Anne... is to do right by Anne. When we look back at Anne of Avonlea, we have two areas, in proximity of each other, that show us Gilbert (an enormously popular and enormously attractive catch) is 1. able to resist the temptation he faces from the âfast setâ youths of White Sands, and 2. that he wants so badly to be âworthyâ of Anne, that he âwatched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it.â When Anne finally caught up to him, and reciprocated his feelings, Iâd bet you anything that his desire to be worthy of Anne didnât diminish⌠I bet it increased tenfold. I bet in those moments of Preliminary Closeness that it was Gilbert holding strong. He had the most practice in restraint, after all.
Okay what else? đľâđŤ
I do feel like Iâm forgetting another thing I wanted to add, but considering the already semi-absurd length of this, Iâm sure itâs probably fine lol. Iâll try to reblog again, or comment you, if I do remember!
Thanks for posting this poll! Iâm still so mad I initially missed it!
diana barry is an example of a character who is written as fat but every adaptation refuses to depict it perhaps because the source material doesn't portray her fatness negatively. in this essay i will
Oh boy, this is interesting, and I would honestly eat this essay uppp. Iâve personally always read the source material as portraying Dianaâs weight kind of passively negatively (and other characters too, certainly Diana is not isolated in this), but now Iâm frankly wondering if I should be canceled because perhaps Iâve just been assuming that pointing it out = negativity. Thinking, just for instance, that thereâs those bits in Anne of Ingleside where itâs like, âAvonlea folks had never thought Diana âskinnyââŚâ and the that bit whereâs its like, âDiana, forgetting that she had tipped the scale at one hundred and fifty-five that morning,â all besides noting how many extra slices of cake she was having compared to Anne⌠or Anne congratulating herself on never getting a double chin, and resisting the âmiddle age spread.â Now that said, I do of course appreciate that notion that Montgomery was able to present Diana as both heavier and beautiful/romantically appealing, because sometimes, often even, they two things arenât always presented as being able to coexist in 110+ year old fiction.
my bad, i last read the books in my early teens and i'd forgotten those parts (which are definitely neither neutral nor positive *wince*). if my memory serves me though, at least in the first book (which i have re-read recently), diana's "plumpness" is written as a beautiful and enviable trait. but otherwise it's mostly in the background and has no bearing on diana's relationship with the other characters. she's a kid who just happens to be fat and is not bullied for it.
whether this is exactly as i remember it or not, i can't understate the impression that this left on me when i read it for the first time as a kid. no other media for children that i had ever seen, especially not the contemporary ones, depicted fat characters as anything other than the usual hateful stereotypes or as minor side characters. the bar was on the floor i guess but it got lifted a few inches for me.
maybe there is something to be said about how LMM seems more accepting of fatness in a child than in a woman (e.g. adult diana, and now that i think about it, mrs lynde too?). thank you for pointing that out - i definitely need another re-read with this lens in mind.
This last point here reminded me immediately of Anne and Gilbertâs last daughter, Rilla. As a baby, and a small child (6+), she is both described and nicknamed as âroly-polyâ, and has âchubbyâ knees, hands, and cheeks; obviously built on very similar lines to young Diana⌠but Rilla does, of course, basically undergo what L.M. Montgomery might think of as a âcorrectiveâ action, because by her early and mid teens, Rilla skyrockets in height and leans out into being all elbows and slimness (so long limbed she ceases to be nicknamed âRoly-polyâ and graduates instead to âSpiderâ). So I think you may well be onto something about body positivity having a strict age limit in Montgomeryâs world.
An annotated Anne of Green Gables (was it the 100th anniversary one?) once made a point of suggesting that weight, in the novel, for say Rachel Lynde, was a tip off to how loved a person was (a husband and ten children), especially when compared to the thinness of Marilla (never married after a broken love affair with John Blythe). This is a v interesting point, when we again consider Dianaâs happy and loving home life, compared to love-starved + orphaned Anne, and their respective statures. This notion kind of falls out of relevance in the later books⌠after all, Anne ends up having born seven children, is much beloved by her husband and community, yet the text reiterates and praises her still tiny figure⌠but it almost makes a comeback in Rainbow Valley â which opens with the Blythe kids (all of whom were described as âchubbyâ in infancy), who are so well loved and fed and cared for that they can produce and prepare out-of-doors meals themselves (Jem and Walter fish and cook), providing a fish-fry to the poor famished and love-neglected Merediths.
MUCH to consider here honestly, thank you for bringing this topic up, @1tspcinnamon. đ§
