The Kindred Spirits
Finishing up my extra literacy courses and my final project was to write an essay/book report based on any book of my choosing. I decided to read the second Anne of Green Gables; Anne of Avonlea - Side note, I already started the third one.
I'm posting a copy of it on my blog because I think it belongs here...and for my friend who's too much of a boomer to figure out Google Drive, not that I blame him, Google Drive sucks!
Enjoy c:
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Anne Shirley of Green Gables, the redheaded girl continuing her adventures in Avonlea on Prince Edward Island in Canada in the year 1882, on her search for other kindred spirits like herself throughout her many journeys. I wonder if she ever realized that she's not only creating kindred spirits, but unknowingly giving hidden kindred spirits the courage to be comfortable being a kindred spirit.
First, Anne is dreaming of improvements to the life she leads. She comes up with an idea to create a small society called Avonlea's Village Improvement Society alongside Gilbert Blythe as President, Fred Wright as Vice-President, Diana Barry as the Treasurer, and Anne Shirely as the Secretary. Marilla tells her “It’s better to leave it alone, people don’t like being improved.” To where Anne explains to Marilla that “We’re not going to try to improve the people. It’s Avonlea itself.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg.9)
I think this is where Anne is missing the influence she’s provided for people throughout Avonlea. She and the rest of ‘The Improvers’ partake in what the people of the community deem as ‘nonsensical’ tasks such as raising funds to repaint the Avonlea Hall. While doing so, an older woman with two daughters came passing by, the mother spoke in a grimly tone “If she had money to waste, she wouldn’t give it a cent of it towards the hall, she’d burn it up and have fun seeing a blaze. It’s no benefit to the settlement…just a place for young folks to meet and carry on when they’s better be home in their beds.” Not seeing the necessity, and proclaiming that “We didn’t gad about to halls and places when we were young, this world is getting worse every day.” One daughter, Catherine Andrews, tries to chime in saying “She thinks it’s getting better.” Her mother, with the utmost contempt in her voice, expresses that “It doesn’t signify what you think.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg. 43) [By gad, the mother means to move about restlessly or with little purpose, especially in search or pleasure or amusement.]
As the mother departs, one of the daughters, Catherine, rushes back to Anne so out of breath that she can hardly speak handing Anne a couple quarters she says gasping “That’s my contribution to painting the hall, I’d like to give a dollar but I don’t dare take any more money from my mother than I already have. I’m real interested in your society and believe that you’re going to do a lot of good. I’m an optimist. The world is getting better… it certainly is.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg.44)
Catherine runs back to her mother while Anne and Diana just keep going about their day unaware of the deeper positive influence they’re showing to generations after them.
Secondly, as Anne claimed previously, she’s not looking to change the people of Avonlea, she misses how she does change the people of Avonlea, for example, she made a habit of visiting her new neighbour, Mr. Harrison, after accidentally selling his jersey cow thinking it was hers breaking into his pasture. Despite the unfortunate circumstance, Mr. Harrison enjoyed the visit saying to his parrot Ginger “I’m a crusty, lonesome crabbed old chap, but there’s something about that little girl that makes me feel young again…and it’s such a pleasant sensation I’d like to have it repeated once in a while.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg. 24)
After a heavy hailstorm rolled through Avonlea, the neighbours were gathered together to assess the damages when Mr. Harrison came out and had said that a tree had come down into his house. He tried to keep his composure but started to crumble when he said mournfully “He was all the company I had Anne…and now he’s dead. Well… I’m an old fool to care so much. I’ll let on that I don’t care. I know you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking…but don’t. If you did, I’d cry like a baby.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg. 211)
She says nothing but just sits with her neighbour as they grieve the loss of Ginger together. Anne’s compassion gives way for other hidden kindred spirits to come out of their shell, maybe all they needed was another kindred spirit to show them how to express themselves in a way that not only resonates with the person but also in a way they didn’t know they needed themselves. She and Mr. Harrison may have different beliefs and attitudes towards certain aspects of life regardless of that he recognizes that their feelings are similar and, being around Anne allowed Mr. Harrison to feel comfortable enough to open up about his emotions and allow her to grieve with him.
Lastly, as Anne becomes the newly appointed teacher at Avonlea school, giving the students in her classroom an influential role model to look up to, providing them with the freedom for expression and emotion, believing that “There is some good in every person if you can find it. It’s a teacher’s duty to find and develop it. That she’d rather have her pupils’ to love her and look back to her after years have passed as a real helper than be on the roll of honor.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg.28)
She creates a safe space for students to be able to open up about their deeper emotions and troubles as they come. A peculiar representation of this is when Anne was leaving the school for the day and she sees one of her students, Paul Irving, sitting upon the fence waiting to walk with her to the graveyard; Anne to visit Matthews grave and Paul to visit the graves of his grandfather and mother. As they sit in the graveyard together, Paul expresses how after three years since his mothers’ death, he still hurts and misses her just as much as he did before and admits that the pain is too much to bear at times. Anne replies softly that he wouldn’t want it to stop hurting. He agrees but follows up with “That’s just the way I feel. You’re so good at understanding, and nobody else understands me so well. Father understood pretty well, but still I couldn’t talk much to him about her because it makes him feel bad.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg. 125)
This is where Anne underestimates the safe space she has unknowingly created for her students to talk about their troubles and deeper emotions that they’re facing during hardship times towards expressing emotions. Another example, one day Anne walks over to the Irving’s farm and has a cup of tea with Paul, he asks Anne if she thinks there’s anything wrong with his upper story after overhearing a conversation between the house maid and a visitor say “Dat Paul, he is de queeres’ lettle boy. He talks dat queer. I tink dere’s something wrong with his upper story.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg.162) [By Paul’s Upper story, the house maid means his head or his brain “He’s not all up there in the head.”] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/upper-story?q=upper+story
Anne insists that there’s nothing wrong with him or the way that he thinks and adds that she thinks similarly. She gives an open invitation for him to come to Green Gables to unload all of his ‘peculiar’ thoughts whenever he really needs to. Excited, Paul starts right away telling Anne his list of different peculiar thoughts asking her once more, “if there’s anything so very queer about his thoughts?” to which she responds with “They are strange and beautiful thoughts for a little boy to think, and so people who couldn’t think of the sort themselves, if they tried for a hundred years, think them queer. But keep thinking on them Paul, some day you are going to be a poet.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg. 166)
Anne yearning to find kindred spirits, missing the kindred spirit she has created right before her very eyes, though, maybe Paul Irving was always a kindred spirit, he just needed to find another kindred spirit who understood him the way he needed to be understood as Paul’s dad says to Anne at the end of the school year that “I think that your influence has been just what he needed.” (L. M. Montgomery - Pg. 255) further proving that she doesn’t just find kindred spirits, she creates and inspires kindred spirits.
