Much has been written lately about the dark side of Lucy Maud Montgomery — of how her sunny, optimistic writing concealed a tortured inner life that became increasingly drug-dependant and eventually ended in what was likely a suicide. That this author who was so existentially heartbroken had created a tale so universally heartwarming — Anne of Green Gables — invokes the question: What was Montgomery really like?
Perhaps no one is as qualified to answer this question as Mary Henley Rubio, who has devoted more than two decades of her academic career to the study of Montgomery and her work.
Rubio, along with Elizabeth Hillman Waterston, co-edited Montgomery’s huge collection of journals, but was careful not to take them at face value. Montgomery wrote — and rewrote — her journals with an audience in mind, and thus described her life as she wanted others to see it, not necessarily as it was. In The Gift of Wings Rubio seeks to fill in the missing pieces. She draws from many sources, including correspondence, legal papers, newspaper clippings, family genealogies, and interviews with Montgomery’s descendents.
The result is a multi-faceted history that, while it revolves around one person’s life, is really a story of human nature in all of its complexity. Along the way, the reader learns a lot about the social history of Canada during Montgomery’s lifetime (1874–1942). It’s a riveting narrative that’s hard to put down.
Rubio argues that Montgomery was much like her creation, Anne, in that she lived her life between the soaring of imagination and the depths of despair. As Montgomery wrote in her journals, the ability to “escape at will into a beautiful world of your own will help you amazingly through the hard places of life.”
Montgomery was profoundly troubled by her family situation. Her husband, a minister, suffered from deep depression. But it was one of her sons, Chester, a shady lawyer, brilliant manipulator, and probable psychopath, who truly proved to be her undoing. Rubio shows how Montgomery’s moods rose and fell in line with the trajectory of Chester’s life — a life that included philandering, various forms of cheating, and suspected pedophilia.
Her fragile mental state resulted in a dependence on prescription sedatives. She more than once stated a wish to end her life, and she died of an apparent overdose in 1942.
Yet her shadow side was not so evident to those around her. Even her maids saw her as bright, witty, organized, and kind. She was active in writing circles, gave frequent public talks, and encouraged young writers — reminding them that the phenomenally successful Anne of Green Gables had been rejected five times before being published.
The Canadian literary establishment has tended to dismiss Montgomery’s work as sentimental children’s fare. But Rubio, who is American-born, puts Anne of Green Gables in the same league as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
“Her books appeared to be ‘simple little tales’ … but that was misleading: The last quarter-century of scholarly research has shown that her writing has been, in fact, a very powerful agent of social change,” Rubio writes.
Rubio argues that Montgomery’s books inspired women to greater heights of achievement while bringing consolation to heads of state and spurring soldiers in the trenches to fight for home. Even today, the worldwide appeal of her homely stories shows no sign of fading.
— Nelle Oosterom (Read bio)
Nelle Oosterom is the Senior Editor of Canada's History magazine.