Anne

From the moment we met, I loved the character of Anne Shirley. She was bold, fiery, and rash, but a dreamer and a creative. Anne was dramatic, she was an optimist. She had a tendency to get herself into trouble and come up with some completely outlandish scheme to get out of it. We were the same person, so similar that when I first read L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables it was like meeting the perfect, redheaded version of myself. I’ve never exactly had a problem finishing books I’ve started reading, but this one even less so. I practically devoured it.

However, back when I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time, I was under the care of a lackluster librarian. It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me, that is) that the quality of one’s librarian has an enormous impact upon the quality of one’s reading material and as mine was sorely lacking in the finer qualities all great librarians have, after finishing Anne, I was loathe to find something else to read of a similar quality, save maybe Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and was forced to forget about Anne Shirley and her fantastic life on Prince Edward Island. Ever after I pondered what life for Anne was like after the book, not content with the ending given as a final ending. It was not that the ending did not work fine for a regular ending, but for the end of a universe, Anne making up with Gilbert Blythe and beginning a teaching career was simply not enough. I was frustrated (rightly, I think), but I had to let it go.

Fast forward a few years and I had the good fortune of having a fantastic librarian who possessed all the fine qualities the previous had not. One day, frustrated with the lack of reading material not about snotty teen girls or in the form of grotesque comic books, I expressed my frustration quite vocally to said librarian. Mrs. Alberts, the ever patient saint, led me to a little-accessed shelf in the middle school section of the library I wasn’t supposed to go in and handed me the book Anne of Avonlea. Apparently, a sequel to my beloved book existed.

I must admit that I approached this longed-for sequel with trepidation. It wasn’t the style of book that I normally read at this point in my life, but as my beloved Mrs. Alberts had suggested it, I caved and cracked it open. Like before, I was hooked.

The new book was incredible. It had all the magic of the old combined with new characters and the development of the old. I loved it, and I went through it in a day. After that, I went through the rest of the books in so little time that the other librarian who worked with my librarian started to get frustrated with how quickly I kept checking out and turning in books. I didn’t care, I had what I’d always been looking for: a real ending --the sixth book in the series, Anne of Ingleside.    

The premise of this book was a simple one: Anne Shirley is married now (her earliest years of marriage having been detailed in the previous book, Anne’s House o’ Dreams), and a mother to six children. It follows Anne, Gilbert, and their children through several years of their lives, just telling little stories about them. An absolutely darling plot, it held the kind of sweet old fashioned-ness never found in modern books, and I grew to adore the way Anne lived her life.

For one, Anne was a domestic. She took pride in raising her children and creating a home out of her house. She is seen in numerous scenes sewing for her family, gardening, and generally doing all the things modern society claims oppresses women. Anne hardly seemed oppressed to me, though. She didn’t do these things out of obligation or because she was forced to, but because she wanted to. It was her choice to do all these things, as it was her choice to continue writing (though not publishing) and stop teaching. Anne went to college, she could have gotten a job or done whatever she wanted to, really, but she decided on marriage and staying home with a family. This choice, this freedom seems to be integral to living a good life to the author. Kindness, too, to children and your fellow man is integral. Anne never tolerates cruelty and never uses corporal punishment. In all things, Anne pushes love.

In most things, I agree with these beliefs on how to live a good life. I aim to live with as much love as possible. Women should have a choice between staying at home and working outside the home, but if they do wish to stay home, then that choice should be respected. The author and I also share a love of life’s small blessings, in taking joy from life’s small beauties, and that babies are an essential good. I differ with Montgomery in that I’m Catholic and to me, the Church and her teachings are some of the most important parts of my life and I don’t know how to live without them. To me, while not the only, it is the best way to live if true joy is what is longed for. Nothing else compares.