Kindling Spirit: LM Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

Elizabeth Waterston, who is associated with the L.M. Montgomery Project
at the University of Guelph, reclaims in this study a popular
children’s novel that has long been neglected and/or dismissed by
critics as sentimental and escapist literature for adolescent girls.

Waterston gives a close reading of Anne of Green Gables, noting
Montgomery’s creative use of narrative strategies and structures, her
talent for vivid characterizations, and her effective use of pastoral
imagery. She goes beyond the novel’s sentimentality and romantic
optimism to explore its subversive subtexts of youthful rebellion and
“gender-based pressures in psyche and society.” She discerns in the
text a “subtle but revolutionary feminism.” Above all, Waterston
emphasizes the high quality of storytelling displayed in Anne of Green
Gables; her study, which is suitable for students at both the
high-school and the university levels, encourages readers to rediscover
the enduring appeal of this Canadian literary classic while at the same
time approaching it in new ways.