Making Avonlea: LM Montgomery and Popular Culture

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

As Irene Gammel points out in her introduction, the scholarly
rediscovery in the past decade of Canada’s best-known literary export
has focused almost entirely on the literary merits of her fictional
creations to the exclusion of any critical consideration of the cultural
phenomenon that Montgomery and her works have engendered. Yet, as this
volume of essays successfully demonstrates, Montgomery’s fictional
world of Avonlea has had a profound effect on popular culture, resulting
in the commodification of her name and producing a lucrative
entertainment and tourism industry. Drawing on new scholarship by
popular culture theorists concerning commodity value, esthetics, and
social impact, as well as new theories of girl culture, the contributors
examine the many questions surrounding Montgomery’s enduring
popularity, not only in Canada but around the world, and how that
popularity has resulted in a culturally constructed representation of
Montgomery as a commodity with considerable commercial value.

The essays represent a wide variety of perspectives and approaches to
popular culture, and apply these various cultural theories to the
examination of the emotional response of readers to Montgomery’s
texts, and how the literary devotion of her fans has inspired the
creation of movies, musicals, television series, theme parks, and
accompanying merchandise. Beginning with a critique of Anne as a popular
cultural and national icon, the volume proceeds to engage in the debate
between literary purists and the defenders of the many film and
television productions that have taken considerable liberties with
Montgomery’s texts and characters. The collection moves on to explore
Montgomery’s remarkable popularity abroad and the importance of
community and kindred spirits both in her texts and among her devoted
readers.

Though by no means the last word on the subject, Making Avonlea is a
promising introduction to a complex, intriguing, and much-neglected area
in literary and cultural studies.