Bleak Island

The publisher must be quoted: “Adultery, illegitimacy, misogyny, revenge, murder, despair, bitterness, hatred, and death—usually not the first terms associated with L.M. Montgomery.” But, indeed, they are the subjects that at least partly inform this “rediscovered” work, intended to be the ninth volume in Montgomery’s enduringly popular series about Anne (Shirley) Blythe. To be fair, one could also cite love, redemption, forgiveness, justice, wisdom, harmony, loyalty and birth as terms that have equal claim in this unique work of fiction. But these are themes more commonly identified with Montgomery and her Anne series and would not necessarily serve a publisher’s marketing plans quite so well.

Readers familiar with Montgomery and her work—there are legions of them—already know that The Blythes Are Quoted is the much anticipated, unabridged and complete version of an earlier work, The Road to Yesterday, which in 1974 was published as a set of short stories about island life. The fresh publication honours the intentions of the author herself, whose full manuscript the editor discovered among the papers held by the University of Guelph. For a Canadian scholar, such a discovery must have felt like the surprise of a lifetime, every bibliophile’s dream. The discovery itself made international news, a sign of the ongoing popularity of the Anne of Green Gables literature and the enormous reach of its appeal.

This new and longer work will not disappoint. It might even draw readers unfamiliar with the Anne series directly back to the earlier novels. The volume is a curious hybrid of genres, dominated by 14 short stories set in the verdant landscape of Prince Edward Island, and interspersed with poems and fragments of dialogue and private reflections. The short stories had all been published in various periodicals in the 1930s, but Montgomery reworked them to include mention, usually only passingly, of members of the Blythe family. Although Anne and her family are never directly involved in the major plotlines of the stories, their influence is palpable and dramatic, forming the unifying element of the entire work. Many of the men in this collection desire or fantasize about marrying the irrepressibly spunky Anne Blythe, or are in denial about their very desire, as with Allardyce of “Fancy’s Fool” who “said red-haired women were his abomination.” The women, on the other hand, are either admiring or jealous of her sheer wonderfulness. Dr. Gilbert Blythe is also frequently invoked in conversation as a source and model of practical wisdom, and the Blythe children often figure as perfect examples of what imperfect but charming and adorable children ought to be like. So it is that the Blythes are often quoted, much to the exasperation of those figures who are tired of hearing them held up as icons of domestic fulfillment.

That, as Montgomery would have us realize, is their problem. To know them is to want to be like them and to have what they have—a solid foundation of family life, a grand house in which to nurture such a life and an unsinkable optimism despite the grief they know life throws at them. The Blythes Are Quoted spans nearly half a century, with most of the stories and poems being set before the First World War and about a quarter of the volume being set in its aftermath, after Anne’s sensitive son, the poet Walter, has died in combat. Hovering over the work, therefore, is a sense of impending tragedy, of loss and waste, and even of helplessness. Characters who find love or realize long-held dreams do so only after years of unhappiness or torment, usually at the hands of an unforgiving and mean-spirited relative. Aunts and uncles are either benign agents of change or else they are blocking characters, greedy and repressive, Dickensian in their selfish obstinacy and class-bound pretensions. Children are helplessly shaped by such adult forces, softened only when unconditional love has its persuasive way with them. No wonder, then, that the Blythes continually serve as models of the middle class good and the possible, but even their harmony is shattered by the loss of a precious son. Finding and sustaining love in the face of such fated cruelty is the most one can hope for, after all.

Old fashioned and quaint as Montgomery’s world is, and, indeed, as her writing itself persists in being, the enduring appeal of her storytelling is obvious to anyone with half a heart. It is a common-place that Montgomery’s readers tend to be female. Her best characters and, of course, Anne herself have an extraordinarily high degree of emotional intelligence. But the stories are so often infused with drollery and wit that it would be a shame for any reader to pass them off as being too light or romantic. At their best, they remind the reader of a Trollope or a de Maupassant, in the precision of their observations about human nature or in the obliqueness of their insight. And sometimes they are, as already mentioned, Dickensian in the adroitness of their characterization and in the surprise of their humour.

Characters who don’t realize how lucky or naive they are eventually find out the hard way. Poor, bored, married Anthony Fingold in the ironically titled “A Dream Comes True” is never more appreciative of what he has than after a night of hell riding in his pajamas, having been virtually hijacked by the woman he once thought he deserved to be with. She turns out to be a lunatic who would make Miss Havisham look well adjusted. Or the well-meaning Miss Craig, a self-taught child psychologist, in the saucily titled “Penelope Struts Her Theories,” learns that you just cannot raise a child by the book.

As for adultery, illegitimacy and all the rest of it, it is true that Montgomery paints a pretty dark picture of human nature, which is so often blinded by bigotry and self-absorption. The very short story “The Reconciliation” masterfully captures such folly when Miss Shelley resolves to forgive Lisle Stephens for having stolen her beau 30 years ago. Inspired by her Presbyterian minister, she sets out to let go of “old bitterness,” only to discover that Stephens has scant recollection of that beau and certainly no knowledge of how twisted about it all Miss Shelley has been. What hope is there if entire lives are wasted over such trivial memories? Everyone loses.

The poems that punctuate the work, allegedly written by Anne or by Walter Blythe but originally published as Montgomery’s own work, need to be read, as the foreword by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly wisely advises, as tracking a continuum of feeling, from the innocent pre-war period through to its unhappy aftermath. On their own, they could be dismissed as trite or impossibly ornamental, but the line of their development in the novel’s scheme underscores the imaginative vision of the entire work, and the much bigger picture into which Montgomery placed them.

These are not sunshine sketches of little town life so much as darkening narratives in which humans are up against their own weaknesses and fears, anxieties and delusions. This fine and respectful collection will sustain and enhance the Montgomery legacy, deservedly so.