Hasini, I have to admit that I had forgotten many things about Anne of Green Gables. I read the first book when I was about ten, which would have been around 1965. Then I read the next in the series when I was about thirteen, and the rest when I was around sixteen. Thanks to your quotes, I do remember that I thought that Anne seemed to have a happy life when she had small children at home. But I remember, too, how much the last book depressed me.
Many years later, probably when I was around thirty, I re-read some of the books. Not all of them, because I had never owned all of them, and I couldn't find all of them in the library. I don't think I re-read the one(s?) where Anne had young children at home.
When I re-read the Anne books, I had come across an article saying that L.M. Montgomery had a rather unhappy marriage herself. I have no idea if that is true, but when I read that, I wanted to read the Anne books again to see how Anne's marriage was portrayed. The story about Leslie Moore absolutely fascinated me. You are right, Julie, I now remember that Leslie's husband used to be mean, but when he came back he was just child-like and needed to be taken care of. In any case, she was not happy with him, and she wished that she could marry the young man, Owen Ford, that she had met while her husband was missing.
I strongly remember that Gilbert insisted that Leslie Moore's husband could be cured of his amnesia if he had an operation. That seemed like complete nonsense to me - I have never heard of anyone who was cured of amnesia by having an operation, and if it was not possible to give people their memories back in the late twentieth century by operating on them, then it certainly wasn't possible in the early twentieth century. Therefore, the whole story about giving Leslie Moore's husband his memories back by performing brain surgery on him seemed like a complete wishful-thinking scenario to me. But since it was so unrealistic, why did L.M. Montgomery write it?
This is my answer. The story about Leslie Moore is a didactic one, meant to teach young women a lesson about proper female behaviour. When Leslie Moore is told that her husband can have his memory and his earlier personality back if he has an operation, she doesn't want him to have that operation. Like Julie said, earlier her husband had been mean, but now he was at least docile. Was Leslie Moore really supposed to pay a lot of money to give her husband his tyrant-like personality back?
Anne shuddered at the prospect that Leslie Moore would become the victim of her husband's earlier viciousness again. Therefore she argued fiercely with Gilbert that he mustn't let this operation take place. Gilbert waved aside all of Anne's objections. It was the duty of the physician to look out for the best interests of his patient, and if that could only come with the restoration of the patient's evil personality, then so be it.
So the act of turning an invalid into a healthy wife abuser was a righteous one, according to Gilbert. Or maybe he didn't think like that; maybe he felt that God wouldn't let a good and generous act, like the curing of a man's mind, lead to the cruel oppression of a woman. And Gilbert was right, of course. Thanks to the fact that the amnesiac man had the operation, he could explain to the world that he was in fact not Leslie Moore's husband at all, but his twin brother. So because Leslie Moore had dutifully paid for her husband's operation, and because Gilbert had refused to be swayed by his wife's objections, Leslie Moore was now free.
Lesson? It is this. If a woman accepts that she must subordinate herself to her husband, and always put his best interests above her own, then God will reward her and give her the kind of happiness that she could never have found if she had selfishly looked out for her own best interests rather than her husband's.
I'm pretty sure that L.M. Montgomery was repeating a message that young girls of that time were likely to hear from other quarters, too. I have a book at home, "Remember That You Are Inferior!", written by a Swedish scholar who has studied didactic books and magazines from the 1880s, aimed at young girls and women. The message of these books and magazines is always the same: only through obedience and submissiveness can a woman find true happiness.
I was thinking, as I was mulling over the story of Leslie Moore, that L.M. Montgomery tried to be mainstream and "safe" when she wrote that young girls find happiness in obedience and in submissiveness in their marriages. Parents needn't be afraid that her books would inspire their daughters to be rebellious. But I thought that maybe, maybe L.M. Montgomery was trying to reassure herself that God would reward her, too, if she accepted her own (not necessarily happy) marriage without complaints. Maybe, maybe there might come an Owen Ford even into her own life. (Yes, Hasini, this is pure speculation.)
When I first read the story about Leslie Moore, when I was about sixteen, it didn't particularly stick in my mind. What did stick was the last book, and the evaporation of Anne in it. That shocked me enough to make that the thing that I really remembered about Anne: how the lively little girl from the first book became a shadow of a woman after twenty-plus years of marriage. But when I reread the books - some of the books, not all of them - then the Leslie Moore story became a sort of key to the message of the books. A woman must obey. That is her lot. And accepting her lot and her duty will bring her happiness. And yet, and yet - after twenty years of obedience, she had nevertheless faded into the wallpaper.
I'm sure that if Anne had figured as prominently in "Rilla of Ingleside" as Marilla did in "Anne of Green Gables", then I would never have thought of Anne as a victim of her own marriage. Now I do. And that is what makes me wonder about what role Lois will play after twenty years of marriage to Clark.
Ann
