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Life & Times

The ‘Orphan’ Genre

The novel Anne of Green Gables (1908) is one of many classic novels, and not-so-classic novels, with an orphan as a central character. Other examples include Mary from The Secret Garden, Miles and Flora from The Turn of the Screw, Jane from Jane Eyre, Oliver from Oliver Twist, Heidi from Heidi, Nat and Dan from Little Men, and Pollyanna from Pollyanna. In this context, orphans can be seen as useful vehicles for instantly establishing empathy, and sometimes sympathy, in the reader. There can be an immediate tension created by the vulnerable, unloved child being immersed in a new and potentially unpleasant environment. This presents a challenge to be overcome by the orphaned child from the word go, so that their true attributes are amplified in a way that would be less likely to happen if they were in a secure and loving family home.

Some scholars feel that the orphan literary genre was born out of the pre-Victorian social environment, where being orphaned was not an uncommon experience because of illness and disease. As a consequence, being orphaned was something that children feared on all rungs of the social ladder, because parental affection and kindness were the most important ingredients to a happy and contented life. By and large, orphans either wound up living in orphanages or with reluctant relatives, so prospects were not likely to be good. As a consequence, these unfortunate children had to learn to live on their wits, by winning over their guardians with charm and enthusiasm, while possibly also concealing their painful loneliness, sadness and vulnerability.

The Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery was herself a virtual orphan, as her mother had died of tuberculosis when Montgomery was an infant and her father had not been able to care for her. She was subsequently placed in the charge of her grandparents, where she had a very austere and isolated childhood. As a result, the idea for Anne of Green Gables came quite naturally to Montgomery, as it was part autobiographical and part imaginary. She said that writing became a form of escapism and amusement, enabling her to invent parallel worlds and populate them with characters she had created for company.

Lucy Maud Montgomery: A Life

Montgomery was an attractive woman who caught the attention of a number of would-be suitors, but she felt confused about her emotions. When she did accept a marriage proposal, she then found herself having an affair with another man, which led to a period of unhappiness brought on by her dis-illusionment about romance, causing her to break off the engagement. It seems plausible that her childhood had rendered her unable to love, because she had needed to learn to fend for herself. She had received no parental love and she had had no role models in that regard, either.

Following the almost immediate success of her first two ‘Anne’ novels (Anne of Green Gables in 1908 and Anne of Avonlea in 1909), Montgomery married the Presbyterian minister Ewan Macdonald in 1911 and had three sons (one of whom did not survive birth). She had done so largely because she had felt that it was expected of her, a decision that did not make for happy consequences. Before long she found herself suffering from periods of depression, triggered by the fact she wasn’t suited to motherhood, church duties or being married to a mentally unstable priest. Understandably, her writing became her catharsis ever more so, as she resigned herself to a life of general unhappiness despite her financial success. Montgomery’s writing was prolific, including novels, short stories, poems and an autobiography, and she was able to make quite a decent income from it. However, upon her death, a note voiced her anguish at having found herself in such a sorry circumstance. Cause of death was recorded as a blood clot to the heart, but it has been speculated that she may have actually chosen to take her own life by drug overdose during a particularly bad bout of despair.

As a measure of Montgomery’s lack of contentment with her achievements on a professional level, she said that she felt that she hadn’t managed to write the ‘great book’ she desired to write. On a private level, she set about rewriting her journals in later life, so that an edited version of her life would be saved for posterity. It seems that she was overly concerned by what people thought of her, as a writer and as a person, which led her to be unnecessarily critical of her own literature and to make life decisions that she would come to regret. The particularly sad element here is that her work was and continues to be loved worldwide, and many of her fans believe her voice to be one of the best in literature. In fact, Mark Twain was even quoted as saying that Montgomery’s Anne was ‘the dearest and most moving and delightful child since the immortal Alice.’ The irony is that Montgomery’s own upbringing had made her a writer and given her the basis for her most successful work, but it also left her bereft of the skills to forge a fulfilled life. In fact, the fictitious Anne, in many respects, fundamentally enjoys her life far more than Montgomery ever did. It makes one wonder whether Montgomery might have dived headlong into her invented fictional realm had she been able.

In the end, there were eight ‘Anne’ novels, six of which had the name Anne in the title. The last one was Anne of Ingleside, which was published in 1939. Anne also features in a number of short stories. Montgomery’s final work (a collection of short stories and poems) was presented to her publisher on the day of her death in 1942, but it was shelved because World War II was ongoing and the book contained some potentially inflammatory anti-war content. Even after the war, the publishers seem to have remained reluctant to publish for fear of tarnishing Montgomery’s reputation and their own. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that these stories saw the light of day, when anti-war sentiment was all the rage, but even then the book was re-titled and hugely dismantled. In 2009, Montgomery’s final work was finally published in its entirety, and with its original title of The Blythes Are Quoted, 67 years after it was written.

Anne of Green Gables

In the novel, the eponymous Anne finds herself adopted by a late-middle-aged brother and sister, who had requested a boy from an orphanage to help run their farm. The Cuthberts had no benevolent desire to offer a loving home to a child in the first place and when they receive a girl, their first instinct is to send her back, as if she were faulty goods. Despite this unfortunate start, however, Anne makes the best of the situation and manages to win them over before they have a chance to return her to the orphanage. Thus the story sees Anne forge a life for herself with the Cuthberts and in the small community in which they live.

During the course of the story, Anne develops from an eleven-year-old tomboy into a sixteen-year-old young woman. Montgomery wrote her as a feisty redhead who is teased about the colour of her hair, which is now something of a cliché, but there was a long-held idea that those with ginger locks had a matching ‘fiery’ temperament. This served to make Anne a memorable character, which undoubtedly helped in making the novel a bestseller during Montgomery’s lifetime.

In terms of plot, Anne of Green Gables is unremarkable compared with many novels. However, this commonality was part of the secret of its success, too, as it is a pleasant amble through the formative years of the lovable main protagonist. Indeed, Montgomery subsequently made a career from serialising the life of Anne in a number of other novels. When Montgomery initially wrote the books, they were intended for a general readership, but as the twentieth century matured, they became thought of as children’s literature due to their quaint take on life and the perpetuation of a lovely and imaginary world.

Anne of Avonlea

Following the success of Anne of Green Gables, the sequel, Anne of Avonlea, was published a year later in 1909. Anne Shirley is now in her late teenage years, leaving her childhood behind and embarking on adulthood. She is occasionally still childish, getting herself into misunderstandings and scrapes, but as her maturity develops her behaviour begins to change.

Many of the much-loved characters from Anne of Green Gables reappear in Montgomery’s sequel, which sees Anne as the sole teacher in the village of Avonlea. Positioned at the heart of society, Anne is actively involved with her local community and its dynamics. In the first book, Anne was the mischievous pupil, but now she has to deal with mischief in her own classroom. Although often exasperating, she rather enjoys the challenge and admires such unruly behaviour for its expression of spirit and rebellion.

Anne of Avonlea also explores adolescence and the changes that it brings. One of Anne’s childhood adversaries is now a fellow teacher at a nearby school, and an attraction develops between the pair. Their childhood rivalry has now transformed itself into deeper feeling, and together they provide a plotline that endures throughout the series.