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Next door to a perfect heathen - An Anne of Green Gables Overview
I'm Maidenjedi, back for another round of recs in Small Fandoms, and for September 2009 I'm doing Anne of Green Gables.
"There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."
At the start of the twentieth century, a Canadian author named Lucy Maud Montgomery created Anne Shirley, and for young girls everywhere, the world changed. I don't think I'm overstating my case when I make the claim that Anne of Green Gables took what Little Women did and ran further and more successfully. The fandom is small, but the impact that Montgomery's novels had has lasted a century and promises to endure.
The Story
Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert are siblings living on Prince Edward Island, in the village of Avonlea. The story opens with Matthew sent to pick up an orphan boy, whom the Cuthberts had asked a neighbor to acquire for them from an orphanage, to help Matthew with running their small farm. To Matthew's surprise and near-immediate delight, there was a mistake, and red-headed, spindly Anne Shirley is waiting for him instead of the promised boy.
Anne is a chatterbox, and a deeply imaginative one at that. She's had a hard life of it until now, shuffled from foster home to foster home and serving as little more than a scullery maid and nanny (all before the age of 11). Fate, it seems, finally intervenes on her behalf in sending her to the Cuthberts.
Marilla, as stern as her brother is shy, is not particularly glad to have Anne instead of an orphan boy - the whole point was to take some of the farm burden off Matthew's shoulders - but Anne's pleas, and the plight of the young girl do get to Marilla in the end. Anne stays, and her adventures in Avonlea and beyond make up the bulk of the series.
The first novel introduces the most important secondary characters - Anne's "bosom friend" Diana Barry, her rival and eventual love interest Gilbert Blythe, the formidable and nosy neighbor Mrs. Rachel Lynde, and of course the Cuthberts. The series in total tackles some heavy issues, politics and religion among them. The novels take place in Canada, primarily Prince Edward Island (or P.E.I.), and Montgomery paints a picture of it that entrances and sets foreign readers at ease. This is a familiar place, and even in 2009, it's easy to fall into this world.
The Novels and the Films
The novels take us from Anne's introduction all the way through her first year of marriage to Gilbert Blythe, and were written over a span of thirty years. Montgomery was reluctant to take Anne into her college years and beyond, only doing so because her readers demanded to know more about Anne. The fandom, in a way, has always been there, and Anne Shirley's popularity rivaled that of Bella Swan or even Harry Potter easily. A list of the Anne books is below. In 2008, a prequel novel, Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, appeared to mixed reviews.
Several film versions of the Anne story have made their way into popular culture. The first version appeared in 1919, with Mary Miles Minter as Anne. The 1934 film version starred a woman named Dawn O'Day who, upon reading the script for Anne of Green Gables, decided she liked the name Anne Shirley so well that she changed her name (a move the fictional Anne would probably have approved of). A short-lived television series with Carole Lorimer as Anne appeared in 1952, and a mini-series with Toby Tarnow in the lead role aired in 1956. The BBC entered the Anne world in 1976 with a mini-series starring Kim Braden. And in 1979, Anne of Green Gables premiered in Japan, animated in Akage no An. An English-language animated series appeared in 2000.
But it was Kevin Sullivan's 1985 Canadian production of Anne of Green Gables that skyrocketed Anne Shirley back into the popular mainstream, especially stateside. Megan Follows starred as Anne, Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert, and Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla. It was followed by Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel in 1986, spawned a television series on the Disney Channel (Road to Avonlea), and Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story in 2000. <>Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning came in 2008, a reimagining of most of the story.
Lucy Maud Montgomery's books on Anne Shirley (FROM WIKIPEDIA)
# Title Year Anne's age in novel
1 Anne of Green Gables 1908 11—16
2 Anne of Avonlea 1909 16—18
3 Anne of the Island 1915 18—22
4 Anne of Windy Poplars 1936 22—25
5 Anne's House of Dreams 1917 25—27
6 Anne of Ingleside 1939 34—40
7 Rainbow Valley 1919 41
8 Rilla of Ingleside 1921 49—53
9 The Blythes Are Quoted 2009 (Completed shortly before Montgomery's death in 1942)
Related books in which Anne Shirley plays a lesser part
— Chronicles of Avonlea 1912
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea 1920
Characters
Anne Shirley
Anne is eleven years old when we first meet her. She's an orphan, and has been since she was an infant. By the time the first novel opens, she's played nanny and housekeeper for a few different families, and was treated abominably throughout. She has, however, had some schooling, and she's a voracious reader and a quick learner. She is also a very great dreamer. She always emphasizes she's "Anne-with-an-e," but to give herself a touch of glamour she asks Marilla Cuthbert to call her "Cordelia." Practical Marilla refuses, of course, and Anne carries her name like a burden at times. She's anything but boring, however.
Anne has a tendency to get into scrapes, and much of her character-building happens through her making mistakes and learning from them (like the time she serves wine to her best friend instead of cordial, getting her drunk - Diana is forbidden to see Anne and....well, I won't spoil it further!). She's always on the lookout for "kindred spirits," and she has a faith in God that defies convention, never having lived in a strict religious environment. She loves big words, dramatic stories, and poetry. Anne sees beauty in detail that others ignore, or are perhaps incapable of seeing.
When Anne enters school, it isn't long before she's in competition with Gilbert Blythe to be the top student in their year, and this rivalry lasts their entire school career. Gilbert is more than a scholarly rival, however, and Anne spends a great deal of time in the later novels wrestling with the question of Gilbert Blythe and love.
Marilla Cuthbert
Marilla is the elder sister of Matthew Cuthbert, and together the two of them adopt Anne Shirley after a mistake sent her to them instead of the boy they asked for. Marilla is, to those who don't know her well, a crusty, cross homemaker. She's extremely practical, and her ways often chafe spirited Anne. She's described as being a vocal member of the Conservative Party in Canada, and she's a staunch Christian. She's got a storied "past," in the tale of her quarrel and break with John Blythe, which drove him from her and ended with him marrying another woman. Marilla is gentle at heart, though, and Anne's arrival marks a change in her life. She softens considerably, takes in her best friend Mrs. Rachel Lynde after Mrs. Lynde's husband passes, and later adopts twins - a shock to her friends, to be sure!
Diana Barry
Anne's "bosom friend," introduced in the first novel and consistent through most of them. Diana is a beauty, and a bit simpler than wild, imaginative Anne. Their friendship is regarded as very deep in the novels, and fandom often pairs them romantically (it all depends on your reading of the text - or subtext, in this case). Diana marries early, much to Anne's chagrin, and is more or less relegated to the background in later novels.
Matthew Cuthbert
Kind and gentle Matthew is won over by Anne within only a few minutes on their drive from the train station to Green Gables. He's a very shy and quiet bachelor, and fandom has interpreted him in many different ways. He positively dotes on Anne, serving as a spoil for Marilla's hard streak, and often spoils Anne. He passes away from a heart attack early in the series, but his kind nature and his spirit remain important to Anne, and his memory is never allowed to follow him to the grave.
Gilbert Blythe
Gilbert is introduced to us in the school room - he's the resident dreamboat and star scholar. Anne is less than impressed, however, which ripens to outright hatred when Gilbert pulls one of her braids and calls her "Carrots" (in reference to her red hair, about which she is very sensitive). Anne breaks a slate over his head, and Gilbert decides it must be true love. From that point onward, he struggles to at least become friends with the fiery Anne, and even when he saves her from a boating mishap, she refuses to yield. Eventually, she softens, and while they remain scholarly rivals, they are also friends.
Gilbert wants more, however, and makes it clear to Anne as they grow older. She is not "romantical," however - or at least, she's not quite at the point where she can see Gilbert for anything other than his friendliness. His grandest gesture comes after Matthew's death - he gives up teaching at the local school so that Anne may do it in his stead, and stay close to Marilla.
Gilbert, as he ages, proves to be a self-sacrificing type, and becomes a doctor. He finally wins Anne after a bout with an illness that nearly kills him. The modern films go on to portray their courtship and marriage radically differently than the novels have it, but Gilbert Blythe is to many readers the romantic equivalent of Mrs. Austen's Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Other Characters (there are a great many characters in these stories, and I've limited myself to those who play the biggest role in the fandom. If you're interested in more, SparkNotes has a handy list)
Mrs. Rachel Lynde: Neighbor to the Cuthberts and the resident busybody and gossip in Avonlea. She's heavily involved in politics, church, and everyone's business. She and Anne start off on a bad note (Rachel tweaks Anne about her hair, Anne retaliates), but they eventually become friends. Rachel's husband dies not long after Matthew Cuthbert, and Rachel goes to live with Marilla, a situation that allows Anne to go to college.
Muriel Stacy: Miss Stacy is the teacher that inspires Anne to become a teacher herself, and shows the kind of confidence that a budding young mind like Anne's needs to accomplish big goals. Anne idolizes Miss Stacy and they become good friends.
Jem Blythe: Anne and Gilbert's oldest son, named for Captain Jim (a friend of the Blythes' whom they meet shortly after they marry) and Matthew. Described as "sturdy and reliable" in character analyses, Jem is a typical oldest child, and he serves in the army in the first World War.
Walter Blythe: Another of Anne and Gilbert's sons, studious and a bookworm, very much like his mother in habit. He also serves in the war.
Nan Blythe: One of the twins, a beauty who is well aware of it. She inherits Anne's imagination and tendency to get into scrapes.
Di Blythe: The other twin, who looks like her mother, and her sister's opposite in that she is more practical and studious, and like their father in temperament.
Shirley Blythe: The youngest Blythe boy, who is very quiet and who doesn't talk much. He also goes off to war in Rilla of Ingleside.
Rilla Blythe: Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter, from whose perspective Rilla of Ingleside is told. She suffers from a lisp, which she mostly conquers but which comes back when she's nervous or upset. Like a lot of youngest children, she's proud and fights to be noticed in her crowd, and dislikes being looked down upon or condescended to.
The Fandom
The fandom for Anne of Green Gables revolves around all the various mediums in which her story has been told, but the fanfiction concentrates on the novels. It is a small fandom, and is a fixture at Yuletide every year.
The common pairings are mostly canon, though Anne/Diana enjoys a steady place.
Links:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
anneandgilbert - LJ Community for Anne/Gilbert fans
shining_waters - General fandom community for AOGG
aogg_icons - Icon community
(there are others, but these are the most recently updated ones, and are all active as far as I can tell)
Yuletide Archive for Anne of Green Gables:
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/fandom_l_m_montgomery__anne_of_green_gables_series.html
Fanfiction.net AOGG archive:
http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Anne_of_Green_Gables_series/
The Anne of Green Gables and L.M. Montogomery Lexicon
http://www.lmm-anne.net/
Anne's Garden (Japanese)
http://www.h3.dion.ne.jp/~a-garden/map.html
Anne Fans (German)
http://www.anne-fans.net/
Home of Anne (Korean)
http://myhome.konetic.or.kr/annegreen/main/index.asp
The World of Anne (Cordelia) Shirley
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/1726/
"There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting."
At the start of the twentieth century, a Canadian author named Lucy Maud Montgomery created Anne Shirley, and for young girls everywhere, the world changed. I don't think I'm overstating my case when I make the claim that Anne of Green Gables took what Little Women did and ran further and more successfully. The fandom is small, but the impact that Montgomery's novels had has lasted a century and promises to endure.
The Story
Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert are siblings living on Prince Edward Island, in the village of Avonlea. The story opens with Matthew sent to pick up an orphan boy, whom the Cuthberts had asked a neighbor to acquire for them from an orphanage, to help Matthew with running their small farm. To Matthew's surprise and near-immediate delight, there was a mistake, and red-headed, spindly Anne Shirley is waiting for him instead of the promised boy.
Anne is a chatterbox, and a deeply imaginative one at that. She's had a hard life of it until now, shuffled from foster home to foster home and serving as little more than a scullery maid and nanny (all before the age of 11). Fate, it seems, finally intervenes on her behalf in sending her to the Cuthberts.
Marilla, as stern as her brother is shy, is not particularly glad to have Anne instead of an orphan boy - the whole point was to take some of the farm burden off Matthew's shoulders - but Anne's pleas, and the plight of the young girl do get to Marilla in the end. Anne stays, and her adventures in Avonlea and beyond make up the bulk of the series.
The first novel introduces the most important secondary characters - Anne's "bosom friend" Diana Barry, her rival and eventual love interest Gilbert Blythe, the formidable and nosy neighbor Mrs. Rachel Lynde, and of course the Cuthberts. The series in total tackles some heavy issues, politics and religion among them. The novels take place in Canada, primarily Prince Edward Island (or P.E.I.), and Montgomery paints a picture of it that entrances and sets foreign readers at ease. This is a familiar place, and even in 2009, it's easy to fall into this world.
The Novels and the Films
The novels take us from Anne's introduction all the way through her first year of marriage to Gilbert Blythe, and were written over a span of thirty years. Montgomery was reluctant to take Anne into her college years and beyond, only doing so because her readers demanded to know more about Anne. The fandom, in a way, has always been there, and Anne Shirley's popularity rivaled that of Bella Swan or even Harry Potter easily. A list of the Anne books is below. In 2008, a prequel novel, Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson, appeared to mixed reviews.
Several film versions of the Anne story have made their way into popular culture. The first version appeared in 1919, with Mary Miles Minter as Anne. The 1934 film version starred a woman named Dawn O'Day who, upon reading the script for Anne of Green Gables, decided she liked the name Anne Shirley so well that she changed her name (a move the fictional Anne would probably have approved of). A short-lived television series with Carole Lorimer as Anne appeared in 1952, and a mini-series with Toby Tarnow in the lead role aired in 1956. The BBC entered the Anne world in 1976 with a mini-series starring Kim Braden. And in 1979, Anne of Green Gables premiered in Japan, animated in Akage no An. An English-language animated series appeared in 2000.
But it was Kevin Sullivan's 1985 Canadian production of Anne of Green Gables that skyrocketed Anne Shirley back into the popular mainstream, especially stateside. Megan Follows starred as Anne, Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert, and Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla. It was followed by Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel in 1986, spawned a television series on the Disney Channel (Road to Avonlea), and Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story in 2000. <>Anne of Green Gables: A New Beginning came in 2008, a reimagining of most of the story.
Lucy Maud Montgomery's books on Anne Shirley (FROM WIKIPEDIA)
# Title Year Anne's age in novel
1 Anne of Green Gables 1908 11—16
2 Anne of Avonlea 1909 16—18
3 Anne of the Island 1915 18—22
4 Anne of Windy Poplars 1936 22—25
5 Anne's House of Dreams 1917 25—27
6 Anne of Ingleside 1939 34—40
7 Rainbow Valley 1919 41
8 Rilla of Ingleside 1921 49—53
9 The Blythes Are Quoted 2009 (Completed shortly before Montgomery's death in 1942)
Related books in which Anne Shirley plays a lesser part
— Chronicles of Avonlea 1912
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea 1920
Characters
Anne Shirley
Anne is eleven years old when we first meet her. She's an orphan, and has been since she was an infant. By the time the first novel opens, she's played nanny and housekeeper for a few different families, and was treated abominably throughout. She has, however, had some schooling, and she's a voracious reader and a quick learner. She is also a very great dreamer. She always emphasizes she's "Anne-with-an-e," but to give herself a touch of glamour she asks Marilla Cuthbert to call her "Cordelia." Practical Marilla refuses, of course, and Anne carries her name like a burden at times. She's anything but boring, however.
Anne has a tendency to get into scrapes, and much of her character-building happens through her making mistakes and learning from them (like the time she serves wine to her best friend instead of cordial, getting her drunk - Diana is forbidden to see Anne and....well, I won't spoil it further!). She's always on the lookout for "kindred spirits," and she has a faith in God that defies convention, never having lived in a strict religious environment. She loves big words, dramatic stories, and poetry. Anne sees beauty in detail that others ignore, or are perhaps incapable of seeing.
When Anne enters school, it isn't long before she's in competition with Gilbert Blythe to be the top student in their year, and this rivalry lasts their entire school career. Gilbert is more than a scholarly rival, however, and Anne spends a great deal of time in the later novels wrestling with the question of Gilbert Blythe and love.
Marilla Cuthbert
Marilla is the elder sister of Matthew Cuthbert, and together the two of them adopt Anne Shirley after a mistake sent her to them instead of the boy they asked for. Marilla is, to those who don't know her well, a crusty, cross homemaker. She's extremely practical, and her ways often chafe spirited Anne. She's described as being a vocal member of the Conservative Party in Canada, and she's a staunch Christian. She's got a storied "past," in the tale of her quarrel and break with John Blythe, which drove him from her and ended with him marrying another woman. Marilla is gentle at heart, though, and Anne's arrival marks a change in her life. She softens considerably, takes in her best friend Mrs. Rachel Lynde after Mrs. Lynde's husband passes, and later adopts twins - a shock to her friends, to be sure!
Diana Barry
Anne's "bosom friend," introduced in the first novel and consistent through most of them. Diana is a beauty, and a bit simpler than wild, imaginative Anne. Their friendship is regarded as very deep in the novels, and fandom often pairs them romantically (it all depends on your reading of the text - or subtext, in this case). Diana marries early, much to Anne's chagrin, and is more or less relegated to the background in later novels.
Matthew Cuthbert
Kind and gentle Matthew is won over by Anne within only a few minutes on their drive from the train station to Green Gables. He's a very shy and quiet bachelor, and fandom has interpreted him in many different ways. He positively dotes on Anne, serving as a spoil for Marilla's hard streak, and often spoils Anne. He passes away from a heart attack early in the series, but his kind nature and his spirit remain important to Anne, and his memory is never allowed to follow him to the grave.
Gilbert Blythe
Gilbert is introduced to us in the school room - he's the resident dreamboat and star scholar. Anne is less than impressed, however, which ripens to outright hatred when Gilbert pulls one of her braids and calls her "Carrots" (in reference to her red hair, about which she is very sensitive). Anne breaks a slate over his head, and Gilbert decides it must be true love. From that point onward, he struggles to at least become friends with the fiery Anne, and even when he saves her from a boating mishap, she refuses to yield. Eventually, she softens, and while they remain scholarly rivals, they are also friends.
Gilbert wants more, however, and makes it clear to Anne as they grow older. She is not "romantical," however - or at least, she's not quite at the point where she can see Gilbert for anything other than his friendliness. His grandest gesture comes after Matthew's death - he gives up teaching at the local school so that Anne may do it in his stead, and stay close to Marilla.
Gilbert, as he ages, proves to be a self-sacrificing type, and becomes a doctor. He finally wins Anne after a bout with an illness that nearly kills him. The modern films go on to portray their courtship and marriage radically differently than the novels have it, but Gilbert Blythe is to many readers the romantic equivalent of Mrs. Austen's Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Other Characters (there are a great many characters in these stories, and I've limited myself to those who play the biggest role in the fandom. If you're interested in more, SparkNotes has a handy list)
Mrs. Rachel Lynde: Neighbor to the Cuthberts and the resident busybody and gossip in Avonlea. She's heavily involved in politics, church, and everyone's business. She and Anne start off on a bad note (Rachel tweaks Anne about her hair, Anne retaliates), but they eventually become friends. Rachel's husband dies not long after Matthew Cuthbert, and Rachel goes to live with Marilla, a situation that allows Anne to go to college.
Muriel Stacy: Miss Stacy is the teacher that inspires Anne to become a teacher herself, and shows the kind of confidence that a budding young mind like Anne's needs to accomplish big goals. Anne idolizes Miss Stacy and they become good friends.
Jem Blythe: Anne and Gilbert's oldest son, named for Captain Jim (a friend of the Blythes' whom they meet shortly after they marry) and Matthew. Described as "sturdy and reliable" in character analyses, Jem is a typical oldest child, and he serves in the army in the first World War.
Walter Blythe: Another of Anne and Gilbert's sons, studious and a bookworm, very much like his mother in habit. He also serves in the war.
Nan Blythe: One of the twins, a beauty who is well aware of it. She inherits Anne's imagination and tendency to get into scrapes.
Di Blythe: The other twin, who looks like her mother, and her sister's opposite in that she is more practical and studious, and like their father in temperament.
Shirley Blythe: The youngest Blythe boy, who is very quiet and who doesn't talk much. He also goes off to war in Rilla of Ingleside.
Rilla Blythe: Anne and Gilbert's youngest daughter, from whose perspective Rilla of Ingleside is told. She suffers from a lisp, which she mostly conquers but which comes back when she's nervous or upset. Like a lot of youngest children, she's proud and fights to be noticed in her crowd, and dislikes being looked down upon or condescended to.
The Fandom
The fandom for Anne of Green Gables revolves around all the various mediums in which her story has been told, but the fanfiction concentrates on the novels. It is a small fandom, and is a fixture at Yuletide every year.
The common pairings are mostly canon, though Anne/Diana enjoys a steady place.
Links:
anneandgilbert - LJ Community for Anne/Gilbert fansshining_waters - General fandom community for AOGGaogg_icons - Icon community(there are others, but these are the most recently updated ones, and are all active as far as I can tell)
Yuletide Archive for Anne of Green Gables:
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/fandom_l_m_montgomery__anne_of_green_gables_series.html
Fanfiction.net AOGG archive:
http://www.fanfiction.net/book/Anne_of_Green_Gables_series/
The Anne of Green Gables and L.M. Montogomery Lexicon
http://www.lmm-anne.net/
Anne's Garden (Japanese)
http://www.h3.dion.ne.jp/~a-garden/map.html
Anne Fans (German)
http://www.anne-fans.net/
Home of Anne (Korean)
http://myhome.konetic.or.kr/annegreen/main/index.asp
The World of Anne (Cordelia) Shirley
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/1726/
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Seriously. I just finished a reread of all of the Anne books and was thinking to myself, "I wonder if good Anne of Green Gables fic even exists." So I did a Google search and the results were...disappointing, to say the least. AND THEN YOU HAVE DONE THIS AMAZING THING!
I need to say OMG again because...whoa.
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Recent publishing runs of the books have Windy Poplars renamed to Anne of Windy Willows, for no earthly reason that I can determine *glares in the general direction of Puffin Classics*
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