"Where Is the Boy?": The Pleasures of Postponement in the Anne of Green Gables Series

Abstract

In her ominously entitled article, "The Decline of Anne: Matron vs. Child," Gillian Thomas argues that the sequels to L. M. Montgomery's popular Anne of Green Gables (1908) prove "progressively unsatisfactory" due to Anne's gradual transformation from an unconventional, spirited child to a cautious, conservative matron (23). Objecting in particular to the adult Anne's habit of playing matchmaker, Thomas claims that "[t]he idea that some marriages can be unfulfilling or destructive is scarcely allowed to intrude into Anne's world" (28). Similarly, T. D. MacLulich notes that even as Montgomery's characters protest against the narrow view that "unmarried [women] are simply those who have failed to get a man," Montgomery as author "can imagine in her fiction only one resolution of this situation: the unhappy woman must finally acquire a man of her own" (90). Initially compelling, these readings ultimately fail to do justice to the extraordinary extent to which the Anne series dramatizes the effort its female characters must make to conform their unruly desires to the dictates of heterosexual romance, to close the gap between what they want and what they are supposed to want. Through her portrayal of numerous "dilatory courtship[s]"--including the romance that finally flowers between Anne and Gilbert--and her ingenious manipulation of the series format, Montgomery demonstrates the enormous expenditure of time and effort necessary to bring about "The End" embodied by heterosexual union (Chronicles of Avonlea 2). At the same time, she indicates that these lengthy delays make room for passionate relationships between women that prove far more romantic than traditional marriages.

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