QUILLBLOG

In appreciation of Anne

As you may have heard, spunky red-haired heroine Anne of Green Gables is celebrating her centenary this year. Here at home, we’ve always been partial to L.M. Montgomery’s tale of the spirited orphan who grows up on idyllic Prince Edward Island, but it’s amazing to note just how wide an impact our Anne has had on readers around the world.

Slate.com weighs in with some interesting insights into the novel, in light of Random House’s decision to issue and heavily promote a centennial edition of the book on their Modern Library classics imprint. (“Tolstoy and Anna Karenina, meet L.M. Montgomery and Anne Shirley.”)

To some, this canonical promotion of a writer who would probably now be classified as a YA author might seem preposterous. To certain left-leaning cultural theorists who won’t embrace a heroine with a less-than-revolutionary CV—Anne, once the Island’s best young scholar, chooses to become a devoted wife and mother of six—the Modern Library’s decision may appear to be a reactionary cave-in to nostalgic sentimentality. All very plausible arguments. But none of them is capable of accounting for Anne’s still-flourishing appeal and the series’ intellectual hold on the women who read it as young girls. Revisit Anne of Green Gables with an open mind, no matter what your age, and there’s an excellent chance you’ll feel that Anne deserves, however belatedly, to dwell in the company of Huck and Tom.

Apparently the folks at Jezebel.com agree, asking, “Why isn’t Anne Shirley worthy of Huck Finn status?” In a post today, they suggest that Anne should be part of the “kiddie canon” of classic books read in schools:

And yet how many of you (outside of Canada — it might be required reading there) actually read it in school? How did a book — eventually a series of books — beloved by even sometimes-YA author Mark Twain not make it into the canon of Things You Must Read? And how many of the books in that canon are about girls?