Friday, June 26, 2020

The Bend in the Road


I recently finished Anne of Green Gables with Sam.  We cried together at the death of Matthew Cuthbert.  Okay, I cried--copiously enough that my tears ran down Sam's cheeks as well.  

There is a chapter right after Matthew's death called "A Bend in the Road."  Before Matthew's death Anne's future is clear and bright.  She has just won the Avery scholarship and will be attending University. She seems well on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer.  But then a string of calamities. . . . 

Matthew's Death
The bank failure
Marilla's failing eyesight. 

It looks for certain that Green Gable will have to be sold and so Anne makes a decision.

Anne went to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart.  How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home!  Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise.  Anne felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend--as duty ever is when met frankly.


Anne turns down the scholarship.  She will teach school to help earn money for the family and she will stay with Marilla so that they can keep Green Gables. 

As a pre-teen,  I understood this passage somewhat....  Being betwixt and between childhood and adulthood I was equally drawn between going out into the world and staying close to home and understood the loyalty and dedication that would lead Anne to choose the way she chose.  

But I always struggled with the later books in the Annes Series--after she gets married to Gilbert.  It seems that the bright future that Anne dreamed of having was foreclosed upon.  There is even a vignette in one of the later books where Anne fears that Gilbert doesn't love her any longer.

I don't think my mind has changed about those later books, but as an adult I now see the seeds of the later books being planted in this moment.  There will be many good, happy and exciting things that happen in Anne's life, but she will never become a writer. In the last decade many details of L.M. Montgomery's life have surfaced--most shockingly that she chose to die and left a suicide note and that she and her husband were both seriously addicted to barbiturates.  

Knowing this now I can't help but see Montgomery trying to write herself into a more optimistic and hopeful outlook on the world through her beloved character of Anne.  Montgomery might not have ultimately succeeded for herself, but she certainly helped countless other people.  

Today I find inspiration in the last paragraph of the book:

Anne's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen's; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that the flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspirations and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams.  

And there was always the bend in the road.

God knows I would like to be on another road, and yet I know God walks this road with me.





2 comments:

  1. Thanks for coming back to the blog. What a remarkable passage from Anne at a time like this. Just what we need. I've missed you!

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  2. Wow, what a passage! I had soured a bit on LMM after reading a late novel in the Anne series, Rilla of Ingleside, in which WWI pacifists are rather viciously attacked. But the context of her life & death brings nuance. Thanks for that. I'm also glad that with greater freedom for women today, road-bends are often less permanent than they used to be. Love & strength to you.

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