Extraordinary Canadians: L.M. Montgomery by Jane Urquhart
A possible lesbian. Suicidal. Depressed in her choice of Bridegroom even on her very wedding day. The last statement I knew, the other two took me by surprise. When an article was published last summer on L. M. Montgomery's possible end by medicinal overdose, I cried. But I wasn't all that surprised. She had been horribly haunted all of her life. Her own personality including a perverse need for control and keeping up appearances made her life even more horrific. Even in the end, she was granted no respite from controversy or drama. She was in real life, by all accounts, the very opposite of what you would expect the authoress of our beloved Anne to be. And yet it all makes sense.
Perhaps one of the most distressing things about her life, in my view, is her close encounter and then complete resistance to passionate love. When I am reminded how close she was to giving into her feelings for Herman Laird before convincing herself that he, at least in her mind, was a lowly, uncultured farmer that she could never prevail herself to marry, I feel sadness in the depths of my soul.
... to dream of marrying such a man. If I were mad enough to do so -- well, I would be deliriously happy for a year of so-- and wretched, discontented and unhappy all the rest of my life. I saw this plainly enough--- passion, while it mastered my heart, left my brain unclouded. I never for a moment deceived myself into thinking or hoping that any good could come out of this love of mine.
To let some misconceptions cloud your judgement so. To be so judgmental. To be so blind. Some spectulated that it was a combination of Herman and her Saskatchewan love interest, Will, that culminated to create Gilbert Blythe.
And yet this is what she later wrote about the day she did marry:
I felt a sudden horrible inrush of rebellion and despair. I wanted to be free! I felt like a prisoner-- a hopeless prisoner. I sat at that gay bridal feast, in my white veil and orange blossoms beside the man I married-- and I was unhappy as I had ever been in my life.
All these things come together so eloquently under the prose of Jane Urquhart, another of Canada's beloved authors. Not chronological. Deeply engrossing. Certainly thought provoking. This biography of my favourite author has to be one of the better ones. Reading this has forced me to pull out my pictorials of Montgomery's numerous photos, her journals, her auto-biography The Alpine Path. This has been an ideal way to kick off my L.M. Montgomery Challenge.
Perhaps each January, when the snow drifts splash on my windows and the pines on yonder field sway in their annual ceremonial dance with the Wind Woman, I will strive to pull out my collection for some reading and reminiscing.
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