Romance, Love, and L. M. Montgomery

As brilliant and wonderful as she was, reading L. M. Montgomery’s journals has filled me with the overwhelming desire to jump through time and space to give her a hug. (Tardis, anyone?) She had a hard life. Judgmental neighbors...no antibiotics...war...epidemic...bad teeth. But the saddest part, from my perspective, was reading her opinions about love and marriage. From the woman who gave us Gilbert Blythe and Anne Shirley, comes this comment about love:

“Yes, I think there must be a love which embraces them all [friendship, passion, and worship]--but it is rarer than a blue diamond. Most of us have to content ourselves with far less. I have loved different men in vastly different ways; but I have never loved any man with the whole of my nature--with passion and friendship and worship. They have all been present repeatedly but never altogether in any of my loves. Perhaps it is as well, for such a love, in spite of its rapture and wonder and happiness, would make a woman an absolute slave, and if the man so loved--the Master--were not something very little lower than the angels I think the result, in one way or another, would be disastrous for the woman.”

(The Select Journals of L. M. Montgomery, Volume II, entry of January 21, 1920)

Ohhh... but what happened to this?

“For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps. . . perhaps. . .love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ” (Anne of Avonlea)

Perhaps Maud didn’t believe it, or maybe she just thought that blue diamonds were more worth writing about than cut-glass gems. And maybe she was right. But, either way, it was a little guidebook for my adolescence. Anne taught me to ignore the attentions of outrageously flirting Royal Gardners as much as the prosaic and practical Charlie Sloanes. I wanted a Gilbert Blythe: someone who could be my best friend and my equal, who could talk about life and books and God and politics, and who could marvel with me at the perfection of a flower or sunset. I didn’t “date” in high school, because I wanted to learn first how to be a friend. I didn’t want a play romance like many of my friends and acquaintances had--romance that dissolved into ill-feeling and resentment after a few months of passion and obsession. I wanted true friendship, and I wanted love, true love.

“True love” is a charged term, I suppose, and so overused that no one knows what it means anymore. Maybe it’s easier to start with what it isn’t: it isn’t selfishness. It isn’t raw emotion and sexual desire. It isn’t a mere affirmation of the way we are. But it is a complete gift of self--along with an accepting of the gift of the other. It is the context in which sexual passion becomes beautiful instead of animal. It is a challenge to become a better person every day in order to make our gift of self more meaningful. It is always wanting the best for your beloved, and trusting that they want the best for you as well. In true love, Maud’s fears of a woman becoming a slave are irrelevant; in true love, a woman can love completely without losing her wholeness, because that would be giving less of a gift. In true love, a man doesn’t want a slave and he doesn’t want to be a slave either. He wants to be a friend and a helper and an equal. (And isn’t that just what Gilbert was?)

When I was fifteen, I met my true love. We didn’t date then. We wrote each other letters and talked about the world and enjoyed it together and with our other friends. We didn’t advance this prematurely into passion because neither of us wanted to stunt something by forcing it to bloom too early.

I do remember, though, the exact moment when I knew that my quickly-getting-to-be-more-than-a-friend Mark was the man I wanted to marry. Shortly before my eighteenth birthday (the day we did actually start dating), he wrote me a letter, in response to an exchange about our favorite books. Besides our mutual obsession with Tolkien, his were David Balfour and Michael Strogoff and The White Company; mine were, well, mostly L. M. Montgomery. I told him this timidly, noting how my brother had riled against the girliness of Anne, and a little afraid to recommend it to a guy. Here’s what he wrote back:

“I swear, there must be a direct link between your brain and mine. I knew without a doubt that you loved Anne of Green Gables even before you said you liked L. M. Montgomery’s books. Now as to your brother’s critique of what guys should read...well, I haven’t actually read the books, but I’ve seen the movie and have already embarrassed myself to others by saying that I believed it to be one of my favorite movies of all times... I believe that any guy who can be described as a hopeless romantic would be thrilled to find that there is conceivably a girl like Anne somewhere in the world. It was after watching the movie that I decided I would never settle for a girl other than a HOPELESS romantic. A brilliant dreamer. A beautiful dreamer. Someone who would be happy to share all her wild, romantic views of the world with me.  Someone...who knows that by being what she is, I will only love her more and more. Someone who knows that sometimes words aren’t necessary. Who finds peace in knowing that she and I are thinking together. And all this I discovered by analyzing a “girly” movie.”

And so, “Reader, I married him.” What else could I do with someone who was waiting for an Anne Shirley, when I’d been waiting all my life for a Gilbert Blythe?

I have such profound gratitude for L. M. Montgomery, and a heaping handful of other writers, who showed me over and over that real love was possible. Maybe I do think Mark is a rare, blue diamond... and, all right, I admit it’s crossed my mind occasionally that he’s just a little bit lower than the angels. But maybe those blue diamonds could get less and less rare if we can give readers an ideal to live up to, to wait for. I think it’s important to write romance--but don’t write romance divorced from true love and true friendship. I wish someone could have convinced a young Maud Montgomery that having it all together really was possible.