These Books Made Me

Anne of Green Gables Pt. 1

January 19, 2023 Prince George's County Memorial Library System Season 3 Episode 8
These Books Made Me
Anne of Green Gables Pt. 1
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This podcast crew has so much in common with the heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic, Anne of Green Gables. We too prattle on incessantly, have ill-advised adventures in hair dyeing, and we're big in Japan... one might say we're kindred spirits. In this episode we take a turn down the White Way of Delight and visit Avonlea as we return to a book that's an absolute mashed potatoes of a book for some of us. We discuss place as character, try to decipher Rachel Lynde's interesting brand of feminism, rhapsodize over the magic of childhood, and delve into the stigma faced by both orphans and redheads in the 19th century. We adore LMM's vivid landscape descriptions and economical writing, but we wonder if the 1985 Sullivan adaptation didn't improve Anne's puffed sleeve dress a bit by making it blue instead of... brown?!?

These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.

We cover a lot of ground in this episode and used some books and articles as jumping off points. Here’s a brief list of some of them if you want to do your own further research:

Make it Fashion! (Anne edition) https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1880-1889/

You're sick? How Romantic! https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/handed-down/fever-dreams

The Edwardian era: https://www.anneofgreengables.com/blog-posts/the-edwardian-era-and-anne-of-green-gables

Barnardo's Boys:
https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/06/19/a-timeline-of-barnardos-and-other-child-emigration-programs.html

Darlene:

Hi, I'm Darlene.

Heather:

I'm Heather,

Hannah:

I'm Hannah.

Darlene:

And this is our podcast, These Books Made Me. Today we're gonna be talking about Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Friendly warning as always, this podcast contains spoilers. If you don't yet know who gets drunk on what she thinks is raspberry cordial, proceed with caution. We have a special guest this week. Could you introduce yourself?

Erica:

Hi, I'm Erica. Uh, so Anne of Green Gables, what did this book mean to you? Uh, was this everyone's first time reading? If not, how this reread compare to your memories of reading it when you were younger?

Darlene:

Oh, I can start in saying that this is actually my first time reading it. I thought I had read Anne of Green Gables when I was younger, but I guess I hadn't, I was pleasantly surprised. I will say, I will confess that I was kind of dragging my feet with< laugh> reading it because after the Nancy Drew episode, I became interested in rereading all the Miss Marple mysteries cuz we brought it up. And so this was, you know, reading this book was obviously gonna take me away from my reread of Miss Marple. But I really enjoyed it and I didn't expect to enjoy it quite as much. I just think that Anne was a, very, like, she was just fairly charming. I will say that I don't think that it held up very well, though in certain aspects. Yeah, there was just a lot of like prejudiced language sprinkled in there that I thought like, made me a little uncomfortable, was a little jarring when I came across it. But if you kind of just read it and take it with a grain of salt and just come at it with, I guess understanding that it was like a product of its time, I think that it's still a good read.

Heather:

So I love that you brought up Miss Marple, cuz is Rachel Lynde, the Miss Marple of this series?< Laugh>, she knows what everyone is doing at all times. She has an anecdote about everything. Like someone put strychnine and poisoned all of the things. She knew an orphan that did this. She knew a girl whose hair turned to auburn. She's like totally the Miss Marple of this series.<laugh>. I did read these when I was a very little girl and I, I read the whole Anne series, which is a lot of books. I definitely hadn't revisited these in a very long time. So yeah, it was interesting to reread from that perspective. Yeah, like Darlene, I think for the most part I think the characters are well drawn and so that holds up. I think the, the plot and some of the feelings behind it hold up very well. But yes, I, I definitely had those same moments where I hit some of the anti French sentiment or parts where I was just like, Ooh, yikes. Like, Marilla, what are you saying?< laugh>. Um, you know, aside from that, I think if you look at it as a product of its time, it still is. It's a good read.

Hannah:

So I read the Anne books growing up. I read the whole Anne series and I think I actually read probably the bulk of what L.M. Montgomery wrote, cuz she, she had definitely had a formula. There's like Anne of Green Gables, she also wrote the Emily of New Moon books, which I think I actually liked better than the Anne books. That's a whole different conversation for another podcast maybe. Um, but she also had others like, I think there was like Jane of Lantern Hill. I mean, she writes about, she has this formula, the girl of place, um, that she does, I think for more, more characters very successfully. You know, it's a very different experience to read it as an adult than it is as a teenage girl. The language also, um, it feels a lot more flowery when you're an adult than when you're a teenage girl.

Erica:

Uh, yeah. So I kinda split the difference between y'all. I came to this book in my twenties. My cousin, for some reason that I do not know, gave me a copy of this book. The, the one I brought with me, the famously visual medium of podcasting. It's sitting right next to me. It is this very pretty illustrated edition. It sat on my shelf unread for years, and then one day I was bored. I picked it up and I think I read it in one sitting and now I come back to it once or twice a year, just when I need some comfort food. Just kind of getting drawn into this, this poor child's, uh, story as a woman in her twenties, but still being this captivated by it. But every time I read it, there's, I notice some new little gem and some new little yikes, and it's like, oh my. And it gets a little uncomfortable. But, you know, some of the views of feminism and as you mentioned some of the terms,

Heather:

I love that this is a mashed potatoes book for you. I think we've talked about those comfort food books for us before. And I, I think we've hit books that for us are that, and I can totally see how this would be that kind of book for somebody. It has great emotional pull. I think we'll get into that and that's part of the, like, romanticism of the book. But thinking about my mashed potatoes book, it has a good cry in it for me.< laugh>, like I, I know it will elicit some sobs at some point when I read it. And, and that's part of it. Like, you want that heightened emotional response and you want that pathos and investment in the characters. So I love that this book is that for you and that you brought your copy.<laugh> Anne Shirley is a red-headed 11 year old orphan who has been adopted and abandoned again multiple times since the deaths of her parents in infancy. She has received no love and limited education in her previous homes and has relied on her rich imagination to escape the bleakness of her circumstances. She is adopted by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a pair of elderly siblings on Prince Edward Island. After a providential mistake sends Anne to Avonlea instead of the boy they requested. Anne finds love and freedom at Green Gables, the Cuthbert's home. Matthew is shy, but smitten with Anne from the first day. And Marilla, while stern comes to love Anne for her funny little ways and unique perspective, we meet other islanders in Avonlea: Town busybody Rachel Lynde, who has a good heart in spite of her domineering ways, Mrs. Allan, the minister's wife, who is all kindness and pretty dresses and good counsel, Mr. Phillips, the skeevy schoolmaster, and Miss Stacy, the life-changing teacher who replaces him. We meet the other children of the island as well. Anne finds a bosom friend in Kindred spirit, Diana Berry and a nemesis in the form of Gilbert Blythe, whose head she smashes her slate over when he teases her in class. She befriends Ruby Gillis and Jane Andrews, but frequently clashes with the obnoxious Josie Pie. As she grows up, Anne gets into a series of mishaps, the slate incident, breaking her ankle due to a failed attempt to answer a dare, dyeing her hair green, almost drowning in a tragic boating accident and accidentally getting Diana drunk. She also has numerous triumphs, saving the life of Diana's little sister, working diligently to become top of her class, placing first in the entrance exams to Queens becoming a lauded performer and winning the Avery scholarship for college. Anne has grown into a stylish and accomplished young lady by the end of the book, diploma in hand, ready to embark on her collegiate career. Matthew dies unexpectedly due to a heart attack when the bank all their money is in fails. Marilla facing a lack of funds in the loss of her vision decides to sell Green Gables. Anne intervenes and changes her path, deferring her collegiate dreams to take a job as a schoolteacher to bring in money and allow her to care for Marilla. Gilbert, who was awarded the position as headmaster at the Avonlea School, hears of Anne's plight and gives up his position so she can remain in walking distance of home. Green Gables is saved and Anne and Gilbert reconcile and pledge to be close friends and help mates with their future college studies. I feel like we should have given a shoutout to our Canadian and Japanese listeners,< laugh>

Multiple Laughers:

< laugh>

Heather:

I feel like this is such a beloved work for Canadians and it's also weirdly huge in Japan.

Hannah:

It is. I found that.

Heather:

a podcast,<laugh>

Hannah:

< laugh>. I found that in our, in the research that's kind of neat.

Darlene:

Oh, there was like an anime version, right? Okay.

Heather:

Mm- hmm.

Darlene:

Interesting. I kind of wanna see it now.

Heather:

And they have a theme park there that is a recreation of Avonlea.

Darlene:

That's interesting.

Heather:

It's very interesting how huge Anne is in Japan

Darlene:

< laugh>. And I mean, it almost feels like Montgomery set it up that way. Like you said, that that's the formula that she has person and place. And I feel like Green Gables is like its own character, especially like after watching the series, which I hadn't before, I kind of just wanted to get more into a discussion about how it held up. I know that we kind of already brought up some of the problematic language in it. I did think that the< laugh>, was it the peddler scene that was pretty problematic.

Hannah:

Yes.

Heather:

About the Italian peddler.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Heather:

And then he wasn't actually Italian, right?

Hannah:

Yes.

Darlene:

Just the fact that like she already, or that Marilla already found fault in his character just by the fact that he was a peddler and just made the assumption that he was Italian.

Erica:

Yeah. And uh, and Anne's like, oh, he wasn't Italian, he was German. It was like, not the point< laugh>, but okay.< laugh>. Yeah. It's, um, there are a lot of things that are very product of its time. I think Heather mentioned the, the, the French hatred. Like mm. Marilla refers to, uh, stupid little French boys down by the creek and you're just like, wow.< laugh> mm- hmm.. It's so, uh, that, that part is, is not my favorite to revisit. No. But I think on a, on a high point that something that does hold up is just kind of this, every time I read this book, I am taken exactly to the place that Montgomery is describing.

Darlene:

Mm.

Erica:

Because there is so much description, there's so much talk about the plants and the way the roads are structured and where things sit. And so it gives you this very visual, like, I can see Green Gables and I can see Avonlea. And to me it's, that's one of the things that's so comforting about it. It's just like, ah, okay, I'm back in this happy place. I'm back in this, this place that is just beauty personified and I.

Darlene:

< laugh>.

Erica:

that, that just kind of takes you back to a time and a place and a feeling. And I think that really, uh, stands the test of time.

Heather:

Yeah, I agree with Erica. Obviously there's some references in there that were really cringey the poor French Canadians just get beat up on throughout this book. There's that, there's the references to like, they didn't want a little, I think they called it a half grown stupid French boy was what Marilla said. There was also a, a weird reference to Arabs in one of Marilla's random diatribes.

Erica:

She refers to Barnardo's Boys. I'm, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right, but she calls them quote London Street Arabs unquote. And so there was this guy, his last name was Barnardo. I don't, uh, Barnardo, I don't remember his first name. But what he did was he would see street urchins and kind of forcibly adopt them. So he would just kind of snag them off the street and put them into these, these homes. He, he was kind of one of the, the first, one of the progenitors of the before and after picture. So he would take a picture of this poor kid who's been starving, neglected working as a chimney sweep. So he probably had some sort of terrible malady. And then he would put him in this home and then get him healthy and fed and whatever. And there just show a picture of after. So he's shining and cleaned. And so people would give him money. It's not that he didn't do a lot of good, but also his homes were very strictly regimented and, you know, you had to pray for like six hours a day or something and you'd go to school and then you had chores and you had very little time to yourself. And it wasn't all altruistic. Like he really did wanna help these poor kids. But you know, he would just send them hither and yon all over the, all over the world. And the kids were just kind of like, where are we going?<laugh>. So that's, that's what that's about.

Heather:

That's really interesting. And I do think it's orphans in general. The depiction in here is just kind of heartbreaking. You know, the, the life that Anne led before she was with the Cuthberts at Green Gables is absolutely wretched. Her first placement was somewhat better than the second placement, but in neither placement did they think of her as actual kin. The idea of adopting somebody for the first placement, it seemed more like, well it's charity and then we can get her to do some work. But at least they sent her to school and then they completely abandoned that by the second placement with the Hammonds, where there's a drunken violent husband and Anne is really just there to nanny their multiple sets of twins. Certainly the orphan asylum seemed like a pretty horrific place here. I mean, maybe not directly abusive, but again, not a loving place at all. Certainly no nourishment for a child as a human being. You know, it's just a here's a bed, here's some food, you're gonna learn this religion. And yeah, very strict.

Hannah:

You're basically warehoused there.

Darlene:

Yeah. And I mean we talk a lot about the problematic language, but also in terms of it holding up, it is set in the 1880s, which I think was interesting cuz there are some things that, at least for me, it's something that I have like a vague notion of. So one of the things that was really hard to really get a good sense of is the sort of discrimination that redheads have.

Marilla:

What have you done to your hair?

Darlene:

And I think that that was really hard for me because I, I feel like most people actually think it's unique and like, actually beautiful now. But I, I just don't see that sort of distinct hatred for people that have red hair and green eyes. Like I think, I don't know if it's just that specific combination, but I don't, I think actually green eyes are very like, desirable amongst people. I really appreciate that Hannah had like a lot of, uh, research and looking at some of these articles. It just put it a bit more into perspective. But I think that that was like hard.

Heather:

It did make me think though, that some of that has hung on because the phrase redheaded stepchild still gets used.

Unknown speaker:

Oh, that's

Hannah:

It does.

Heather:

Yeah. And which makes no sense if you don't have this context of red hair being stigmatized.

Darlene:

mm-hmm.

Heather:

U m, but yeah, that's a really important part of this book is her struggle to escape from the stigma of both being an orphan and being redheaded.

Rachel Lynde:

Lawful heart. Her hair is as red as carrots.

Heather:

And at times it seems like she thinks the stigma of her hair is far worse than that of being an orphan. Yeah.

Erica:

Well it's funny because I never, the, the stigma always seems to be internalized for me. Like point people point out that she has red hair, like, you know, Gilbert holding up her braid and saying Carrots,

Gilbert:

Carrots.

Erica:

And when Mrs. Lynde meets her for the first time saying, and hair red as carrots. But all of the, the self-hatred about having red hair just to me seemed very, not like it was coming from the outside, it was coming from, but it just seemed to be like that she personally did not like having red hair. That it was just like a, a personal choice because it was something about herself. So she's like, well I've got this hair, no one else around me has red hair. So to me it never really seemed like a thing that she was getting from other people. It was more that she, it was just something that she didn't like, she didn't like having red hair. So it's funny that, that that's a perspective I hadn't really taken on it before that maybe she was hearing it from, from other people, like the kids at the asylum or whatever. But we never really hear any of that.

:

Mm- hmm.

Erica:

Just people saying, Hey, you have red hair. That's unusual, but never saying you have red hair, therefore you are a bad person. Or, oh, gross redheads. We all know what they're saying about that. Um,

Darlene:

I mean she also really loves literature, so I wonder if she also picked up on it through books. Cuz I know that at one point she said she wish she had black hair and then I think she quotes a book and how women with black hair are like Raven Beauties or something like that. And so it could also be that just not really seeing herself represented in the literature that she was reading and really admired

Heather:

With her hair there's at least an implicit connection early on with that being part of why she has a bad temper.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Heather:

Like when she flies off the handle with Mrs. Lynde and then with Gilbert, I felt like the book was almost implying that that is like,

Darlene:

Oh yeah.

Heather:

That that was a trait of her being, you know, it's the fiery redhead.

Darlene:

Oh.

Hannah:

There's a trope. mm-hmm.

Heather:

but it, it did feel like they were kind o f trying to connect those things like impulsivity and temper.

Darlene:

Yeah. I think that was hard for me to understand because for me carrots.

Gilbert:

Carrots.

Darlene:

didn't seem like an insult, but it carries a lot through the book. Right. Because she's mad at Gilbert for like the entirety of the book and he like, that's the worst that he said to her. And I think it was like hard to wrap my mind around, but I can't in any way figure out why this is that big of an insult other, other than calling attention to the fact that she has red hair.

Heather:

Yeah. She nurses that grudge for literally years< laugh> Yes. About that one< laugh> incident.

Darlene:

Yes.

Erica:

He calls attention to the thing she hates the most about herself. So of course she takes carrots. as an actual insult rather than just sort of like an obnoxious bit of teasing.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Erica:

kind of, uh, a nd Diana's says the same thing. She's like, he's cro called me a crow a dozen times. And she's like, well, being called carrots.

Gilbert:

Carrots.

Erica:

is worse. Is like, well is it?

Darlene:

< laugh>.

Erica:

I mean to you because you don't like the fact that you have red hair. Diana probably doesn't mind the fact that she has black hair. So she's like, well that's not an insult. It's like, if me being taller than someone is like, oh, you're really tall. It's like, yes I am. But if I was sensitive about my height, then I might be like, how dare you?

Anne:

How dare you

Darlene:

< laugh>. Yeah.

Erica:

So her, her ability to, to hold onto a grudge is, is almost admirable. Like as a, as a little, if I'd read this book as a kid, I would probably be a lot more stubborn than I am now when people slight me

Hannah:

< laugh>. So I think there's a couple things going on. I think the redhead culturally has like, there's a lot of complex stuff. There's sort of like the rarity of it, which makes it maybe sometimes considered considered, you know, a beauty ideal. But there it also is like connected with fieriness and I think there's sometimes like connected with the sense of like the supernatural or mm- hmm.> vampirism, witches, like Anne's referred to as a witch earlier on in the book. There's sort of an uncanniness to it, which I think Montgomery is still deliberately trying to evoke there. And I think that even if you accept red hair as beautiful in as some circumstances, Anne doesn't seem to at the beginning of the book, if you are a child growing up and you are, you look different than most of your peers, I think there's a hardness in that that is maybe are for you to accept until perhaps later in life. You know, you might get there at some point, but um, it's hard to look different even if you might like it later I guess like she says, she wanted nut-brown hair like, you know, the other girl who was adopted. I think we're also meant to think that Gilbert refers to her hair as carrots.

Gilbert:

Carrots

Hannah:

I think we're meant to think that it's sort of a flaming ginger orange color and that later on it darkens to auburn and that auburn in the hierarchy of hair colors is more desirable than an orange. Like she, you know, is hoping for darker hair. I think that matters to Anne or to the beauty standards of the time. So

Heather:

That early interlude with Rachel, she says, you know, well I, I knew a girl whose hair darkened up and Anne is like, oh very sincerely says, I will think of you as a benefactor for telling me that like you've given me hope. It, this is a very fraught issue for her. And I mean she feels things very deeply as well, but I think at least for me, I very much sort of infused her past with people called her out for this all the time. Like, if, if you were the child that is not kin in a family and you're being mm- hmm sort of marginalized or berated or treated poorly all the time, that probably all ran together for her. You know, it's the, the most notable thing about her when she meets somebody, I'm sure drunk Mr. Hammond referred to her as that redheaded girl or whatever. I mean it probably just got so wrapped up in the general abuse and neglect she was experiencing. I could see how that would be supercharged for her. Maybe even more so than it would be for someone else during that time because she had seemingly attributed some of her not being wanted to her hair. Like you were saying about the would you want me if I had nut-brown hair like the other girl that got adopted?

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Heather:

Which, yes, again, it seems all outta proportion the way she reacts to Gilbert, but at the same time I can, I can understand that from the perspective of that like being a wound that she's carrying and baggage she's bringing to the table. He didn't know that obviously like.

Darlene:

right.

Heather:

He's doing the really obnoxious, oh I did it cuz I liked you kind of thing. Where it's like, why are you nagging her? First of all, you're older than her by a couple of years, like grow up Gilbert. But he didn't certainly intend it to be something hurtful on the level that she experienced it as.

Hannah:

He didn't know it was her berserk button

Heather:

< laugh>. Right, exactly. But then, but then when she has that and she smashes the slate, I feel like that's immediately attributed to her being a redhead. Yeah. So it was like her action just confirmed the< laugh> the stigma for people.

Anne:

How Dare You.

Heather:

Can we talk for a minute about, uh, Mr. Phillips the school teacher?

Hannah:

Yes.

Darlene:

Oh my god,

Hannah:

He is skeevy you said it in your.

Heather:

so gross

Hannah:

Plot summary. He's so gross.

Erica:

I was just agreeing. He is every time I get to that and he's just like, she is 16 years old and like we don't know how old this guy is, no matter how old he is, not okay. But like in again, famously visual medium of podcasting, there is a picture drawn, there's an illustration of the back of the room when Anne strikes the slate over Gilbert's head and you can see the whole classroom because Mr. Phillips is in the back and he's got this like gray hair and a big bushy gray mustache. And so he clearly looks like he's in his fifties. But again, no matter how old he is, he is a teacher, she is his student.

Hannah:

Right.

Erica:

He's just, just like, he is not teaching the class and they're doing whatever they want. He's just sitting there like writing little poems to her and being like, yes, make sure you know your Latin and it's just, ugh, gross.

Heather:

So gross. It's awful. And we do see that in theory a teacher could be young. I mean Anne and Gilbert are taking on schools when they are what, 16, 17 years old as their first teaching assignment. Well I guess Gilbert's older cuz he was two years back. But Prissy is a child. She is in a one room schoolhouse as a child and the other students are squicked out by what he's doing. It's not like this was like a norm that was okay because then he loses the school later. And it's certainly implied that the trustees had had enough with him with all of his goings on. But yes, he's writing her love poetry. He's spending half of his day sitting with Prissy like giving her private lessons while the rest of the students are just kind of left to their own devices. It is nausea inducing. I did think that the film version really portrayed this with that level of just like, this is making my skin crawl< laugh> credit to the guy that played that part because< laugh>, he played it, you know, just perfectly for how it's written. Where like you really just feel like dirty watching his, his interactions with the girl that's cast in that role mm- hmm., who's clearly like very flattered by all of this attention, which makes sense. Like this authority figure is singling me out for all this special attention and saying I'm beautiful and smart. Like you can see the power dynamic very well in the book, which I, I do think is somewhat progressive for the book, given the time it was written to spend as much time as it does sort of calling out the like creepiness of that relationship. I don't know what Montgomery's intention was with that, but I thought that that landed pretty well.

Hannah:

Well you, you see the, the respect that everyone is supposed to give the teacher is so great that it makes it extra awful. I mean there's no way that it, there's no situation where it would be okay but you know, the teacher kind of rules over the classroom and it just makes the situation of being in that one room schoolhouse for hours and hours with him. Even worse, like you said, you know, they portrayed her really well in the main series. The actor does not like he doesn't a very good job. Like you don't feel an ounce of sympathy for Mr. Phillips< laugh>

Darlene:

Makes even though anyone else is crying< laugh>.

Hannah:

Yeah. You know, he, he makes them every bit as believably awful.

Erica:

< laugh> a, the guy who plays Mr. Phillips reminds me of the guy who plays Mr. Collins and the BBC Pride and Prejudice.

Hannah:

Yes.

Erica:

So every, every look, every gesture, every word is just, I'm like, I want to crawl out of my own skin and hide in a closet. It's so gross. But one thing we do not get at all is Prissy's perspective on this. We don't know if she welcomes this attention like from the book she has to submit to it. You know, maybe she does actually like it. Maybe she is kind of like, oh well, well this is fun and this guy's gotta, he's going places I guess. But having this older attention, maybe it is welcome to her still gross, but maybe it isn't. She cannot get away from this guy. So< l augh> it, that would be, you know, as a cataloger you see a lot of the same themes come up in a lot of, you know, you see a lot of romances that have the same, uh, kind of plot devices, a lot of YA that has the same plot devices and something that's very popular is taking a marginalized character from a major work and giving them their own work. I would love the Prissy Andrews story.< l augh>.

Hannah:

Me too.

Darlene:

I do think that another character within the novel is the landscape itself. Did you guys have any feelings towards it reading it?

Heather:

I think just to recall what Erica said earlier, that's part of why this book resonated with me as a child. Like it very much echoed my experience. You know, I, I remember when I was Anne's age or probably a bit younger, my cousins and I, we had names for all of these little areas on my grandparents' land. You know, we, we named the creek, we named this like tangled area that was had all of these vines and stuff. We had had our own little secret names for those places. And that sort of letting your imagination infuse the landscapes around you with magic that you really only get when you're a kid. And I think Anne even kind of comments on that as she's getting older, we get like some very adulting is hard and dull moments from Anne as she kind of calms down as she ages. But it's so true. And the book kind of brings you back to those moments when you're a kid where there is magic in just the world around you. And where going outside is an adventure that you create with your friend. You can be in another place and and really escape sort of the drudgery of life just by being outside in nature and having that interaction with, with the setting. I think that holds up beautifully for me personally. I do kind of wonder now kids don't go outside as much in a lot of places and are the landscapes of the the multi-person video game you're playing the same sort of magic that you create in natural landscapes when you're outside. I don't know. So I, I would be curious how this resonates with younger kids, especially urban kids that maybe don't have as many opportunities to sort of commune with nature in a, in a setting with friends. The writing is very vivid. You can really see in your mind's eye all of these places and like the film of course, like it's a beautiful setting and they filmed it in the actual places of, of Montgomery's life. So you're seeing what she saw and just this kind of unspoiled coastline and, and the fields and the meadows and the trees that creates the archway of the white way of delight. And it's, it's lovely and you can, you can see for a child like Anne with a vivid imagination, how that would transport her into the books that she's reading with her friends, like with the Lady of Shalott, you, you see how it could turn into, uh, we're terrified to go through this forest that we were fine going through last week because we made up a story that there was a person haunting it and.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Heather:

Yeah, it's great. I think that's so relatable and, and the setting very much is a character, you know, it has all this depth to it cuz we hear all of these things that Anne and Diana have created as backstory and context for the landscapes that they're experiencing. I think it's wonderful. And the home too, I mean the house itself of Green Gables and the way that it physically changes as Anne is there longer, I think is also really beautifully done. You know, the stark, stern room in the gable that Marilla initially puts her into, by the end of the book it's floral and romantic and mm- hmm. feminine and you know, it's warm.

Hannah:

I want to visit Prince Edward Island now. And I do think that, you know, you see how imagination, although wonderful, it's a double-edged sword because for every White Way of Delight, there's a Haunted Forest.

Erica:

There is this, this very real feeling when you're a a kid and the first time you go somewhere different, you know, and how that imprints on you, where you remember the first, like, I grew up just outside Baltimore. The biggest memory I have is the first time I remember seeing,

Singing:

Ohhhhhh.

Erica:

not the musical my family lived in, still does in Oklahoma. So we went to Norman, Oklahoma and I keep saying Oklahoma just because I, I can't quite wrap my head around this, but like my grandma's house had this big field behind it and I had never seen anything like it. I was like four years old and I'm like, look at all this room. It was all this space. I can throw bird seed and birds will come. That doesn't happen in Baltimore, you know, and for Anne, this is probably the first time she's been anywhere pretty, you know, so she, I think Matthew refers to something that like possibly the White Way of Delight as it's kind of pretty, I guess she's like pretty, doesn't begin to describe it. This is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen in her entire life. Her short, sad, pathetic, not pathetic, sorry,< laugh>, um, sad, upsetting. It's kinda, yeah, there is, there's pathos and just everything she sees just adds up and adds up. And it's just she has gone away from this ugliness and drudgery into this new world of vast possibilities. It's very probable that she has never seen flowers growing in such perfusion before. Uh, the only thing she brings up of her previous residences are a broken china cabinet that she talks to in the mirror. Oh my god. So sad. And an echo- kind of foresty place that her echo comes back to her and is her other imaginary friend.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Erica:

Again heartbreaking. But those are the only two things. She brings up something with a pretty cabinet with that had tchotchkes in it and a forest, the orphan asylum, I'm guessing middle of a city dirty, just they did the best they could, I'm guessing. But now she's in a place that is beautiful and that is like immediately just sucks her in and you see it through her eyes and it's quite something.

Darlene:

She didn't really bring much from her previous experiences. Yeah. When she gets to Avonlea, all her romanticism just comes out. And I think one of the beautiful things about this book is that it didn't really seem like she had much of an adolescence beforehand because she was always made to be like a caretaker, like at a really young age. And then she gets to Green Gables and it's like she's allowed to be an actual kid. There is a start of this like tragedy, tragic comedy of like adolescence, which< laugh> is very like fun and interesting to see the kind of trouble that she finds herself in.

Marilla:

What have you done to your hair?

Darlene:

I, I was like trying to recall like, was I that bad as a child? Like did I get into as many terrible situations as Anne did? But I think she was kind of special in one of a kind, in the fact that for her it's just kind of letting her imagination kind of run wild.

Heather:

When my family was in town before the holidays and I was, and we watched the film together again, which is really kind of an annual tradition for us around the holidays. We always watched the Canadian version from the eighties with Megan Follows in it. And we were talking about the sort of scrapes you get into at young ages. And my bosom friend when I was that age, she had a younger brother who was a close friend to my brother. And so we would, the four of us would play and do all of these very alike things. We staged very silly theater performances where we would stuff, you know, uh, an old dress from a thrift store with rags and that would be the deceased like murder victim. And you know, we are very dramatic about it and I was thinking we got into a lot of mischief with sort of our imaginations running away with us. Like we ruined I think a good amount of Elizabeth's mother's Pyrex and bakeware because we decided we were going to make candy because we had read it in a book. Well, we didn't know what we were doing, so we just nuked the hell out of sugar in the microwave, which then just crystallized on everything and was impossible to get off. My brother locked her little brother in a steamer trunk that they had in the attic because we were again playing an imagination game kind of thing. And it went horribly off the rails and that was actually quite dangerous. So like, yes, you sort of look at this and it's like, well Anne, what are you thinking? Like why would you buy something from this random person on the road and then dye your hair? What did you think was gonna happen with that? The Lady of Shalott thing, it's like, no, why did you put her in a boat and just shove her down the the stream? But then thinking back at that age, I think we did make poor judgment calls like that. My cousins and I, we got into all sorts of mischief down at the creek where it's, it's probably lucky none of us got bitten by a water moccasin with the things that we put our hands into and that we crawled into. So I, I think that that's relatable too. It's just maybe like the type of scrapes that we got into are a little bit different than Anne's. There is something about that. Like, you fail your way through adolescence, right?< laugh>, like that's part of it. And at the best of times you can laugh about it as it happens, but a lot of times you feel like it's just extremely painful and embarrassing and it, it just feels so heavy when you're in seventh grade, right? Like, everything feels like the end of the world. So I think that's captured really nicely in the book as well.

Hannah:

I, I feel like my sister and I, between the two of us, my sister broke her arm on a hay bale. I've crashed into a ditch on my bike.

Erica:

The, um, the kind of refrain that I don't think this exact phrase gets said, but the, the just constant refrain of Anne, what were you thinking that it's just like, or, or what did you think would happen? Anne's whole thing is that it kind of distills down to, well I didn't know what would happen or I thought this would happen, this good thing, this good outcome and that everything would go from there. So I'm not sure, but I wanted to find out and she says later in the book, well I've never made the same mistake twice.< laugh>. I've never starched the handkerchiefs again. I've never poured milk into the ba- pail full of yarn balls. I've never dyed my hair again. I've gave up on the haunted wood thing. It's a learning thing. You know, she's a kid, you know, she's like, that's what kids do. They make mistakes and then they go, huh, well I learned something today or ow that hurt. I don't want to do that again. She keeps getting into these things that seem like they would be related, but, and some of them, like the anodyne liniment in the cake, truly not her fault because she couldn't smell it. And Marilla you need to put thi- you tell her where the things are or write labels on them.< laugh> because I mean if it had said ligament and she'd poured it in, oops, that's, that's a silly mistake. But it said vanilla, she poured ligament into a vanilla bottle and put it right back where it was< laugh>.

Hannah:

We could have avoided the, um, the current wine incident as well.

Erica:

Yes.

Hannah:

Possibly with a label maker

Heather:

A hundred percent. And Marilla learned something in those incidents as well because those were very much a product of having lived your life a certain way for a really long time because you were the only person in the house responsible for the cooking, the medicine, the things like that. So she didn't need to label it for herself. But now that you're sharing those like housekeeping duties with somebody else, it goes tragically wrong when your memory is the only one< laugh> that's aware of changes that have been made. Like where something is what the label says, what bottle it's in, they're learning together, which is lovely. And I think Marilla's really pretty good about being forgiving of that. All of these incidents that Anne gets into would be quite trying, if this is this child and you've never raised a child before, but she's very forgiving of her. Like I think she's pretty gentle in her acceptance of Anne's foibles. You know, Rachel at one point is like, I'd get this switch, like be like, I hope you, you get a branch, it's this very harsh, you gotta go straight to the corporal punishment and go big with it. Marilla is like, well no cuz I kind of understand where she went off the rails here and it wasn't intentional. So like I don't think that's the way to handle it. And then she has a discussion with her about it. And I think that's a really nice dynamic that develops in the book as well. Just the responses to teen screw ups are very gentle compared to some of the other books that we've read about what goes wrong when you make a mistake. No one burned their house down in this one< laugh>< laugh>. So, Anne, Anne's ahead of Kirsten on that front front, I guess

Hannah:

No one robbed a corpse

Darlene:

<laugh>. Oh yeah. I love that though. I love that she does say like, I never make the same mistake twice. I kind of had this moment where I thought, oh, like if I had read that as a child, would I be more forgiving of myself? Like if I, when I did make mistakes, I don't know that I would have. Cuz I, I think that whenever these books try to be like moralizing or like they have these little like life lessons, I don't know that I was keen on following them, but I think as an adult reading it, I was like, oh that's so nice. And like I, I hope that people kind of take that with them after reading it. And the other thing I really love about Anne is I love her apologies and I love how she makes it into a whole, like she's very theatrical about it because how many times have you been put in a position where you had to like apologize to someone and it was the worst thing in the world and you had to really like swallow your pride to say that you were wrong And Anne's just like, you know what, I'm just gonna make something out of it. Like this is my moment to shine. I really appreciated them.

Hannah:

Look, I mean I, I feel like can any of us say that growing up we didn't have a moment where we were in trouble and we didn't just decide to really lean into the melodrama of the moment because we were already there.<laugh>

Darlene:

< laugh>, I mean guess the other thing about finally allowing her to be an adolescent is that then it was in this really small town setting and so word travels fast and that was also really interesting. Cause again, like I've never lived in a small town so I wouldn't know what that sort of dynamic is. But a really funny scene was when she like owns up to something because Miss Stacy had come around and she like owned up to something that really, that wasn't even the point of the call, it was actually to commend her on something.

Heather:

Yeah, I think Marilla says it's your own guilt that just made you apologize or this not anything that Miss Stacy did because Miss. Stacy's coming to like ask can she be in the advanced class

Darlene:

Yes, exactly.

Heather:

For the entrance exam and Anne's like uh oh, I'm in trouble about this thing that I did two days ago, so I better confess now and get out in front of it with the small town thing. You know, Rachel Lynde is the like news of the village. She knows what everyone is doing at every time, the book starts right out of the gate, Rachel sees Matthew in the buggy and he's got a collar and like he's dressed too well so, well he is not in a hurry. So he is not going for a doctor and he is not courting cuz it's Matthew. And it's like why could he possibly, he wouldn't dress like that to just go pick up, you know, hayseed what is going on and she can't rest until.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Heather:

Finds out. So she immediately just goes over to Marilla's and everyone just tells Rachel what's going on all the time. I think everyone has gotten to the point of, well I can't hide anything from her, she's gonna find out anyways. So she always knows everything that's happening. She's the source of information at several points in the book about what else is going on. She knows everything that's going on with Gilbert giving up the school before Anne knows about it.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Heather:

you know, like he hasn't even had a chance to tell Anne. She finds out< laugh>< laugh> via the telephone network that is Rachel Lynde. It's kind of great. I think that's, that's pretty apt characterization. You know, I think even like at work, we, we don't live in a small town here. Oh, oh you're right.<laugh>. I bet all of us could name the Rachel Lyndes in our organization.

Multiple Laughers:

<laugh>< laugh>.

Heather:

Like, oh, I wonder what's going on with this. I know who I'll ask. Yes. You know who the people are that know everyone's business. So I think there's something very universal about, about that even if you're not from a small town. Mm-hmm. That's true.

Erica:

Yeah. It's some of the most economical storytelling that, that I've encountered in a book because by the time I think it takes Rachel three in my version anyway, like three or four pages to get from her house to walking in the front door of the kitchen door of Green Gables. And in that time you learn who Rachel is, you learn who Matthew is, you learn who Marilla is and you learn about their whole situation. And it's not just because you learn the facts of these things, it's because you get Rachel's perspective on these things. And the book is mostly it's limited third person, so it will usually be from one person's perspective at a time. Um, usually Anne or Marilla. But you get a couple scenes of Matthew doing this. But I think Rachel gets one and it's the first scene and Gilbert gets one and Gilbert's is one of my favorite. It's the first time he is back at school with Anne and he notices her. It's like, oh, he knows who she is because of the hearsay and the gossip. And the two things that get brought up are that Mrs. Lynde says she has a bad temper and little Jerry Buote from down the creek says she talks to herself like a crazy person and he's like, I have got to know this guy, have gotten know this girl because I mean, look at the, I know these two pieces of information, her eyes are incredible. She's got this red hair and she's not paying attention to him and all the other girls are.

Darlene:

mm- hmm.

Erica:

and he's just kinda like, who are you? Fascinating. U m, and it's just every time, every time it switches perspective because you are seeing things from outside. Like you never get any part of a chapter that's from Diana's perspective. Mm- h mm. or Ruby or, and again, you only get Mrs. Lynde at one time. And just on a, on an aside, it kind of drives me crazy that once a woman is married in this town, she loses her first name except for Rachel, she's Mrs. Rachel Lynde, everyone else is like Mrs. Mrs. Cornelius Ross or Mrs. Peter Blewett and they're like, Mrs. Peter is coming up the lane in the second, but, but she is Mrs. Rachel Lynde and her husband Thomas is Rachel Lynde's husband. And I think that's very funny.<laugh>,

Heather:

Does that lead us into feminism a little bit because I have some real questions about Rachel Lynde's brand of feminism. Yeah.< laugh> at one point she talks about how everything would be better if women were in charge of things. And she says like she, she clearly is supporting suffrage. I looked up, she's a Grit is brought up. And that party was the progressive party in Canada at the time. And like one of their platforms was universal suffrage at the time of this book, when it's set, women had not gained the vote yet in Canada. So Rachel, at least on surface from that seems to be fairly progressive. But then later in the book she's like, I don't like this having a woman school teacher. I don't like women going on to higher education. I'm like, what is going on with like, I don't understand your philosophy here about feminism. You said it would be better if women ran everything, but you don't want them to have any roots to doing that. I thought that was really odd.

Erica:

Well, by women she means Rachel Lynde< laugh>. It's if, if it was all women were exactly like her then she wants them in charge. But she's like, oh well she's she's a little too flighty. Oh, she's a little bit too young. Uh oh, she doesn't have the life experience.< laugh>. If Rachel Lynde were in charge of the world then that would be one thing. But she looks around, she's like, but not that woman. So< laugh>, I think that might be part of it, just she's a woman who's very particular about what a woman should be.

Darlene:

But I mean in terms of other aspects of feminism, again reminding me of pride and prejudice, I thought Anne's self-reflection when I forgot whose nose she like makes comment about like saying that they have an ugly nose and then she's like, oh no, I shouldn't have said that. I think my vanity just caught up with me because one time someone told me I had a really pretty nose and I don't know, I just thought that was really interesting. I mean she is a little older by that point. I thought it was really interesting that she kind of had that pause and then kind of like corrected herself, this isn't the kind of like energy I wanna be putting out there. It ebbs and flows with the feminism. The author's trying to like incorporate

Heather:

Anne really. She never second guesses her ability to be the best.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Heather:

She does sometimes say like, oh geometry is really my, my achilles heel. But she always believes in herself.

Darlene:

Mm-hmm.

Heather:

and, and her right to be head of the class instead of Gilbert. If she puts in the work, Marilla is presented as more conservative. She's in the conservative party. We learn when they go visit the prime minister's rally. But she's incredibly pro Anne. And even Rachel is too at the end, even though she's like kind of tsking, I don't know about all this education for women. She's very proud of all of Anne's accomplishments, but more's a hundred percent behind it. She's like, yeah, I've always thought a woman should be able to make a living for herself. And you know, she's been so dependent on Matthew as an unmarried woman. I think there is some at least nascent, if not named feminism in the book, but it is a little bit more opaque as to what maybe the author wants us to take home. But I would say at heart it is a fairly feminist work. Anne makes decisions about what guy she wants or does not want to be with throughout this book. It's does not want, she rejects poor Charlie Sloane every step of the way, bless his heart.

Darlene:

< laugh>.

Heather:

Um, and after he is very gallant and chivalrous and beats someone up who insulted her. She rejects Gilbert in like the most extreme way she possibly can for years before finally kind of coming around and saying, well yes, I'll let you into my circle now because I've, I've forgiven. But she gets a lot of pressure from other people to sort of bend to, well he clearly likes you so you should just be glad about this. And she, she isn't, she's like, no, I don't want anything of that. And she, she very much follows her own wants and directions and ambitions and you know, she never stifles herself to be something for other people. She's very true to herself. Which I think is inherently pretty feminist.

Darlene:

And I thought it was so sweet that there's that scene. I don't think it's just in the movie, I think it's in the books too, where Matthew like outright says, I am okay with the fact that you weren't a boy, like the minute I saw you like I wanted you. And so, and I think he says like there's, does he say like there's nothing a guy can do that like a woman can't do. I wanna say it's something to do with her studies and like coming in first because he believed in her that much.

Heather:

He says he's so sure she's gonna place first on the whole island.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Heather:

Which is a big, I mean that's a lot of pressure. Yeah. He never waivers in his conviction that it doesn't occur to him that someone else could best her because he knows what she's capable of.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Heather:

And he knows who she is and, and the work she's put in.

Darlene:

I love that. And I, I think it's so funny cuz Gilbert thinks that she's like very smart and he places that above beauty and she takes it as like a sort of insult. Even though it's meant to be< laugh>. It's meant to be a compliment to say that he thinks very highly of her. But Anne, you know, does have a preoccupation with like beauty and she's like obsessed with it. And you know, we touched on this before about her red hair as well. Yeah. She's just always very acutely aware of like how other people perceive her and what it is that she finds beautiful. Right? Like we get a lot of ands in our thoughts on like how she feels about Diana and like all these other characters and how pretty she thinks that they are. And a lot of it is because they follow more closely to like the beauty standards of that time. And then the book itself also kind of touches on fashionable items of that time. And again, I thought it was really interesting cuz I, I felt like the puffed sleeve thing,

Anne:

Look at the puffs.

Darlene:

This is like really interesting. I think they were saying that progressively they get more puffed, but the fact that Matthew like went in and like tried to buy it for her despite his really bad social anxiety mm-hmm. the sweetest thing. And in the book, I think he then has, is it Rachel L ynde that he gets to like,

Hannah:

Yes.

Darlene:

Go and order it for her because he's too afraid to ask Marilla to do it.

Hannah:

The brown dress.

Darlene:

Yes.

Erica:

I gotta talk about this scene.

Darlene:

<laugh> in the movies. Um, or in the series, he, he ends up doing it himself, which I thought was just so sweet. I don't know. And then like the, the store clerk or the, maybe she's the cashier, she um, she was like, oh my God, why didn't you say so? And she's just like, just so happy.

Heather:

But notice that she's still in both the book and in the film version. She still sold him all that crap he didn't need.

Darlene:

< laugh>. Yeah

Hannah:

Yes. He still brought home 20, 20 pounds sugar,

Heather:

pound of brown sugar and like a rake and like

Darlene:

< laugh>. Yeah. And I still, it still didn't dawn on me. I don't know why. So I'm so glad that one of the things that you linked Hannah, like said it as well. But for the longest time reading it, I thought Marilla and Matthew were married. I don't know, like I got to the end and it was like, oh he was such a great brother or something. And I was like, oh wow. Like my reading comprehension has really gone downhill.< laugh> cuz I thought they were married.

Hannah:

Well it's, they had the same last name I could, you know, it's an easy.

Darlene:

I don't know, but I feel like did you guys feel that way when you guys were reading it before? Like, I feel like I just missed something cuz

Hannah:

Yeah, I think it's stated.

Darlene:

Yeah. I,

Hannah:

a lot of like, missed text, It's easy to of to skip over, uh, if you're, you know, reading in a sort of a, a gulp. Which I do sometimes.

Erica:

Yeah, that was, that was never, that wasn't ever an issue for me. But that's Yeah. It's a lot of dense text so you miss things. But I got, I got, I'm sorry. I gotta go back to the, to, to the puffed sleeves. I gotta go back to the sleeves.

Anne:

Look at the puffs.

Darlene:

Ok.

Erica:

Because the, the, I keep saying scene, but the chapter where Matthew decides that she's gonna have a pretty dress is my favorite chapter. It's so sweet that this terminally shy man is like, okay, so where am I gonna go where I don't have to talk to a woman? And then he has to talk to this woman he's never seen before with big hair and flashy bangs. And he's like, uh, a rake, some hayseed and 20 pounds of su- 20 pounds of sugar.

Voice:

20 pounds of brown sugar.

Erica:

And he's just sweating in his escape. He goes to Rachel Lynde and he's like, Hey, I want Anne to have a dress that doesn't look plain and whatever. And she's like, I'm gonna make her the biggest, the best dress you or you've ever seen with the, the biggest sleeves in the land. So we know about four of Anne's previous dresses. The one she wore got from the asylum, yellowish-gray wincey and then the, the three that Marilla makes for her, which are dark blue, black and white, and snuffy colored gingham, which I'm guessing snuffy colored is kind of like a, I don't know. It just sounds gross,

Darlene:

It just sounds gross.

Erica:

And what color is this dress? Brown! We keep hearing about these, all these girls wearing white and pink and yellow and light blue and, and crimson and all of these beautiful colors. And this dress that she's supposed to wear at Christmas is brown. Maybe brown is particularly good color for redheads. I don't know. But I used to have red hair and like when I was a kid, I had very red hair. And whenever I wore brown, I looked dead. It, I, it washed me out completely. I don't know, maybe I'm of a different heritage or whatever, but it's one, and I'm like, brown, that's my nitpick. Make it a pretty color!

Hannah:

< laugh>. I think it depends on the

Erica:

Green. Put her in green, like just trust me.

Hannah:

I think it might depend on the shade of brown and the skin tones and the shade of hair.

Heather:

And they do put her in pretty green later. Her evening gown ends up being green.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Heather:

And, and I think it's notable that the filmed version changed that because yeah.

Erica:

Oh, they did, oh, okay.

Heather:

Yeah. So the dress that he gets her, it's like a

Darlene:

Light blue,

Hannah:

Baby blue

Heather:

Pale blue.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Heather:

And it's lacy and pastel and beautiful.

Anne:

Look at the puffs.

Heather:

Yeah. You get to that and it's like, well, I guess it's shiny< laugh>. Cause that's about all you got there. Cause brown doesn't sound nearly as as romantic as, you know, you want in the fairy princess dress. And well, okay, I guess we're going with that. But like, again, the fashion of the time, maybe that was an extremely sought after< laugh>.

Hannah:

Maybe the, maybe the fabric was, was really, was really beautiful. Like maybe had a sheen to it or was really supple.

Heather:

Well, they, we looked it up, right? Yeah. And the, the, um, the type of fabric they mentioned it would have a sheen. Mm- h mm. Now it, it wasn't silk or a real taffeta, but it was sort of meant to look that way.

Darlene:

Mm- hmm.

Heather:

So it would've had a sort of satiny sheen to it. But it is still brown< l augh>. No.

Darlene:

Yeah.

Hannah:

Thus begins Anne's glow-up.

Darlene:

< laugh>. That's,

Erica:

And I like that from then on too. Like, Marilla starts making her stuff in a, in, in, up to the minute fashion because she's like, well, if I don't Mar- Matthew's just gonna go behind my back, go to Rachel and put her in. You know, like all these pretty garments. So fine. I will make your new coat in the modern way.

Hannah:

< laugh>. I'll make a flounce.

Erica:

I'll make a\ coat at you.

Heather:

< laugh> and redemption of Rachel Lynde. I love the Rachel Lynde arc in this book because I think the book starts out and you feel like we are really not supposed to like Rachel, she is a busybody and like first time she meets Anne, she's mean to her.

Rachel Lynde:

Lawful heart her hair is red as carrots.

Heather:

Rachel ends up being such a great advocate for Anne throughout her life. Like she gives Marilla the very good advice. No, don't send her back to school right now. Let her come to terms with this incident that happens and she'll get there on her own time, which is very solid parenting advice. She does the like, beautiful dress for her and then is, is very sweet about like going overboard with that. Like she does all of the fr- the flounce and frills and she throws in a hairbow. You know, I, I think there's a very sweet arc for Rachel where we see that like she really has a very good heart and cares a lot for Anne in spite of all of her interfering ways.

Darlene:

< laugh>. Yeah. And how fun is it that Anne somehow always wins over the like grumpy old lady? Because then there's also Miss. Blight, or is that who it is? Mrs.

Erica:

Ms. Barry.

Darlene:

Ms Barry. That's who it is. Yes, exactly. And she's like, so in like fawning over Anne and was like, come visit me. Like anytime you get a chance, like please come.

Heather:

Much like Anne couldn't pry herself away from Ben Hur, we couldn't quit Anne. And we'll continue the conversation in our next episode. In the meantime, check out our blog linked in, the episode notes. As always, feel free to drop us a tweet. We are@pgcmls on Twitter and#TheseBooksMadeMe.

Intro
Special guest
What did this book mean to you?
Plot summary
Shoutout to our Canadian & Japanese listeners
How does it hold up?
Prejudice and the treatment of orphans
Redhead discrimination?
Skeevy Mr. Phillips
Landscape as character
Imagination and the outside
Tragicomedy of adolescence
On mistakes, learning, and forgiveness
No secrets in a small town
Feminism?
PUFFED SLEEVES
Anne's brown dress
Anne's glow-up
Anne the grumpy old lady whisperer
End of part 1