Pike, E. Holly, and Laura M. Robinson, eds. L.M. Montgomery and Gender. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021.
Paratexts: Introduction and section headnotes by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson
6” x 9”, xvi + 398 pp., 978-0-2280-0879-8 (trade paperback), 978-0-2280-0878-1 (unjacketed hardcover)
L.M. Montgomery and Gender is a collection of essays edited by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson and based on an international conference hosted by the L.M. Montgomery Institute and held at the University of Prince Edward Island in June 2016. It includes an introduction and section headnotes by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson as well as original scholarship by Wanda Campbell, Catherine Clark, Lesley D. Clement, Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, Carole Gerson, Christina Hitchcock and Kiera Ball, Vappu Kannas, Heather Ladd and Erin Spring, Tara K. Parmiter, E. Holly Pike, Ashley N. Reese, Mavis Reimer, Kazuko Sakuma, Rebecca J. Thompson, and Bonnie J. Tulloch, as well as an excerpt from Jane Urquhart’s Extraordinary Canadians biography of L.M. Montgomery. The book was published as a trade paperback and an unjacketed hardcover by McGill-Queen’s University Press in October 2021.
From the Back Cover
The celebrated author of Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon receives much-deserved additional consideration in L.M. Montgomery and Gender. Nineteen contributors take a variety of critical and theoretical positions, from historical analyses of the white-feather campaign and discussions of adoption to medical discourses of death and disease, explorations of Montgomery’s use of humour, and examinations of the author’s rewriting of masculinist traditions.
The essays span Montgomery’s writing, exploring her famous Anne and Emily books as well as her short fiction, her comic journal composed with her friend Nora Lefurgey, and less-studied novels such as Magic for Marigold and The Blue Castle. Dividing the chapters into five sections—on masculinities and femininities, domestic space, humour, intertexts, and being in time—L.M. Montgomery and Gender addresses the degree to which Montgomery’s work engages and exposes, reflects and challenges the gender roles around her, underscoring how her writing has shaped future representations of gender.
Of interest to historians, feminists, gender scholars, scholars of literature, and Montgomery enthusiasts, this wide-ranging collection builds on the depth of current scholarship in its approach to the complexity of gender in the works of one of Canada’s best-loved authors.
Contents
Figures (ix)
Acknowledgments (xi–xii)
Abbreviations (xiii)
Introduction
“You Don’t Want Me Because I’m Not a Boy”: L.M. Montgomery and Gender / E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson (1–15)
Masculinities and Femininities (17–18)
1. The White Feather: Gender and War in L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside / Kazuko Sakuma (19–43)
2. From “Uncanny Beauty” to “Uncanny Disease”: Destabilizing Gender through the Deaths of Ruby Gillis and Walter Blythe and the Life of Anne Shirley / Lesley D. Clement (44–67)
3. Barney of the Island: Nature and Gender in Montgomery’s The Blue Castle / Ashley N. Reese (68–86)
Domestic Space (87–88)
4. The Robinsonade versus the Annescapade: Exploring the “Adventure” in Anne of Green Gables / Bonnie J. Tulloch (89–118)
5. Soliciting Home: The Cultural Function of Orphans in Early-Twentieth-Century Canada / Mavis Reimer (119–51)
6. “That House Belongs to Me”: The Appropriation of Patriarchal Space in L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Trilogy / Rebecca J. Thompson (152–72)
Humour (173–74)
7. Cross-Dressing: Twins, Language, and Gender in L.M. Montgomery’s Short Fiction / E. Holly Pike (175–94)
8. “I’m Noted for That”: Comic Subversion and Gender in L.M. Montgomery’s “The Quarantine at Alexander Abraham’s” and “Aunt Philippa and the Men” / Wanda Campbell (195–210)
9. “Nora and I Got through the Evening”: Gender Roles and Romance in the Diary of L.M. Montgomery and Nora Lefurgey / Vappu Kannas (211–28)
Intertexts (229–31)
10. The Blue Castle: Sex and the Revisionist Fairy Tale / Catherine Clark (233–48)
11. L.M. Montgomery, E. Pauline Johnson, and the Figure of the “Half-Breed Girl” / Carole Gerson (249–65)
12. Orgies of Lovemaking: L.M. Montgomery’s Feminine Version of the Augustinian Community / Christina Hitchcock and Kiera Ball (266–83)
13. Feminizing Thomson’s The Seasons: Identity, Gender, and Seasonal Aesthetics in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables / Heather Ladd and Erin Spring (284–303)
Being In Time (305–7)
14. Her Reader / Jane Urquhart (309–15)
15. Like a Childless Mother: L.M. Montgomery and the Anguish of Mother’s Loss / Tara K. Parmiter (316–30)
16. Magic for Marigold: Engendering Questions about What Lasts / Elizabeth Rollins Epperly (331–49)
Bibliography (351–76)
Contributors (377–81)
Index (383–98)
Reviews
Review by Holly Blackford Humes.