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And here is my last Lucy Maud book – and it’s the second to last book she wrote: Jane of Lantern Hill<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1402289308\")
<\/i>. Published in 1937 … only a couple of years after the Mistress Pat<\/i> debacle<\/a> – and interestingly enough, it has a lot of the same themes (the love of home, the need for a home – but this is always one of Lucy Maud’s themes) – but Jane, in this book, spends the majority of her time separated from her father – who lives on Prince Edward Island – and she lives in Toronto – and seriously ACHES to get back to the island. The red roads, the ocean, the freedom of life there … One of the reasons why this overwhelming love of home doesn’t quite work with the “Pat” books is: Pat LIVES at home<\/a>. She is not (like Anne<\/a>, or Emily<\/a>) an orphan, she barely spends a night away from her house – let alone her entire LIFE. She is not “in exile”. She grows up in the same house, with two parents … and so why this unbelievable attachment to the damn house? It makes no sense. That kind of displacement was very familiar to Lucy Maud – who did not grow up with her biological parents – who was basically abandoned by her father, who went out West, and created a new family from scratch – leaving Lucy Maud at home to be raised by grandparents. And then – once Lucy Maud married The Lunatic Husband – he whisked her off to various cities and towns far far away from Prince Edward Island, and – I don’t know, this is just my impression – but I feel like she never ever reconciled herself to that geographical distance. She never got used to it. She never accepted it. Her entire soul and spirit yearned towards PEI and yet – til the end of her life – she never spent more than a month there at one time. People who experience their native land from exile often have a way deeper attachment to the soil than those who actually live there (see Joyce, see a bazillion others) … Lucy Maud Montgomery was no exception. She lived far away from PEI for 30 years. And yet where did the majority of her books take place? Prince Edward Island. No one who has read her books can be indifferent to PEI. She writes about it with such love, such specificity – it’s not a romanticized view, not exactly. To her, it felt like reality<\/i>. There was no place on earth as beautiful or as desirable as PEI. So you wonder if she would have written about it so well if she had<\/i> lived on PEI all that time. Perhaps exile sharpened her senses, her memory.<\/p>\nThe story of Jane of Lantern Hill <\/i>is actually kind of “modern”, (for Lucy Maud anyway) – and touches on issues that were very personal for her, things she never spoke about or wrote about. Anne and Emily in her other books were both orphaned – which was not their fault (the very funny Oscar Wilde quote notwithstanding). Lucy Maud wrote about her sense of being alone in the world, thrown on the kindness of others – through these orphaned characters. But she never wrote a story from her own experience: her mother died, and her father felt he couldn’t raise his daughter by himself – so he moved away, married someone else, started a family – and never sent for Lucy Maud. Even though he promised to. It’s like he wiped her out of existence (I’m exaggerating – she did visit a couple of times, etc.) – but he had NO intention of “sending for” his young daughter. Which – if you really think about it – is pretty damn cold. But Lucy Maud coped – she accepted her life with very little bitterness, etc. – she didn’t blame her father for this … and yet in book after book after book she writes about orphaned girls. Girls with no parents. Parents do NOT exist in Lucy Maud’s world. It’s an indirect indictment of the lonely childhood her father left her to.<\/p>\n
In Jane<\/i>, the situation is: Jane’s parents split up acrimoniously when she was still a baby. I don’t think they got divorced – just separated. Her father, in a rage, moved back home to Prince Edward Island, where he grew up – and Jane’s mother moved back in with HER mother, an imperious WITCH. The three of them live in a huge mansion in Toronto and Jane grows up in a rigid atmosphere of silence – her grandmother despises her, because of the resemblance to this hated and scorned ex-husband. Jane’s mother is beautiful, and “modern” – much more modern than other mothers in Lucy Maud’s books – and by that I mean, she wears makeup, perfume – she’s an urban woman, going out to dinner parties, etc. But there’s a sadness there. Jane is forbidden to ask questions about her father, whom she has never met.<\/p>\n
Jane is a winning little child. You like her. She has spunk. She’s not fanciful like Anne, or really really good at something like Emily – but she’s the kind of person well liked by everyone. A person with the gift of human connection and friendship. Lucy Maud writes her well – you really GET her character. She’s not a re-tread of Anne or Emily. She is her own person. For example: – Anne is a bumbling idiot at first when it comes to domestic issues – and puts salt into pancakes, and forgets the flour … and Marilla has a hell of a time teaching her to cook. But Jane doesn’t have that problem – she’s kind of a brilliant cook, improvisational, enthusiastic, good at it – but – she doesn’t even know this about herself – because her environment is so rigid, so “children should be seen and not heard” – that she isn’t given a chance to discover who she is at ALL. She just tries to make herself as good and unobtrusive and unoffensive as possible – to avoid the wrath of her icy-eyed grandmother.<\/p>\n
But then one day – out of the blue – her father writes to her mother demanding that Jane come stay with him for the summer. Jane is 10 or 11 years old. It is his “right” to see Jane, to meet her, he says. A huge family upset occurs. Jane doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t even KNOW her father! Her mother is a weakling, unable to stand up to her icy mother – and the grandmother is just a flat out witch. But eventually – fearful that he will turn it into a legal issue – they allow Jane to go. Jane goes reluctantly. Even though she is unhappy living in the big echoing marble mansion, with her grandmother – who hates her – she doesn’t want to leave. She is afraid of the unknown. She doesn’t know who she is yet.<\/p>\n
So off she goes to Prince Edward Island. Fearful, hateful, cautious, resentful. Naturally – it turns out that her father is wonderful. You can see why he might not be a good husband<\/i> – at least not to a woman like Jane’s mother – he’s a bit irresponsible with his money – you get that right away, he’s unconventional – he’s a writer – he doesn’t care about material things – but you LOVE him. In my opinion, he is the only convincing father-figure Lucy Maud ever wrote. He accepts Jane as she stands. There are no preconceived notions about who she should<\/i> be – she also is not expected to be a ‘good little girl’ – and follow the rules. She can swim all day if she wants to, she doesn’t have to go to church if she doesn’t want to – she can make the friends she<\/i> wants to make – not have stupid “approved” friends. And he already loves her, because she is his daughter. So in that environment of acceptance – Jane just starts to blossom. She lives with her father in his little seaside cottage (called Lantern Hill, of course) – and she cooks – she’s never had a chance to cook before – because the house in Toronto has servants doing everything for her. So after a couple of false starts – Jane becomes an awesome cook. It is the happiest summer of her life. She makes friends her own age for the first time – she has adventures – and she basically just falls in love with her dad. She comes alive. Even though she had never been to PEI before – by the end of the summer she knows: It is HOME.<\/p>\n
Of course when it is time for her to return back to Toronto- and her mother – and her horrible grandmother – it ACHES. She doesn’t know how to bear it. Jane has discovered her home soil. She must endure the back and forth – she misses her mother desperately – but her heart will always be in Prince Edward Island. It’s kind of a complex little book – witih modern-era issues. And I personally think that some of her nature-writing in this book is her best ever – and that is quite a statement, because when she’s writing about the natural world – she is always<\/i> good.<\/p>\n
In this excerpt – Jane is staying with her father – her relationship with him is new and fresh … and she has announced to him that she finds the Bible boring. He feigns shock (but always in a humorous way) and tells her that the best place to read the Bible is in the great outdoors. God isn’t meant to be contained in a man-made building. (Is this Lucy Maud digging at her stick-in-the-mud religious fanatic minister husband? Her books are FULL of hints that religion ruins God. Member Anne Shirley talking about how prayers shouldn’t be in actual words – that she wanted to walk into the woods and feel<\/i> a prayer? This would have been heretical to her husband, who feared the flames of hell to such an extent that he went mad. Anyway, I just wonder about that.) Jane’s father feels that the Bible should only be read with the sound of the crashing waves in the air, etc. Jane is skeptical.<\/p>\n
(Notice here how her father talks to Jane as though she is an intelligent person, not a little girl. He treats her like she is good company. Think back on being a little kid – and how much you cherished grown-ups who treated you like that – with respect. Lucy Maud really gets that.)<\/p>\n
Also: notice the creativity and fluidity with which Jane’s dad reads the Bible. It’s unconventional. Can’t you hear snippety know-it-all Christians arguing in a kneejerk way about where he gets it wrong? Which, of course, misses the entire point. Or – that IS the point. Jane has been turned off of religion through overly literal practice. Or, to be more blunt: Christians<\/i> have turned her off God. Jane’s dad couldn’t give a shit about any of that. To him – God comes alive in nature. This was always true for Lucy Maud as well, who went to the ocean, the woods, to commune – (which is hugely ironic – seeing as she married an unimaginative unspiritually-minded minister.) Jane’s father would probably be seen as a heathen by many. But Jane knows better. So does Lucy Maud. I love this whole passage. It’s full of heart, it’s smart … and I can hear<\/i> the two voices. (She re-uses a couple phrases here from other books. Any serious Lucy Maud fans will immediately recognize them.)<\/p>\n
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