mmy jumps and down with sheer joy.....

Okay, some questions and observations first and then I will be back with a more scholarly response.

Question: Have your read the latter Anne books? I ask because unlike many other authors who have a child/teenager grow up Montgomery follows Anne's life for next decades through the real triumphs and tragedies of life. Those realities (and the realities of which Anne slowly becomes aware) are sometimes chilling and sometimes heartbreaking. Montgomery grew up in some towns, taught in many and finally married a minister. She knew life.

Observation: My mother grew up within the same region as Anne is set (not on the island but my grandmother hailed from an area of the mainland just a short drive from the island and my mother from New Brunswick. Like Anne my mother had to go away to finish school (mom studied at home and went away to write the tests) and like Montgomery (and Anne) my mother had to teach in small one or two room schools to eke out a living when times were hard in that part of the world.

Montgomery captures the flavour of that world and those people without caricaturing them or drawing them over-broadly or making them into either simpletons or naive country philosophers.
 

I have read some of the later books, though not all of them. I have to admit that to me, it felt like they became more 'improving' and lost some of their wit and energy (though it's something I feel happens towards the end of the first book too). Others may disagree, of course. What's your view of them?

I've never been to that part of Canada, but Montgomery certainly makes it feel real. I've always loved the 'that's what' phrase that people add to emphasise a point...
 

it felt like they became more 'improving' and lost some of their wit and energy (though it's something I feel happens towards the end of the first book too).

In general I agree. There are moments and passages and even themes that stand out in the latter books (TRIGGER WARNING: DEATH OF CHILDREN) Anne loses her first child as an infant and later on one of her boys dies in World War One.

The most powerful later incident (to me) was a passage set at the funeral of a man who never hit his wife but who had psychologically abused her by never seeing her as a real person and responding to her real desires -- from the colour of her clothes to the arrangement of the furniture. The widow attempts to laugh at his funeral (in revenge) and ends up in tears.

And reading that you wonder how much "behind the scenes" horror Montgomery witnessed in her life.

Montgomery explored some of the other themes one sees in the first Anne book in other non-Anne books of which my two favourite were Jane of Lantern Hill and The Blue Castle the first of which is about a girl whose parents are estranged and the second a women nearing thirty who has been trapped by convention into an unhappy life. The former is set partially and the latter totally in Ontario. That locates them later in the author's life when she seems to put less stock in "faith" improving life and much more in people striking out and changing things for the better.

As for her writing abilities, she does absolutely nail a type of diction and dialect without going the overbroad route used by many authors. That area of Canada has several distinct regional dialects (many of which sound as un-English to American ears as do the dialects of the Midlands), and they tend to speak with a lilt, use a somewhat different word order the "default normal English" and a non-standard vocabulary. Yet everyone I knew could code-switch very well, at least when they were writing.
 

The most powerful later incident (to me) was a passage set at the funeral of a man who never hit his wife but who had psychologically abused her by never seeing her as a real person

Hm, I think I missed that one: which book was it in?
 

Just checked: It is the sister of the dead man's first wife who speaks at his funeral-- it is from "Anne of Ingleside" -- one of the later books in the Anne cycle.

I sent you a short passage from it -- to me those are the words of a woman who had heard the complaints of emotionally battered women behind closed doors.
 

I've read all the Anne books, some of them more than once, but the sequels didn't make the same impression on me as the first. I remember them quite vaguely. I don't think they were too "improving", though. Certainly they weren't as bad as the sequels to Little Women!

TRiG.

***

Request for first sentence analysis: My Brother Michael, by Mary Stewart.

"Nothing ever happens to me."
 

I remember adoring these books, so thanks for the refresher. I was a motormouth know-it-all, so I deeply sympathized with Anne.
 

I focused on the entire Anne series for my master's thesis in Literary Studies - the role that weddings and funerals (and their related imagery) play in propelling the narrative of the series, specifically.
I am now returning to the series as I introduce bits and pieces of the story to my (still very young) daughter. I try to share my favorite novels - and the Anne series certainly is one of my favorites - by tailoring small activities, meals, and crafts for younger children. Since I can't read the books with her yet (she's only three), I had to find a different way to subtly 'brainwash' my daughter into becoming a reader/dreamer.
Come see my attempts at littlepinkbookmarks.blogpsot.com.
 

Only issue I have is with the long rambling run on sentences.. i mean come on.