I am currently reading through the series of books written by LM Montgomery which start with Anne of Green Gables. Anne is now married and with a family of children and Rainbow Valley concentrates on the new generation with Anne only appearing from time to time in a motherly role. In this book the valley is a secret meeting place of Anne’s children and those of the new, widowed, minister who are benevolently neglected by their father and consequently have a reputation for being a bit wild.
This is a happy and often amusing book about the antics of the children and it also features Mary, an orphan who is homeless, after running away from where she has been living, and who the children look after until she is discovered and placed in a better home. Mary is a delightful child who thinks of herself as tough but is actually very vulnerable. What has happened to her and how she is treated and considered by the adults in the area is a reminder to the reader of how difficult life could be for the poor and working class at the time.
An undercurrent running through the book is the need for the minister to marry so that someone will look after his children as he becomes very easily absorbed in his duties and tends to ignore them. I think that the author meant for us to find this amusing but today’s reader might find it a bit insulting that a man cannot cope by himself and that he would consider marrying for someone to undertake cleaning, household management and childcare – the author, happily, provides an ending to this story that is more acceptable to our modern sensibilities.
This is an excellent book which reveals a lot about the social conditions at the time. The children’s antics are fun to read about but the author is beginning to foreshadow the events of WW1 which I assume will happen in a future volume. It’s not a patch on the original book in the series, but then few books are as that is truly a classic.
Anne Is Reading 