i'm an english major, which means i spend a significant amount of my time reading piles of books. i should be a book snob, and to a certain extent, i am. (twilight is rubbish; please don't read it). thanks to several quarters of careful academic training, i am now fully capable of reading, understanding, and even occasionally enjoying literary theory. somewhere along the way, i've grown to like herman melville. metaphor excites me, alliteration gets me all hot and bothered. i'm a literature junkie.
however--much like my john denver worship--my favorite books are not those that most english majors would admit to loving. i think i'm supposed to be over the moon about dickens (who i hate) and nabakov (who i keep meaning to read) and maybe have a slight appreciation for hemingway (who i hate more than dickens). but no. much to the chagrin of other literary friends, my favorite author is l.m. montgomery.
i hear crickets chirping. there are tumbleweeds rolling across my laptop screen.
she wrote anne of green gables. and anne of green gables is, as kirsten dunst would put it, the poo. take a big whiff.
presently, i'm distracting myself from coursework with pat of silverbush (yes, montgomery heroines are always "of" a designated adorable and cozily named homestead). pat is a girl who's so desperately afraid of change that she can't even bear to part with old clothes in order to make way for the new. while this is not a problem i have-- the gap and i are very, very good and frequent friends, and if i have to throw out a few relics in order to make space in the dresser for s'more goodies, you'd better believe i will-- i know what it's like to be petrified of what's coming next.
you see, pat is resolved to never leave home because it is a place she loves so. the tongue-in-cheek narrations suggests that this is an ass-backward idea--and so does the story's rocking and mystical irish maid, judy. everyone knows pat's inability to roll with the punches is ridiculous, but pat refuses to budge.
i want to refuse to budge. i want to be cozy.
i love montgomery's books because they take me back to a time i wish that i belonged to. i find something comforting in stories where homemaking and one-room school houses take center stage. seriously. i'm the sort of girl who wanders around antique stores for hours and then leaves feeling irritated that i have to go back to modern convenience. blasted indoor plumbing and automatic washing machines! yeah. i mean that.
i like to imagine myself in a tiny parlor, doing sums on my slate or knitting by the light of a fire. it's fun to think of what it might have been like to not have the constant distraction of technology; to know how to do work with my hands; to better appreciate small moments of natural beauty. these are all things montgomery girls are up on. montgomery's heroines have the same concerns as modern women-- their looks, men, what to do with their futures, etc.--but the built-in whimsy and wistfulness of their time period makes them less stressful to read about. almost all of the stories have a sagacious narrator who acknowledges youthful struggle with a wink and nod, as if to say "ha! they have no idea what's next-- but it's all part of the journey!"
maybe i'm afraid to deal with reality, but i think contextualizing bumps in the road as part of the "journey" is a much more positive way to deal with it than curling into the fetal position and crying-- which is a course of action i'm definitely more apt to take. so is pat, coincidentally.
but if there's anything i've learned from montgomery--and, you know, from actual adult life-- it's that you can't refuse to progress. even if things are unbelievably stressful, you have to keep going or else you're going to wind up a dried up old spinster with only her china dogs to keep her company. okay, that's montgomery specific, but seriously.
keep moving.
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