Why She Rules

[caroljane]

Alec Gardiner was born into a large farm family in Prince Edward Island, and inherited the farm as his brothers went west or took to the sea. He married a lovely girl "above his station" and raised a comparatively smalll family of five children.Life depended precariously on each season's crop. The life that happened, seen through the eyes of of one Alec's daughters, is the subject of a novel I have been rereading and finding new things

One thing is the strong connection between Montgomery and George Eliot, I love nature and all, but I admit that I skip a lot of the descriptions, But when I re read, no two are ever alike, and the ecstatic, essential wellspring of the author's being is just unquestionable,

Another thing is how effortlessly she combines Jane Austen with Mark Twain. Twain admired her publicly for silly reasons, Maybe he sensed a rival, Montgomery herse;f lamented that her main talent was for comedy, but she was obliged to keep churning out the "love talk" 'which was such a chore to write. I think she would symathise with today's writers who have to try to do sex writing to some editor's standard.

The reason I care about Montgomery, out of the hundreds of writers, maybe thousands I have read all my life, is because she has rung the most true to me. She spoke to me both universally and personally, and she still does. Hearing her quote my own great-uncles and the chuckling anecdotes of my own family, realising that the "real" world was not New York or London but everywhere, was a revelation to me at the age of eight or nine, and it will remain a revelation as long as I live.