『빨강머리 앤』에 재현된 아동기의 상상력

Abstract

This paper intends to study the pastoral world of childhood in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908). The work has a vivid childhood imagination that expresses the writer’s own experiences, such as a deficiency in childhood and wish-fulfillment, a satire of religious practice, and awareness of a national important issue regarding the preservation of rural Canada in a literary way. Anne, an 11-year-old orphan girl and main character, was a hopeless, skinny child who was initially exposed to all kinds of excesses. However, she slowly grows up in a loving home provided by Matthew and Marilla, taming passion and imagination, and learns to live up to Avonlea’s social and behavioral expectations. Anne not only brings Matthew and Marilla a much more fulfilling and happy life than ever before, but she also influences the Avonlea community. Anne never loses her childhood imagination, even though she grows up to be a great member of Avonlea. Anne’s childhood imagination lets her move forward, keeping her and the community’s desperate needs alive in search of a utopia.