L.M. Montgomery and Gender ed. by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: L.M. Montgomery and Gender ed. by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson Ann F. Howey (bio) L.M. Montgomery and Gender, edited by E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson. McGill-Queen's UP, 2021. Since 1994, when biennial conferences sponsored by the L.M. Montgomery Institute began, numerous edited collections have appeared that have developed out of and expanded on conference themes. Such collections include L.M. Montgomery and Canadian Culture (after the 1996 conference; edited by Irene Gammel and Elizabeth R. Epperley, U of Toronto P, 1999), L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture (after the 2000 conference; edited by Gammel, U of Toronto P, 2002), The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery (after the 2004 conference; edited by Gammel, U of Toronto P, 2005), Storm and Dissonance (after the 2006 conference; edited by Jean Mitchell, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), and Anne Around the World (after the 2008 conference; edited by Jane Ledwell and Mitchell, McGill-Queen's U P, 2013). L.M. Montgomery and Gender, with its genesis in the 2016 conference, is thus the latest in a distinguished line of edited collections that build on conference [End Page 214] discussions to disseminate scholarship on various aspects of Montgomery's works and life. As the introduction by the editors E. Holly Pike and Laura M. Robinson makes clear, Montgomery's writing invites consideration of gender representation, in part because her most famous novel's protagonist, Anne, is initially unwanted at Green Gables because she is not a boy. The timing of this collection of essays investigating Montgomery and gender—it appears just after a century of women's suffrage in Canada—speaks to ongoing concerns over women's rights and roles, and as many of its articles suggest, Montgomery's own views of such rights and roles were neither static nor simple. The goal of the collection is thus to provide "an exploration of the variety of gender analyses possible in the early twenty-first century" in order to extend the feminist and genderstudies perspectives that have informed much Montgomery scholarship in the past and "to examine how Montgomery's constructions of gender reflect her own historical moment, shape later understandings of gender, and potentially transmogrify when examined through new perspectives" (2). The collection seeks to fulfil its goal through articles that examine constructions of femininity and masculinity, not only in Montgomery's novels, but also in her short fiction and journals. The introduction, "'You Don't Want Me Because I'm Not a Boy': L.M. Montgomery and Gender," establishes context for the articles that follow. Striking about this context is the way it invites consideration of the myriad ways in which the terms "Montgomery" and "gender" intersect. Pike and Robinson provide evidence of Montgomery's attitudes to suffrage and gendered responses to her work (3), such as the recurrent use of "charming" in reviews (4); they also survey the male modernist Canadian literary scene and its response to—and, one might say, its deliberate exclusion of—Montgomery (4–5). In addition to this attention to the way gender informed the context within which Montgomery wrote and within which her writings were received, Pike and Robinson trace the importance of feminist scholarship in the reevaluation of Montgomery and the obstacles faced by early Montgomery scholars, many of them women working within a patriarchal academic establishment in the late 1970s to early 1990s. The introduction then situates the collection within a theoretical context by reviewing Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity and Karen Barad's theory of "the materiality of identity" (10), which productively suggests "the agency of all actors," whether author, reader, or critic (11). Such agency may conflict, however; Pike and Robinson importantly recognize the [End Page 215] resistance that critical readings of Montgomery can face, if such readings counter the desire of fans (and governments and tourism industries) to maintain Anne of Green Gables, in particular, as "the perfect Canadian female archetype" (8). The introduction thus articulates the collection's concern with the ways social constructions of gender affected Montgomery and continue to affect the reception of and the scholarly conversation about her work, as well as investigating representations of...