In preparation for the reread, I read <i>Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings</i> by Mary Henley Rubio.
During Montgomery’s life and for many decades after, she was seen as a woman who lived a fairly straightforward life, but as this biography shows, many of the darker depths of her novels reflect, directly or indirectly, the complex and often unhappy life she read.
Maud was a woman who felt things deeply — both the positive and the negative — and a woman who had great discipline. She could have a public persona of a happy, successful author while writing in her journal of the depths of her misery. I believe that both portraits have some truth. The happy, successful woman was not a lie, but she was only able to exist because Maud had the discipline to compartmentalize her life.
The saddest part of Maud’s story, in my view, is the way that prescription drugs most likely caused much of that misery in their effects on her husband and herself. Ewan MacDonald, Maud’s husband, suffered from depression, as best we can tell, and Maud herself seemed to suffer from anxiety and possibly depression too. Both were given prescription drugs which were fairly standard at the time but which are known now to just make things worse, cause other physical ailments, and are addictive. It doesn’t take much reading between the lines of Maud’s journal and what we know of her life to see that whenever the drug use was heaviest, the problems she and Ewan suffered were worst.
Maud could be a difficult and complex person, but she also had great insight and energy. It is easy to see how such a woman could write novels and stories which seem simple and happy on the surface and have the whole depth of human experience just underneath.
As I go through the reread, I may include relevant biographical bits. When I do, this will be my primary resource.