Aunt Cynthia's Persian Cat begins amusingly enough, and is set in time when Anne was teaching but not yet married - there's a casual mention of Anne seen walking with Dr Irving, presumably not Stephen Irving; and a bit later Anne's being engaged to Gilbert Blythe is discussed and confirmed between the protagonist and her sister, Sue and Ismay Meade respectively. Here again is an aunt trying to get her niece to marry someone she keeps refusing. Ultimately it's the Persian cat who's the matchmaker, quite unintentionally.
The Materializing Of Cecil has a woman of forty making up a story, when asked by a young girl new to Avonlea, about a beau she had at eighteen, just to avoid a humiliation in the sewing circle - with a made up name and description - just to have a person of that name and description turn up shortly thereafter in town as a visitor to a family new in town. That it eventually turns into a romance and marriage, is the authors usual satisfactory finishing touch.
Her Father's Daughter involves a deeply inherent caste system of society of Europe and lands of European migration, which has seafaring communities held lower than the settled farming ones; in its more known form, caste systems of these societies has lanholding gentry at the beginning rung of respectable castes, while wealth and titles count for more when added to lanholding and history thereof. All that is in the background of the story, though, and the story is beautiful.
Jane's Baby has the author take up her favourite theme again, about an older sister displeased at a younger one for being married; here the story goes further, and the two are finally united again in their need of one another, after a cousin has died and her baby daughter was left to the younger one.
The Dream-Child has a male protagonist, a first, not only in this volume but in this whole collection so far. The story has a young couple deal with the death of a toddler firstborn, a son, with the mother beginning to hear him call her at nights, and her trying to catch him on the seashore. Then comes the surprise, mystery, a ghastly revelation, and a good satisfactory solution all around.
The Brother Who Failed has a family, a clan, acknowledge the debt they owe to the eldest for his virtues, although they are huge successes in the world and he's barely keeping out of debt - they owe it to his guidance and help at a key point in life of each one.
The Return Of Hester has the author yet again deal with her favourite theme, here with a variation - a younger sister deprived of a full life of love and marriage by an older sister who prevails even in her death, leaving the younger one lonely. Here the author again has a spirit healing the rift.
The Little Brown Book Of Miss Emily is set in time when Stephen Irving and Lavender Lewis are married and back in her home, and here the protagonist is Anne Shirley, visiting them with Diana Barry. The story unfolds with an old aunt, of the Leith girls they befriend, dying, and Anne finding her trunk bequeathed to her, sent to Green Gables. It contains a diary of her youth. And a heart rending love story, of two young lovers separated by his cold calculating parents making the girl refuse him, because she has nothing except youth and beauty and love to offer him, since she's poor.
Sara's Way has a scene very reminiscent of Melanie Wilkes defending Scarlett O'Hara and telling off her cousin and sister in law, in just such a gathering of women - only, here its Sara defending the honest, upright beau Lige she was until then resisting agreeing to marry.
The Son Of His Mother tackles the theme of a possessive mother forcing her son to choose between her and his new found love, reducing them to misery, even at the cost of losing the previous open intimacy between herself and her son. In the process the author also takes in the malignant spirit that would repay lifelong kindnesses of someone superior by inflicting pain and torture, just to see the benefactor reduced to agony and writhing, resulting in this power over the superior. The author resolves it as often with forgiveness for the latter, and a seemingly intervention from above bringing wisdom for the former.
The Education Of Betty is unlike any other story by this author, but a theme not unknown in literature, about an older man and a young girl whose relationship changes from fatherly guardianship of a ward to one of love, engagement and marriage; even the theme of a man in love first with the mother, and later the daughter, isn't unknown. The author combines the two, and brings about a satisfactory end, but with a puzzle left unsolved - how did Betty know about her love by being at the boarding school, as she tells him?
In Her Selfless Mood begins with a dying woman making her never loved daughter promise to look after the half brother that the mother loves. This brings about sacrifice of the girl's youth in taking care of the house and farm for the brother, and refusing to marry because the brother throws a fit at the thought of her not housekeeping for him; yet he himself not only finds his own need to marry only natural, and brushes aside any objections as lack of common sense, but unceremoniously informs the suster thst shed have to leave the house when hes married, treating her as a slave until he marries and an unwanted servant thereafter. She then takes place of his late unmarried aunt in his uncle's house, as an unpaid servant employed for all work in exchange for board and lodging. And then she dies of a heart attack, after she's nursed the brother during his small pox until his own death, while the wife stayed away for safety.
The Conscience Case Of David Bell is, to begin with, about evangelism, "coming out", "testifying", and expectations thereof in the community from those not known against such things, of their known vociferous opposition thereto. There is an explicit description of the meeting, the call for standing up for "the master", and testifying. Whether the author is serious about it all, or silently ironic, isn't clear.
Only A Common Fellow has Philippa Clark awake at dawn of her wedding day when her aunt Rachel goes to her, they reminisce about her beau who died in France in war, and Rachel hates Philippa's stepmother Isabella for making Philippa marry Mark Foster. Only, after Rachel has helped Philippa get dressed, there's a knock, and it's Owen when Rachel opens the door. Hed written several times, but Isabella had never given the letters to Philippa, because Mark Foster had declared that he'd foreclose unless Philippa married him. Mark asks Philippa to choose, but then declares he was only hoping to marry and win her love because he thought Owen was no more, and wouldn't stand in the way of their love. Rachel has her estimation of him changed, since his actions are of a true gentleman.
Tannis Of The Flats is about a beautiful girl of very mixed racial ancestry, which - the author assures the reader - is disastrous bringing only a veneer of civilisation even after education, since the girl understands nothing of platonic flirtation when a lonely Englishman in Canadian Northwest spends day after day with her, with no intention or thought of marrying a mixed half breed, especially since he has a third cousin who's a baronet. When an Elinor Blair of Avonlea with her unfixed racial ancestry visits her brother in the vicinity, the said Englishman Carey falls in love with her immediately, and forgets about Tannis immediately. It ends violently when Carey is shot in a quarrel between Paul, brother of Tannis, who worked with Carey, and another man of mixed racial ancestry - native and French - who was after Tannis, and Tannis performs an act of unselfish sacrifice in bringing Elinor Blair to see him before he's dead.
From start to finish, the story is in language and thought racist and colonial imperialist, without any consciousness thereof on part of the author that she thinks this way - to her, this is the only way of seeing things. Not really different from those religions that hold it as a fact that everyone else is going to hell, or for that matter Chinese where the word for all non Chinese is "foreign devil". Pear S. Buck mentions another word or phrase too, but it escapes memory, half a century after reading it.
And yet - coming back to author of this work, Montgomery - this whole collection is replete with descriptions of physical beauty of people of PE in particular, and most are presumably of ancestry from Europe at that, because she mentions no other alternative except in this story - well, quite a lot of them are dark eyed or black eyed and black haired, and quite a few are described as brown skinned. She describes these details as part of their beauty more often than not, except in cases of stories about old maid sisters where the elder one is described as dark and portrayed as dominating, but obviously with a blue eyed blond sister there's no question of another race.
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July 19, 2020 - July 21, 2020.
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