Omg She's Racist: A Closer Look at L.M. Montgomery's Work & Life

They say to be critical of the media you love. I put this to the test with my undying love for L.M. Montgomery.

In the past five-ish years, I have read and re-read many, many books by beloved Canadian author L.M. Montgomery (aka the woman who wrote the Anne of Green Gables series) including:

Anne of Windy Poplars* 
Anne’s House of Dreams* 
Emily of New Moon 
Emily Climbs
Emily’s Quest 
The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery 1889-1900
A Tangled Web 
Pat of Silver Bush 
Mistress Pat  
Jane of Lantern Hill 
Kilmeny of the Orchard 
The Blue Castle

I read/re-read the first three Anne books as a teen*.

There are many things about Montgomery's (1874-1942) work that are significant and ground-breaking considering the era they were written in. Not to mention Montgomery herself being such a highly-successful author worldwide given she was both a woman and Canadian! Her work is unique and noteworthy for the following reasons:

1. She wrote about non-traditional families -- siblings raising kids, those kids oftentimes being orphans who were adopted or fostered, and single-parent families
2. All her protagonists are women. And most of her antagonists were, too.
3. She wrote about women in the workforce and girls who wanted to be in that workforce, which, at the time, was pretty bold considering how many of her books were written before WW1 (Montgomery died during WW2)
4. Her characters were well-rounded--they were good, bad, complicated, flawed, had full story arcs, and opinions (both thoughtful and questionable) 
5. Over and over again, the conversations between the women in her books pass the Bechdel Test with flying colours
6. Her writing about nature and the Canadian landscape, in my opinion, rival the greats like Thoreau 
7. Her characters did a helluva lot more than wait around for a Marriage Plot resolution
8. She very often wrote about blue collar families, choosing not merely focus on the lives of the wealthy and upper class
9. There is a compelling case that Anne Shirley was bisexual
10. In conservative, predominantly-Christian communities (not to mention eventually marrying a Presbyterian minister herself) where women didn't often get a say in religious practices, Montgomery wrote about some decidedly pagan practices of her heroines, magic, and otherwise imagined different possibilities for religious worship
11. Seriously, I'm not the only one saying her work has very strong feminist themes

Needless to say, I love her writing and her work has had a huge impact on my life--I needed to read about girls and young women who were smart and unapologetic for it, who had ambitions beyond being a wife and mother, who had the vocabularies that bewildered most adults, etc. 

Her novels are the only YA fiction I have read in recent years, and if I were to go back in time and talk to my younger self, one of the first things I would tell her is to read the Emily of New Moon series before Anne, honestly. Montgomery has inspired my interest in seeing more of Canada, so much so that our honeymoon was basically a tour of Canada. 

All this being said, I am very mindful that this body of work, as impactful and meaningful as it is to me, was written by a woman who was absolutely and undeniably racist. 

How could a woman who gave us so many (fictional) feminist idols be racist? How can I know this and still adore her writing?

Feminist extraordinaire, Anita Sarkeesian, found of Feminist Frequency, reminds us to be critical of the media you love. Past iconoclasts would say to kill your idols. I'm writing this post to further explore that, as Sarkeesian says, “it's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects.”

What makes me say L.M. Montgomery was racist? Well, to be honest, I have read it first-hand.

While I will explain what I have read that makes me think Montgomery was racist, I have decided not to publish the quotes in question here. I have immediate access to both of the books in question, and am purposely choosing not to share them because, frankly, there is enough racism on the internet, I don't need to replicate hateful words here, even for emphasis. Curious readers may go and read the books themselves if they really need to know if I'm being truthful.

I am basing my judgment specifically on two separate works of hers. The first is an excerpt from her personal diaries (i.e., non-fiction), the second is from a sentence of one of her novels.

The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery: The PEI Years, 1889-1900 edited by Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Hillman Waterston

If you have access to a copy, I am referring to pages 86-88, Montgomery's entry from Thursday, August 13th 1891, written when she was about seventeen years old. 

Montgomery recounts a summer day where she goes berry picking with some friends. 

Her and her group choose to not only explicitly trespass on land belonging to a community of First Nations people*, they further demand that they are transported via canoe by the people there. Montgomery makes several offensive comments against First Nations peoples, and uses a racial slur several times in her recounting of this afternoon. 

This entry in an otherwise-charming diary is a very clear micro example of colonialism in action: Montgomery and her pals are wilfully and knowingly trespassing, demanding and taking goods and services of First Nations people, offering nothing (not even thanks from what I read) in exchange. While doing so Montgomery and her friends are belligerent; I will not accept "oh but the time she lived in" as an excuse--she was a very smart and educated woman, she could have and should have known better.

*Montgomery of course does not specify whose traditional lands she and her friends were trespassing on. Prince Edward Island is the traditional territories of the Mi'kmaq peoples.


A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery

If you have access to a copy, I am referring to the very last two sentences of the novel of the last chapter.

Published in 1931, this is one of Montgomery's few works specifically target at an adult audience. The story is about a family matriarch who dies, leaving her very large extended family (full of all sorts of unique and interesting characters) to squabble over who gets to inherit a prized family heirloom.  The lives of the family are turned upside down over the course of the year following her death; everyone is running around with various hilarious antics and impassioned love affairs. Honestly, it's a very cute and funny little tale.

It is especially shocking, therefore, when the story ends abruptly on a racist joke using a racial slur. It is literally the punchline of the entire novel itself, resolving one of the story arcs of two brothers, and of the sentence itself. It is clearly intentional - she is trying to end things on a high note. It is shockingly racist and comes out of nowhere  - there is no other explicit racist jokes or slurs in the entire novel.

Again, I do not excuse the year/era as a reason for her to use a racial slur/allowing it to go to print with such hate. Just fifteen years after A Tangled Web was published, Viola Desmond would challenge segregation laws in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Montgomery had no excuse, she was choosing to be racist.

L.M. Montgomery's entire body of work?

The two examples above are the two I find most horrifying and are the only two reference I can recall that are explicitly and shockingly racist. Still, I should recognize that from what I have read personally, all of Montgomery's main characters are white. 

Is this racism by exclusion? Perhaps. The lack of BIPOC characters in Montgomery's writing is certainly something the crew and creators behind Anne with an E (which I also LOVED) sought to rectify. That being said, I personally think if Montgomery had attempted to write about POC characters, being white herself, we just would have had an American Dirt situation on our hands.

So where do I go from here? I acknowledge L.M. Montgomery's work is explicitly racist in at least two of her publications. Am I going to stop reading her stuff/loving it? Right now, no, I'm not. In the meantime, I'm (trying) reading her work critically and through an intersectional feminist lens. This does not mean I forgive her for it, and I'm open to my obsession with her writing changing. 

In fact, I was just observing the other day that I used to be super into J.D. Salinger. I wrote many, many of my university papers on his books. This was before it came to light that he was a sexual predator, pedophile, and generally a criminal. This fall from grace has happened during my lifetime; the general opinion of J.D. Salinger has experienced a 180 in just a few years. Who knows what might come to light about L.M. Montgomery. Bottom line - I am reading, I am wary.

*For an excellent feminist critique of the Anne of Green Gables series, I would strongly suggest How to Be a Heroine: Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis.