no apparent reason

Anne Shirley goes to war

I'm back from exams. They were okay. I was planning on writing more about them, but internet access was kind of scarce last week (maybe that's among the many improvements being made to I-House).

I haven't done much since I've been back--have mostly been lazing around. Have also been re-reading some cozy books, Agatha Christie mysteries and the like. I’ve also started re-reading "Rilla of Ingleside" online. That's the last in the Anne of Green Gables series (about a girl growing up on Prince Edward Island, and later her family), the title character is Anne's daughter and the book takes place during World War I. When I read it last I was at a more accepting age, and now was having trouble remembering how the uber-idyllic world of Anne met up with the war, and whether the war changed Anne's world at all. The book has a very definite point of view on the war. The following quotes especially caught my attention:

"'Without shedding of blood there is no anything,' said Mr. Meredith, in
the gentle dreamy way which had an unexpected trick of convincing his
hearers. 'Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by
self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent
with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I
don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is
the price humanity must pay for some blessing--some advance great
enough to be worth the price--which we may not live to see but which
our children's children will inherit.'"

This is spoken by the town pastor. Later, regarding the possibility that his own son might be killed in the war, he adds: "'Whatever I felt, it could not alter my belief--my assurance that a country whose sons are ready to lay down their lives in her defence will win a new vision because of their sacrifice.'"

There is one "pacifist" in town, who is roundly despised by all the other characters. Weirdly, what he has to say definitely resonates with what anti-war activists say today: "He prayed that the unholy war might cease--that the deluded armies being driven to slaughter on the Western front might have their eyes opened to their iniquity and repent while yet there was time--that the poor young men present in khaki, who had been hounded into a path of murder and militarism, should yet be rescued--" This speech was labeled "sedition and treason," and the pray-er was forcibly ejected from church by one of the book's more colorful characters.

Another dissenting voice was heard earlier in the book: "'It's a commercial war when all is said and done and not worth one drop of good Canadian blood,' said a stranger from the shore hotel."

These objections to war sound eerily familiar--and perhaps, in historical retrospect, were even right, or at least something close to right. Yet these views, which today are usually considered to be rooted in a "moral" point of view even by those who disagree with them, in Rilla aren't even allotted decent characters to espouse them. How did sweet Anne get so bloodthirsty, and why is the opposing viewpoint considered so iniquitous?

A devotion to high ideals is very characteristic of the Anne books. Both Anne and her closer friends are guided only by their ideals and their ideas of what is right--not because this is the right way to live, but because it is the only way to live. Anne’s ideals sometimes come into conflict with practicality, notably in an episode in which her view of corporal punishment is modified by the realities of being a schoolteacher (in Anne of Avonlea, she tries to win the respect of an incorrigible student through patience and gentleness, but after she finally gives in and “paddles” him (though not cruelly, the book informs us) he surprises her by according her respect because "'that whipping you gave him was 'just as good as a man's.'"—remember, these books take place in the 1800s). However, practicality never supercedes morality as her guiding star; if it did, “Anne” would cease to exist. It's one of the things I admire about the Anne books--reading them makes me want to be a better person. Modern reading material tends to reflect people’s actual behavior, rather than attempting to lead readers to aspire to something better—something which probably would be seen as hypocritical or not true to reality.

I don't know if real people were more idealistic back then than they are now, but the impression one gets from reading the literature of the period is that having a good character (being a good person) was more important than personal appearance or wealth. Not that there is no morality now, but when moral rules come into conflict with practicality or convenience, morality usually loses, as long as there is no obvious victim involved. Interestingly, this time of higher ideals existed at a time when life was much more difficult, not to say brutal, than now. This can even be seen in the Anne books, so often considered as the epitome of the cozy and idyllic: Anne's parents died when she was a baby, and she was passed from one drunken abusive family to another, where she was used as a household servant; and finally she was passed to an orphan asylum. Apparently in those days you could drop off any child you found inconvenient at such an institution, or pick one up if you found yourself in need of household help, and there was no child protective services to watch out for him or her. Hence, it's not that nothing bad ever happened to Anne, but Anne because of her devotion to her ideals, and with the help and guidance of some pretty ordinary people, was able to transcend her terrible childhood.

However, I believe that this today morality itself is seen as suspect. The morality of Anne’s time is now considered to have been a tool to enforce the social hierarchy and exclude people who were different in any way (in the Anne books, though none of the main characters are particularly socially exalted, the “French” for example are definitely an underclass). Even more, this system of morality is considered culpable in getting a lot of people needlessly killed, the first example of this being World War I, the main event of “Rilla of Ingleside.”

I don't know much about World War I, but I’ve been given to understand it was one of the more pointless wars in history, and didn't resolve anything at all. You wouldn't get that impression from reading "Rilla of Ingleside." The men in the book went to war out of loyalty to England, as they would be loyal to their own mother; they believed they were defending not only their own country, but fighting to prevent the violation of innocence and to preserve peace and goodness around the world. In effect, they were fighting for Anne of Green Gables.

I'm not sure whether soldiers in real life fought the war for such ideals; but in any case the effects of WWI seem to have been just the opposite. My purely literary knowledge of the era seems to indicate that the spiritual aftermath of the war involved an increase in cynicism, the "Lost Generation," and the false panacea of communism; as well as the beginning of the breakdown of traditional roles, social systems, and political configurations. L.M. Montgomery herself seems to feel that somehow the world went wrong after the war. Emily Climbs, the second in a semiautobiographical trilogy and published in 1925, begins like this:

“Emily Byrd Starr was alone in her room, in the old New Moon farmhouse at Blair Water, one stormy night in a February of the olden years before the world turned upside down.”

Montgomery wrote Anne books both before and after the war (“Rilla” was published in 1921). The books which took place before the war (I calculate that the Anne series took place beginning in the 1880s, and only a few short stories took place after WWI) seem to be looking back to a better time. They seem to be beautifully untouched by any of the harsher realities of the outside world--it's not that bad things never happen, but the bad things that do happen are mostly normal, natural things, illness, death, loneliness, and so forth, never carnage or atrocities or cruelty. Though Anne had a difficult childhood, she is never abused or molested as she certainly would be if the books were written today; and she is (unrealistically) able to transcend these early bad conditions without lasting psychological effects; while the women of “Rilla” must contend with stories of rape (I guess that’s what they’re alluding to in that veiled way) and the bayonetting of babies by “the Hun”.

In contrast, it is my impression that Montgomery's books which take place post-war are always trying to take into account a more modern, hardened outlook on the world, in which the world of Anne is perhaps dying away. If this is true, it is the first time Anne’s ideals played her false. The view espoused in Rilla of the protection of peace and innocence turned out to be largely a false or at least an unfulfilled one. Is this where our current moral and spiritual state had its beginning--because such high ideals once led us astray, now all high and exclusively-held ideals are considered suspect? And practicality and cynism are better--and safer--guides than ideals, whose usual role is to get a lot of people pointlessly killed?

I don't know if what I've said about our current spiritual state is true. Most political points of view have at least formal ties to some system of morality. However, it seems that morality is no longer our master, but our servant, a point of view that would never be recognized by Anne. My rather melodramatic question to myself is, was Anne a casualty of war? Could she, or should she, survive in the 21st century? It seems to me that ideals are what makes us human, but sometimes, it seems, they also get us needlessly killed. How do we hang on to this most important part of ourselves, which gives our lives meaning and purpose, without letting our ideals blind us to actual facts?

Did Mr. Meredith's "blessing" and "new vision" materialize? It doesn't seem so. It seems, in fact, that the war was a factor in the breakdown of Montgomery's "good life" of the Anne saga; and ultimately led to an even more destructive war and a loss of faith in ideals and morality. Was Anne wrong, and if so where did she go wrong? I'm not sure if "Rilla" says more about feelings during the war, or about a retrospective attempt to ascribe meaning to a seemingly pointless war; and I'm not sure whether the book illustrates Montgomery's unique view or a more widespread worldview. However, from an even farther removed vantage point, I think that the important elements of Anne's world--peace, innocence, and love are worth defending, even at the loss of one's own life. A morality which holds that the preservation of human life is more important than the preservation of that which makes us human (or more correctly, that which makes us the children of God), can’t be correct. However, when and how does war play a role in preserving these good things--if it ever does?

Posted by michele at March 24, 2004 12:12 PM