Okay. So. The June 21, 2010 issue of Macleans (which, is the current one, even given the date) has an article about L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables‘ “shocking family secret.” I would really like to link to it, but alas, I read a copy that my grandparents go in the mail, and I haven’t been able to find the article on the Macleans website.
This article, by Anne Kingston, discusses a new paper (Anne’s World: A New Century) written by Helen Hoy, in which Hoy explains to the world how everything that we love about Anne is due to the fact that Anne’s mother drank alcohol when she was pregnant – the chatty, imaginative, and impulsive character is like she is because she has Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
Hoy stated that “she wants to use Anne as a bride to create greater tolerance toward a condition that afficts at least one per cent of Canadians.” And bravo for wanting to have a positive character for people who have (or know someone who has) FASD to relate to, and yes it is important for people to be able to relate to characters like themselves – but it seems an awful lot like Hoy just went into her most recent reading of AoGG looking for ways that it might be possible to call Anne an FASD patient.
We all know that LMM covered some topics in some of her books and short stories that were a little bit darker than what we would expect from a LMM story, but I have a few problems with this new theory. Don’t get me wrong – I have no problem with reading about characters who are disabled. But I do have a problem when people make up stuff about a much beloved character like Anne.
I don’t believe Anne had FASD and this is why (all symptoms referenced from above linked Wikipedia article):
- Nowhere does LMM mention Anne having facial abnormalities, which is apparently a defining characteristic of those with FASD.
- Yes, Anne is scrawny at the beginning of the series. She’s just come from an orphanage. Before that orphanage, she worked for families assisting them raising their own families and most likely not getting the proper nutrition that a growing child would need (from the knowledge that we have of the Hammond’s).
- Anne is constantly one of the few people at the head of her class – she is a very smart girl, both academically and (later on in the series) socially. After graduating school, she becomes a teacher – she has the smarts to deal with a classroom full of growing children, without losing her cool (most of the time).
- She most certainly does NOT have a lack of adaptive behaviour – what about when she is working for Summerside High School in Anne of Windy Poplars. She was able to adapt well to a new town that she didn’t know, she was able to adapt to teaching at a school where all sorts of town politics were pretty much barring her way to succeed (hello Pringles!).
But my biggest problem with this theory was that the majority of characteristics that Hoy said pointed to the fact that Anne has FASD, well, Anne outgrew them by the end of the series. And FASD has an effect on a portion of the brain that cannot change – so if Anne had it, these characteristics would have remained consistent throughout the whole series.
I have no doubt that Hoy is a fan – she said she’s read the books many times and has taught them for classes (she a professor at the U of Guelph), but did she read more than the original Anne of Green Gables when she was coming up with this theory, to see if it would remain consistent throughout the all eight (nine if you include The Blythes are Quoted) books?
I have to say, I completely agree with the author of the article, Anne Kingston, when she says that this theory “makes the nine-year-old in me for whom Anne of Green Gables was a defining book want to shout out: ‘Leave Anne alone!’ It’s discombobulating to see a cherished novel reread as a mental-health primer.”
What do you think? Does this come across as a plausible reason for Anne to be the character that we have grown to love and cherish?
ETA: Lisa just informed me that the Macleans article is now online.