Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Montgomery

 

 Reading Anne of Green Gables was an exhilarating experience, so I had high expectations when I started the second book of the series: Anne of Avonlea. This one, however, made me cringe. Several parts of the book tempted me to quit the read, but I pushed myself to finish it in order to write this post.

 When I read Anne of Green Gables, I thought Anne was ahead of her times. She navigated her challenges with grace and intelligence, encouraging others to become more open-minded. In Anne of Avonlea, Anne’s behavior does not befit the character the author created in the first novel.

   Anne and Marilla felt compelled to adopt six-year-old twins because the children had lost their parents and needed somebody to raise them. I thought this was an intriguing part that would reveal how Anne would touch the twins' lives in unique ways. I was wrong.

  The twins were Dora and Davy. Dora was a kind, well-behaved girl, whereas Davy was mischievous and violent; his actions showed clearly that he lacked empathy and consideration for the feelings and emotions of others. Yet Anne and Marilla considered Davy their “favorite” and they loved Davy more than they loved Dora. To make matters worse, the author portrays this situation as something normal and acceptable.  

 Let’s take a moment to reflect on this aspect of the novel. Even though Anne of Avonlea was written about a hundred years ago, this feature of the characters and plot appears to mirror current affairs and situations in our modern societies. For example, research has shown that women in the workplace are held to different standards than men.

  We don’t even need to travel far to see how women’s lives are treated poorly by the legal system.

 Coming back to the story, it is important to point out that Anne and Marilla are not the right caretakers for Dora. She deserves better.

 Anne started working as a teacher in the small town of Avonlea, where everybody appreciated how she cared about her students. She did her best to excel at her teaching position. One day, however, her mood was not in the right state of mind and her behavior went off the rails. One of her students—a girl—had a fall. As a result of this accident, Anne told her off in a way that clearly evinces the social biases against girls.

  “If you cannot move without falling over something, you’d better remain in your seat. It is positively disgraceful for a girl of your age to be so awkward.” Anne never apologized to the girl nor showed any signs of regret about this statement.

 You may remember from Anne of Green Gables that Anne had been adopted by siblings Matthew and Marilla. Now we are told that Anne voted for the same political party that Matthew had voted for before he died because she wanted to follow his example. Anne had no interest or motivation in examining the ideas, principles and goals of the political party she was blindly willing to vote for. It was made clear that the only reason to support this political party was that Mathew had voted for it before he died.

  In this novel Anne does not appear to be the intelligent person she was in the first book. It is true that she had an insightful conversation with her colleague in which she spoke against whipping children, but, other than that, there is not much to impress the reader about Anne in Anne of Avonlea. I still like some of the peculiar characters Lucy Montgomery introduces, and the end of the story is a pleasant read, romance instilled into it without obnoxious sentimentality.

  I assign two stars out of five to Anne of Avonlea. It may still be considered a useful resource to spark discussions about current social issues that continue to assail the world today, and to analyze the subtle and not so subtle ways in which gender discrimination continues to pervade different societies. An introspective outlook can open up the opportunity to examine social judgments and prejudices and to see how these judgments shape the fate of societies and the world.

 

 Note: Three days after the publication of this blog post, new research emerged. One new research study shows that nine out of ten men and women across the world are biased against women. I provide a link:

Also, a recent study shows that one third of young men in Germany consider that violence against women is acceptable:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/11/europe/germany-violence-against-women-study-intl/index.html

One in  three female NHS surgeons in England have been sexually assaulted by a colleague within the last five years:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66775015

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/12/two-women-describe-sexual-assaults-in-surgery

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/26/why-are-uppity-women-stil-weaponised-when-hold-on-rights-so-fragile-sonia-sodha

I am sharing here an opinion article by Kara Alaimo:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/15/opinions/gilgo-four-how-we-talk-about-victims-of-violence-alaimo/index.html

Still I rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room?

Just like moons and suns

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hope springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Digging in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou

The effects of prejudice in America

“Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.”~ Aldous Huxley.

A prejudice is a silent evil demon; its voice is reality.

A study published by Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues at Yale University provides some important facts that we should not ignore.

 In this study half the scientists were given the job application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the female applicants were rated significantly lower than the males in competence, how likely they were to be hired, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.

 The scientists also offered lower starting salaries to the “female” applicants: $26,507.94 compared to $ 30,238.10

  I also want to make clear that both male and female scientists were equally guilty of committing gender bias. (In other words, the gender bias has nothing to do with all the lies that we hear on a regular basis to justify the difference in salaries.)

 Four in ten American households with children under 18 include a mother who is the sole or primary earner for her family according to a Pew Research Center Analysis of Census and polling data. It has quadrupled since 1960.  Yet women in the US make an average of 0.77 cents to men’s $1.00 doing the same job.

  Women constitute over half of the United States population, but a woman has never been able to become president or vice-president. 

In 2013 women represented only 10% of all governors and held 18% of all US congressional seats.  

 Only 12 of the 100 largest cities have female mayors.
 Twenty-three states have never had a woman as a governor (California and New York are in this list).
 Do you think these figures reflect “equality”?

There is evidence of gender discrimination against female candidates. In 2008 an experiment was done where two congressional candidate credentials were presented to a sample of respondents: Republicans were more likely to say they would vote for a father with young children rather than a mother with young children. They were also more likely to vote for women without small children than with small children.  

   Not only do voters discriminate on the bias of gender, political parties do as well. When a sample of female state legislators was asked whether or not they believed that their political party encouraged women more, less or equally encouraged women and men, 44% of the sample responded that the party was more encouraging to men. Only 3% responded that the party encouraged women more than men.

  When I was preparing this post I came across the comment of a woman who had worked as an engineer in three countries: the United States of America, the UK and Norway. She said that she had endured sexism in the workplace in both US and UK, but not in Norway. She also shared this interesting article. As far as I know many women in Norway work part-time and the economy did not collapse.

 In Norway gender equality is taken so seriously that they recently passed a bill to make military service compulsory for women.This is not something I would recommend in the United States of America because  sexism is routine in American Military Academies according to the Pentagon. 

  A sexist culture is deeply ingrained there. Not surprisingly, Defense officials said that students at the academies see sexual assault and crude behaviors as an almost accepted part of their academy experience. Victims feel peer pressure not to report incidents.

  Sexism does not always happen on an unconscious level. It comes to the surface and speaks to us clearly when we hear remarks like the one made last year by Erick Erickson when he said that situations in which women are the breadwinners are “unnatural”. He also stated that the male is the one that has to dominate. 
   Sexism still exists, so why do so many people get mad when we talk about it? Why do they believe that we should ignore the matter and pretend that it does not exist?

 The US Constitution embraces equality and liberty, but reality has not caught up with it yet.