Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings (review)

This rich, comprehensive, and long-anticipated biography of L.M. Montgomery, published recently to correspond with the 100th anniversary of Montgomery’s most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables, will no doubt remain the definitive biography of Montgomery for some time. Divided into four parts – The pei Years, 1874–1911; The Leaksdale Years, 1916–26; The Norval Years, 1926–35; and The Toronto Years, 1935–42 – the biography conveys the intensity of Montgomery’s life, first as an insecure child and later as a famous author, anxious mother, and frustrated rural minister’s wife. Readers of the five published volumes of Montgomery’s diaries, which Rubio co-edited with her University of Guelph colleague Elizabeth Waterston, will be familiar with many of the characters and events in the biography, but will enjoy plenty of new material and fresh perspectives. In fact, one of the greatest strengths of the biography is Rubio’s comparisons of how Montgomery wrote about her own life in the diaries with how Montgomery’s family, friends, and maids perceived some of the same events.

The Gift of Wings is the culmination of Rubio’s four decades of study devoted to Montgomery. Rubio, though she never met Lucy Maud Montgomery, must know her better than anyone ever knew her, including her husband, friends, sons, and grandchildren. Perhaps the best example of this played out in the Globe and Mail in September 2008, one month before the biography was published. Montgomery’s granddaughter Kate Macdonald Butler wrote an article that appeared in the front page of the Globe and Mail revealing that Lucy Maud Montgomery had committed suicide, and offering the fully reprinted ‘suicide note’ as proof. Fortunately Rubio was asked to comment and respectfully argued that what Kate Macdonald Butler and her father Stuart assumed was a suicide note was more likely just another of Montgomery’s depressing Second World War–era diary entries. According to Rubio, Montgomery always wrote her diary entries on loose sheets of paper and further edited and copied them into her diary. When Rubio discusses this on page 575 of the biography, she has already demonstrated such a thorough knowledge of Montgomery that her explanation is very convincing.

The Gift of Wings portrays Montgomery’s life as conflict-ridden and dark, with only rare moments of joy. Even when things were going well, such as when she received an award or a large royalty cheque – and these were things Montgomery really, really cared about because she had so little emotional affirmation or financial security in her first thirty-five years – she was never peaceful or secure. And when life was stressful – including the long period during which Montgomery was engaged in a legal battle with her Boston publisher, L.C. Page; the ongoing and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to redirect her elder son, Chester, away from an immoral, lazy, and dishonest life; and the recurring hell connected with her husband Ewan’s mental illness – Montgomery’s utter despair is palpable. The first few chapters of the Gift of Wings include much more detail about the subject’s childhood than most biographies. Rubio seems almost defensive in devoting so much time to explaining Montgomery’s difficult childhood, which she later draws on to justify the anxiety Montgomery continued to have throughout her life. As I read those first few chapters I wondered whether Rubio had enough distance from her subject, and I wondered this again in later chapters when Rubio seems so deeply angry with Chester’s dishonesty and hyper-sexuality. In its entirety, however, the book is a solid piece of scholarship; at the end of the day, I appreciate Rubio’s passion.

There is no doubt that the Gift of Wings is more of a literary than a historical biography. Rubio usually refers to Montgomery’s own writing for context and ‘facts’ rather than using the work of historians of Canada. There are exceptions, but they are few. Outside Montgomery’s own writing, the major sources...