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c h a p t e r s i x With all the changes Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and A Little Princess make to the formula of affective discipline, it might seem that L. M. Montgomery’s first orphan girl novel, 1908’s Anne of Green Gables, is something of an anachronism. In the previous orphan girl novels of the new century, the genre pulled itself away from public and conscious affective discipline as well as from most of the other hallmarks of affective discipline in the sentimental tradition. It embraced storytelling as a way to enchant and thereby direct objects of discipline, particularly because storytelling allowed girls to discipline the people around them obliquely, sometimes even accidentally. With those changes in mind, Montgomery’s first novel feels nostalgic: whereas the other books immediately preceding it distanced themselves from affective discipline in the style of sentimentalism, Anne of Green Gables relentlessly recounts the successes of moral suasion. But in doing so, it echoes Wiggin’s warning that the disciplinarian may regret her success. Anne of Green Gables’ portrait of sentimental-style discipline is thorough. Anne herself, for example, is frequently a target of discipline through love in ways that Ellen Montgomery was but Rebecca was not. Anne comes to Green Gables full of “queer” ways, including a complete lack of understanding of the Christian faith Marilla Cuthbert, her adoptive mother, wants to instill in her. To go about making Anne into a Christian, Marilla first tries forcing her to recite a prayer, but immediately the adoptive mother realizes that the “simple little prayer, sacred to white-robed childhood lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God’s love since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human Anne of Green Gables and the Return of Affective Discipline 90 d i s c i p l i n i n g g i r l s love” (99). Marilla frequently tries empty morals and harsh (though never corporal ) justice on Anne, but none of them works so well as affection. Matthew, her brother and the only other occupant of Green Gables, is shy and kind, and the only sort of attention he ever gives the child is loving. As a result, “he was free to ‘spoil Anne’—Marilla’s phrasing—as much as he liked. But it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little ‘appreciation’ sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious ‘bringing up’ in the world” (263). Although harshness never makes Anne act as Marilla wants her to—in one scene, Marilla’s lack of compassion drives Anne to lie, a sin for which Marilla later blames herself—acts of kindness never fail to stir up obedient affection. As Marilla says, Anne is “one of the sort you can do anything with if you only get her to love you” (96). Anne’s affection makes her obedient to all the right codes: like Ellen, she promises not to read anything she should not (317), and like any good middle-class girl, she declares that she does not envy the exquisite jewelry another woman wears but prefers her own string of pearls. “I know Matthew gave me as much love with them,” she confides, as ever went to another woman along with more expensive gifts (356). Anne looks very much like a disciplinary object who would be at home in a girl’s novel decades earlier. In a break with novels from the beginning of the tradition, Anne does use the same kind of affective discipline, with the same successful results, on the adults around her. The touch of her hand causes “something warm and pleasant” to fill Marilla’s heart (“a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps” [126]), and an impulsive kiss “thrilled her” with a “sudden sensation of startling sweetness” (144). The sight of Anne’s pathetic face moves her to unaccustomed love, and the knowledge of Anne’s desires motivates Matthew to go to the store and buy Anne exactly the sort of dress she has secretly wanted. Because Marilla refused to make for Anne any new clothes other than “good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills and furbelows about them” (127–28), Anne’s clothing has always been less pleasant than that of the other girls, but she has never complained. When Matthew arranges for a dress with puffy sleeves...

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