Faith, Fiction, and Fame: Sowing Seeds in Danny and Anne of Green Gables Kathleen Margaret Patchell Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In partial fulfilment of the requirements For the PhD degree in English literature Department of English Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Kathleen Margaret Patchell, Ottawa, Canada, 2011 ii Table of Contents Title Page i Table of Contents ii Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi Abbreviations / Editions Cited viii Preface ix Disclosure of My Worldview Lens x Influential Authors xii Outline of the Dissertation xiii Chapter One: Introduction, Historical Background, and General Comparison 1 Definitions 6 Nineteenth-Century Background 10 McClung and Montgomery: A Comparison 27 Chapter Two: Nellie McClung and Lucy Maud Montgomery: Two Trajectories of Protestant Faith 36 Nellie Letitia Mooney McClung 37 Lucy Maud Montgomery 45 7ZR3DUDOOHO(YHQWVLQWKH$XWKRUV¶/LYHV 59 Chapter Three: Sowing Seeds in Danny 71 Chapter Four: Anne of Green Gables 120 Chapter Five: Divergent Paths: Critical and Reception History of Sowing Seeds in Danny and Anne of Green Gables 170 iii Chapter Six: Conclusion 211 Appendix One: Statement of Faith of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada 221 Appendix Two: Sowing Seeds in Danny and the Book of James 222 $SSHQGL[7KUHH6XOOLYDQ(QWHUWDLQPHQW¶V6HFXODUL]DWLRQRI Anne of Green Gables 230 Works Cited and Consulted 242 iv Abstract In 1908, two Canadian women published first novels that became instant best-sellers. Nellie 0F&OXQJ¶VSowing Seeds in Danny initially outsold /XF\0DXG0RQWJRPHU\¶VAnne of Green GablesEXWE\0F&OXQJ¶VERRNKDGODUJHO\GLVDSSHDUHGIURP&DQDGLDn consciousness. The popularity of Anne, on the other hand, has continued to the present, and Anne has received far more academic and critical attention, especially since 1985. It is only recently that Anne of Green Gables has been criticized for its ideology in the same manner as Sowing Seeds in Danny. The initial question that inspired this dissertation was why Sowing Seeds in Danny disappeared from public and critical awareness while Anne of Green Gables continued to sell well to the present day and to garner critical and popular attention into the twenty-first century. In light of the fact that both books have in recent years come under condemnation and stand charged with maternal feminism, imperial motherhood, eugenics, and racism, one must ask further why this has now happened to both Danny and Anne. What has changed? The hypothesis of the dissertation is that Danny¶VUHODWLYHO\VSHHG\GLVDSSHDUDQFH ZDVSDUWO\GXHWRDVKLIWLQ&DQDGLDQV¶UHOLJLRXVZRUOGYLHZRYHUWKHWZHQWLHWKFHQWXU\DV church attendaQFHDQGELEOLFDOOLWHUDF\JUDGXDOO\GHFOLQHG0F&OXQJ¶VUKHWRULFDOVWUDWHJLHV look back to the dominant Protestantism of the nineteenth century, in contrast to 0RQWJRPHU\¶VZKLFKORRNIRUZDUGWRWKHWZHQWLHWK-FHQWXU\¶VZDQLQJRIUHOLJLRXVIDLWK Although WKHUHLVHQRXJK&KULVWLDQLW\LQ0RQWJRPHU\¶VQRYHOWRKDYHPDGHLWDFFHSWDEOHWR her largely Christian reading public at the beginning of the century, its presentation is subtle enough that it does not disturb or baffle a twenty-first-century reader in the ZD\0F&OXQJ¶V GRHV0F&OXQJ¶VQRYHOLVVRIRUWKULJKW in its presentation of Christianity, with its use of v nineteenth-century tropes and conventions and with its moralising didacticism, that the delightful aspects of the novel were soon lost to an increasingly secular reading public. Likewise, the recent critical challenges to both novels spring from a worldview at odds with the predominantly Christian worldview of 1908. The goal of the dissertation has been to read Sowing Seeds in Danny and Anne of Green Gables within the religious contexts of a 1908 reader in order to avoid an unquestioning twenty-first-century censure of these novels, and to ascertain the reasons for their divergent popularity and recent critical condemnation. vi Acknowledgements First I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Janice Fiamengo, for her unfailing encouragement, her always-positive criticism, her friendship, and her supportive engagement with my topic. She is the reason I embarked on the PhD journey. I am grateful to my four examiners, Dr. Gwendolyn Davies, Dr. Gerald Lynch, Dr. Dominic Manganiello, and Dr. David Staines, for their careful reading of my dissertation and for their helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank the University of Ottawa for financial support during the first four years of the doctoral program, and the FGPS for the travel grant that enabled me to do research in the British Columbia Public Archives in Victoria. On a personal level, I would like to thank my husband John for his unceasing support, his willingness to read many chapter drafts with unflagging enthusiasm, and his flexibility in negotiating his own work schedule to accommodate mine. I also thank my family: my children - Anna, Laura, David, Sarah, Jonathan and Daniel, and their spouses - Ahren, Chris, Christian, Tim, Erin, and Rachel, for keeping me humble; and my grandchildren - Gregory, Michael, Jack, Christopher, Evan, George, James, Duncan, Jonah, Julia, Toby, Josie, Zoe, and Kyla, who represent the future. vii Finally, I would like to thank my mother Kathleen Wesson Parker for ensuring that her children had the academic opportunities denied to her and for always pushing me to achieve my personal best. Her delight in my achievements has been a reward in itself. I gratefully dedicate this dissertation to Dr. Janice Fiamengo Dr. John Patchell Mrs. Kathleen Wesson Parker viii Abbreviations AP Alpine Path BCP Book of Common Prayer CCL &DQDGLDQ&KLOGUHQ¶V/LWHUDWXUH GGL Green Gables Letters HSLDAC Home School Legal Defence Association of Canada MBPH Methodist Book and Publishing House NIV New International Version (Bible) NKJ New King James (Bible) NLT New Living Translation (Bible) PABC Public Archives of British Columbia SJ Selected Journals (of L.M. Montgomery) Editions of Primary Texts Cited in the Dissertation McClung, Nellie. In Times Like These. 1915. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972. ²²². Nellie McClung: The Complete Autobiography: Clearing in the West and the Stream Runs Fast. 1935, 1945. Ed. Veronica Strong-Boag and Michelle Lynn Rosa. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2003. ²²². Sowing Seeds in Danny. Toronto: Briggs, 1908. Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables. Ed. Mary Henley Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. 1908. New York: Norton, 2007. ix Preface This critical case study of Sowing Seeds in Danny and Anne of Green Gables began as the first chapter of a much larger project, ³5HSUHVHQWDWLRQVRI3URWHVWDQW&KULVWLDQLW\LQ Twentieth-&HQWXU\&DQDGLDQ1RYHOV´ in which I planned to look at the relationship between the Canadian novel and the changing religious climate in English-Canada over the last century. I speculated that as the condition of Protestant faith moved from its dominant position at the beginning of the century, when 98% of the population claimed adherence to a Christian denomination, to its reduced status at the end of the century, when fewer than 20% regularly attended church, novels written by authors who were raised in the Protestant faith reflected and complicated this cultural shift. I intended to look at two novels in each quarter of the century for evidence of the changes in the presentation of social, private, and institutional Protestantism, and to consider correlations between the worldviews presented in these fictional texts, their reception history, their critical history, and the condition of religious faith at different periods of the century. Because no study had related Canadian fiction to a changing religious environment over time, I anticipated that my dissertation would fill a significant gap in literary studies. Halfway through the project, I found myself increasingly dissatisfied with having to simplify ideas and make generalizations in order not to exceed fifty pages per chapter. My fascination with the question of the disappearance of Sowing Seeds in Danny in contrast to the popularity of Anne of Green Gables had led to several conference papers on various aspects of the themes only hinted at in my first chapter. I also realized that in looking at the reception history of Danny and Anne, I could discuss many of the arguments concerning worldview shift that I intended to address in the overall project. I therefore asked for and x received permission to limit my project to the two novels so that I could examine each in greater depth. The study of religion and literature has achieved the status of a sub-genre of literary studies in the United States and Great Britain; in Canada, however, this area has been largely ignored. In 1965 in The Literary History of Canada1RUWKURS)U\HFODLPHGWKDW³UHOLJLRQ has been a major ± perhaps the major ± cultural force in Canada, at least down to the last generation or two´ 1HYHUWKHOHVVLQWKHODVWWKLUW\\HDUVWKHUHOLJLRXVDVSHFWRIZULWLQJ has been eclipsed by studies in gender, class, race, and empire. Canadian sociologist Robert Choquette theorizes that the reason for the dearth of studies of religion and literature is UHODWHGWRWKHGRPLQDQFHRIVHFXODUKXPDQLVPLQ&DQDGD¶V³SXEOLFVTXDUH´GXULQJWKHODVW quarter of the century. I propose to redress this dearth with an interdisciplinary study that FRPELQHVGLVFRXUVHDQDO\VLVDQGWKHRORJLFDOH[HJHVLVZLWKVRFLDOKLVWRU\¶VVHQVLWLYLW\WR environment and context. I believe that we cannot comprehend Canadian history and culture without NQRZOHGJHRI&DQDGD¶VUHOLJLRXVIRXQGDWLRQVDQGWKDWE\H[DPLQLQJILFWLRQDO literature from the perspective of a particular religious worldview, I will be adding a necessary dimension