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Orphan Trauma and the Narrative of Imagination

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Orphan Trauma and the Narrative of Imagination University of Iceland Humanities MA in Literature, Culture and Media, English Orphan Trauma and the Narrative of Imagination Autobiographical Memory, Trauma and Coping Mechanisms in The Alpine Path, Emily of New Moon and Anne of Green Gables M.A. Essay Amy Anne Kennedy Id.#: 030292-5379 Supervisor: Guðrún Björk Guðsteinsdóttir June 2021 Kennedy 2 ABSTRACT L. M. Montgomery’s novels Emily of New Moon and Anne of Green Gables showcase her insight into trauma, imagination and healing. Her engagement with autobiographical memories, both her own and those of Emily and Anne, is multi-faceted. Montgomery uses her autobiographical memories from The Alpine Path as building blocks for the girls’ social worlds, and she shares her love of words and narrative with the protagonists—a love that she amplifies in the narratives in order to fill the void left behind by the trauma of becoming and being an orphan. Through examining narrative as the way in which we learn how to make sense of the world, as the way we create, store and reconstruct memories, as the way we create fictions for ourselves, and as the way we combat and heal from trauma, it becomes clear that Emily and Anne make use of every one of these functions of narrative and imagination. For the girls, creative narrative, from memory to writing and storytelling, is a coping mechanism. It is through this coping mechanism, as well as their imaginary friends and natural environments, that Emily and Anne transform their orphan narratives, turning them into ones of healing. It is through these mechanisms that the power of narrative comes to light. Kennedy 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 4 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY IN THE ALPINE PATH AND THE TWO NOVELS 12 MEMORY AND TRAUMA 25 MEMORY AND TRAUMA IN EMILY OF NEW MOON AND ANNE OF GREEN GABLES 31 ORPHAN TRAUMA AND COPING MECHANISMS 43 IMAGINATION AND COPING MECHANISMS IN EMILY OF NEW MOON AND ANNE OF GREEN GABLES 46 CONCLUSION 54 WORKS CITED 57 Kennedy 4 INTRODUCTION As soon as one reads Emily of New Moon (1923) and Anne of Green Gables (1908) by Lucy Maud Montgomery, as well as her autobiography The Alpine Path (originally published as essays in 1917 and as a whole book in 1972), one finds a few connecting pieces—a few of Montgomery’s memories—that made their way into these two novels. In looking specifically at memory in The Alpine Path and in the two novels, I came across various forms of autobiographical memory of which the following two I examine in depth: Montgomery’s memories used as foundations for Emily’s and Anne’s social worlds within the novels, and the girls’ fictional autobiographical memories surrounding the trauma of becoming and being orphans. Emily’s mother dies when she is four years old, and her father dies of a lingering illness four years later. The narrative begins a few weeks before her father’s death. After Emily’s father dies, her family members on her mother’s side draw straws to determine who is to take her in, and it is her Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Laura, and Cousin Jimmy who take her to live with them at New Moon. Anne is also an orphan, but unlike Emily, she never knew her parents. Anne works as household help from a very young age, taking care of children younger than herself. The narrative begins when Anne is to be picked up at the train station by Matthew. Anne has just arrived from the orphan asylum, and Matthew and Marilla are to be her new family. The narratives follow the girls’ rocky starts at their new homes and the unfolding of their lives through hardship, friendship and imagination. Through these texts, I wish to demonstrate that Montgomery’s ideas on trauma and coping mechanisms were ahead of her time. Some of her ideas correspond to the contemporary understanding of trauma and coping mechanisms. I draw upon Christa Schönfelder’s and Susannah Radstone’s contemporary insight into trauma, and Kate Schick’s and Paul John Eakin’s research into storytelling and self-narration as coping mechanisms. I also wish to argue that in time the girls’ socio-cultural orphan narratives and their individual narratives of self turn into redemption narratives of suffering leading to growth. Furthermore, I wish to argue that Emily’s and Anne’s adoration of words, language, writing, imagining, and imaginary friends is not only that—these are coping mechanisms for much deeper feelings of trauma and loss. These novels deal not Kennedy 5 only with the topic of orphan trauma, but also with coping mechanisms and the power of narrative and imagination in healing from trauma. Montgomery’s texts are much more than trauma narratives; they offer an insight into the author’s own understanding of coping with trauma—knowledge she must have gained through her own experience and imagination. Kennedy 6 AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY In her article “Autobiographical Memory,” Robyn Fivush discusses autobiographical memory, its individual, social and cultural construction, as well as the role of stories in framing memory. Fivush states that in the field of psychology, “autobiographical memory has most often been studied … as a measure of how and what an individual remembers about their experiences, and what these memories can tell the researcher about the structure, content and meaning of personal memory” (13). She further notes that autobiographical memory is “a process and product of both individual and cultural construction” (13). Fivush discusses the currently emerging interdisciplinary approach to autobiographical memory and its push towards examining “memory both as a product of human cognition and as a process by which we construct social worlds” (13). These ideas on memory and its construction by oneself of one’s social world come from the field of psychology, but this idea has much in common with writing and literature, with creating and imagining characters and their surroundings. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s memories in The Alpine Path, and along those lines Anne’s and Emily’s memories in Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon,1 are formed by the individual’s cognition, and they construct the social world within which the individual is placed. Fivush posits that language holds a place of great importance in framing social and cultural interactions, particularly language in the form of stories. She compares these ideas within socio-cultural theory to those of feminist theories,2 wherein “knowledge and memory are constructed in local social interactions that facilitate certain ways of knowing” (14). Our memories construct our social worlds, while social interactions construct our memories. There are other factors that lead to the creation of autobiographical memory, but there exists a loop connecting memory and our social worlds. Continuing down the path of stories, Fivush further states that “stories provide an evaluative and interpretive framework for understanding how and why things happen as they do. Stories move beyond chronological descriptions of what happened to include explanations, causes and consequences rife with human motivations, intentions and 1 After this point, I will refer to Anne of Green Gables as Anne and Emily of New Moon as Emily. 2 Fivush gives the example of Rosser and Miller 2000. Kennedy 7 drama” (“Autobiographical Memory”15). Not only do stories provide a framework for understanding, but they can also influence one’s perception of a shared event. A telling example is one Fivush gives of a mother and daughter going to a carnival, where the daughter sees bears for the first time. After the carnival, the mother asks the daughter whether she was frightened of the bears. The daughter’s answer is that she did not find them frightening. The mother then says that she found them frightening. The little girl learns from her mother’s version of events, and she later says that she also found them frightening. Fivush states that in children who are learning to speak it is most often the parents, especially the mother, who provide a particular interpretation of remembered events (15), thus moulding the child’s perception and retention of the event. Here, an event that was not frightening to the child may be encoded as a frightening memory. The link between bears and fear has been established, not through the child’s own fear, but through fear stemming from the mother and her narrative. The mother has begun to construct “a self for the child—one that is afraid of bears” (15). Through the action of telling and retelling stories of our memories we discover and construct a sense of self in interaction with the world (Fivush, “Autobiographical Memory” 16). Autobiographical memory is thus “a fluid dynamic system that is continuously evolving” (16). The girls in the novels both seem to override the original stories of their lives, not only through conversing and storytelling with others, but through their own storytelling for themselves. They take their stories and create new images of themselves apart from other people’s narratives and those of the societies within which they find themselves. Fivush’s argument is that “the meaning of these stories changes according to how they are interpreted and evaluated and how they fit into the larger story of who we are” (16). Some stories remain stable and provide a constant narrative of who we are, while in others we introduce slight changes with every retelling (16). As the girls grow further away, in location and in personal development, from their selves as orphans, the question here is whether their narratives surrounding orphanhood remain the building blocks of who they are. Autobiographical memories are shaped by larger socio-cultural narrative forms, including events that should occur, and the approximate timing of said events.
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