MAUD

by

Kari Trogen

Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours (English), University of Alberta, 2006

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in the Graduate Academic Unit of English

Supervisor: Len Falkenstein, PhD (English)

Examining Board: John Ball, PhD (English), Chair David Creelman, PhD (English) Gail Campbell, PhD (History)

This thesis is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK

May, 2008

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••I Canada ii DEDICATION

For summers out east with Brittany and Emily.

And for girls with mirror friends and "hungry, tempestuous hearts." iii ABSTRACT

Maud is a two-act play based on the early journals of L. M. Montgomery. Maud tells a different story from the still-frequent parallel drawn between the narrative of Anne of Green Gables and the author's personal history. As it interrogates the faith invested in the idealized figure of Anne, the play illuminates the darker, more complicated aspects of a life often simplified and glorified.

Narrating and steering us through the story of her youth is LMM: Montgomery as a middle-aged bride-to-be in 1911. About to depart Prince Edward Island, she lingers in memories of the past, accompanied by her younger selves, the girl MAUDIE and the young woman MAUD. As she relives her abandonment by her father, her stifling

Calvinist upbringing, the loss of childhood friends, and a painful, passionate love affair,

LMM attempts to resign herself to the future, leaving behind forever the bittersweet idealism of her girlhood. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my indebtedness to Ruth and David MacDonald, the Heirs of L.M. Montgomery, and to Professors Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston at the

University of Guelph, without whose diligent editorship of The Selected Journals ofL.

M. Montgomery this play would never have been written. Thanks as well to Professor

Cecily Devereux at the University of Alberta, who supervised my undergraduate academic thesis on Montgomery.

I would also like to extend my sincere thanks to my supervisor and examining committee, and to those colleagues, friends and family who have contributed to Maud with their opinions and advice. Thanks especially to my grandparents, David and

Patricia Stothart, for enabling me to travel to Prince Edward Island, and to Kirstie

McCallum for showing me the original Anne of Green Gables manuscript and other of

Montgomery's possessions at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown. V

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ii

ABSTRACT iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS v

CHARACTER LIST vi

1.0 MAUD 1 1.1 Act One 1

1.2 Act Two 54

2.0 AFTERWORD 124

3.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY 153 CURRICULUM VITAE VI

CHARACTER LIST

8 actors minimum

FEMALE ACTRESS LMM FEMALE ACTRESS Maud, Grown-Up Anne FEMALE ACTRESS Grandma, Stepmother MALE ACTOR Herman, Father MALE ACTOR Ewan, Mustard GIRL ACTRESS Maudie, Frede GIRL ACTRESS Young Anne, Grown-Up Anne, Clemmie BOY ACTOR Nate, Will

Main Characters:

LMM Maud at age 36 in 1911, successful and famous. Petite, bespectacled, brown hair worn up. Wears an engagement ring. MAUDIE Maud in her teens in the early to mid 1890s. Long golden brown hair, wears a plain pinafore. Very earnest, but not immature. MAUD Maud as a young woman in the mid 1890s to early 1900s. Brown hair worn fashionably up. YOUNG ANNE The iconic heroine of Anne of Green Gables, as she first appears in the novel in the late 1870s. Speaks in a clear, sweet voice. GROWN-UP ANNE Anne as a young woman in the 1880s. Played by YOUNG ANNE / MAUD wearing a red wig in the Gibson Girl pompadour style.

Prince Edward Island Characters:

GRANDMA A prim old lady. Not intentionally cruel, but fails to provide the warmth, sympathy and understanding that Maudie craves. NATE Maudie's bookish school friend in Cavendish. Shy, serious and occasionally sulky. Wears a cap. CLEMMIE A gossipy schoolgirl of Maudie's age in Cavendish. Wears a lot of fussy flounces and bows. Played by YOUNG ANNE. HERMAN A young farmer, the son of the family with which Maud boards in Bedeque. Uneducated, but with intense physical magnetism. FREDE Frederica, Maud's cousin and best adult friend. Played by MAUDIE. vii EWAN A Presbyterian minister who courts Maud. Educated and well- mannered, but distant. Has a Scottish accent, speaks quite quietly.

Saskatchewan Characters:

FATHER A kindhearted but spineless man. Played by HERMAN, wearing a full beard and moustache. WILL Maudie's best friend in Prince Albert. Energetic, redheaded and mischievous. Has a working class accent. Played by NATE. STEPMOTHER A sinister presence, with a whining but commanding voice. Played by GRANDMA. MR. MUSTARD The stuttering, mustachioed schoolmaster at Prince Albert High. A comical figure, but masks a sexual creepiness. Played by EWAN. townspeople, schoolchildren, journalists, etc. played by members of the company. 1

Act One

SCENE 1

Music plays. It is beautiful, but hauntingly wistful.

Dim lights rise on an empty farmhouse interior. All the furnishings have been stripped; the furniture has been pushed back and covered in white sheets. At stage right, below a window, is a wooden writing desk. It is the only uncovered piece of furniture in the room. On the floor in front of the desk are stacks of letters and books. Lying open on top of it is a large, careworn journal.

Music stops.

LMM enters. She looks around, seemingly unable to speak or move. But then she walks over to the desk and kneels among the letters. As LMM picks up one letter, then another, we start to hear voices. They are distinct at first, then jumbled and overlapping.

A silhouette appears. It is YOUNG ANNE, standing in profile.

As the voices continue and YOUNG ANNE's silhouette slowly grows larger, LMM sinks her head in her hand.

VOICE OF MARK TWAIN Dear Miss Montgomery. She is the sweetest creation of child life yet written, the dearest, most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice. Yours admiringly, Mark Twain.

VOICE OF BLISS CARMAN My dear Miss Montgomery. While the young people are rummaging all over the house looking for Anne, the head of the family has carried her off to read on his way to town! My sincere regards and congratulations, Bliss Carman.

FEMALE VOICE, CHILD Is Anne a real girl? 2

RADIO ANNOUNCER Putting Cavendish and Prince Edward Island on the map, Anne of Green Gables, beloved by thousands of readers, has just been translated into Swedish and Dutch.

FEMALE VOICE, ADULT I want to tell you how much my little girl loves Anne. I found her with Green Gables the other day and I said, "Child, how often have you read that book?" And she said "Oh mother, I don't know. I just keep it and my bible together and read a chapter of both every day."

FEMALE VOICE, CHILD Is Anne a real girl?

FEMALE VOICE, TEEN Oh Anne, I wish I was like you!

VOICE OF MARILLA You blessed girl!

FEMALE VOICE, CHILD To Miss Anne Shirley, Green Gables, Avonlea, Prince Edward Island. Dear Anne. I adore you. I want to be just like you when I grow up. I hope you marry Gilbert Blythe.

MALE AND FEMALE VOICES, YOUNG AND OLD, DIFFERENT ACCENTS (Jumbled.) Miss Montgomery! Miss Montgomery! Is Anne a real girl? Miss Montgomery! Oh Anne, I wish I was like you! Is Anne a real girl? Miss Montgomery! Is Anne a real girl? Miss Montgomery!

The jumbled voices become interspersed with music, which becomes a minor key version of the wedding march.

Suddenly, LMM stands. The letters fall from her lap; the voices and music stop.

LMM This is what they want of me... what they see. The famous authoress, the success story. My life, my accomplishments, an extension... of her. {Looks over at 3

YOUNG ANNE's shadow.) They want to believe I am Anne! They want my story to be her story... My house, her house.

YOUNG ANNE's silhouette disappears. LMM picks up the journal, almost reverently.

LMM And what of these faded pages? A record of thirty-six years — the little milestones of a life. Will they matter to anyone? I don't know... But I have nothing else.

LMM slowly opens the journal, and runs her fingers across the first page.

SCENE 2

Music begins again. A window-shaped square of light reveals FATHER at downstage centre. The light flickers as though shining through vines.

LMM I remember my mother's corpse. People don't believe I can remember — they say I was only a toddler and I must have just imagined it — but I can. It is my earliest memory. (LMM closes the journal and props it up against the window, then turns to face the audience.) I wore a white dress of embroidered muslin. (Light shines on her dress, making it appear white.) And Father was crying.

She walks over to FATHER and reaches for his hand. He takes it rather absently.

LMM There was a big box in the parlour, and women were seated around the room. (Looks out at people in the audience.) Two were whispering to each other and looking pityingly at Father and me. Somebody sobbed and said, "Poor child." I didn't understand. Why was Father crying? (Looks into an imaginary coffin.) I looked at Mother lying in the box. She was beautiful. She had such a sweet face, though it was worn and wasted... Why was she so still?

LMM reaches down hesitantly, but pulls her hand away in fear. FATHER puts a steadying hand on her shoulder. 4

LMM (Still looking down, transfixed.) I can still feel the coldness of that touch... That is all I have of her, my girlish mother. She sleeps in the old graveyard of Cavendish, lulled by the murmur of the sea.

FATHER's light fades out, and he exits. The music stops. LMM seems lost in the memory for a moment, then she looks at us.

LMM I have always felt a certain kinship with orphans.

SCENE 3

Full lights over stage right. Next to the desk, two sheets have been removed, revealing a wardrobe with a mirrored door and an old-fashioned bed with a quilt on it.

MAUDIE runs in, wiping tears from her eyes, and collapses on the bed. LMM embraces her.

LMM (To the audience, still hugging MAUDIE.) It's a great misfortune for a child to be brought up by old people set in their ways.

GRANDMA comes walking briskly in, wearing neat kitchen clothes.

GRANDMA (Looking primly down at MAUDIE.) We simply won't allow it, Maud. It isn't decent.

LMM Apart from prayer meeting, they never approved of anything that brought young folks together.

GRANDMA It isn't modest for young girls to perform in public. It tends to make them vain and forward. 5

MAUDIE (To GRANDMA, holding back tears.) But I'm to play the Fairy Queen! Miss Gordon picked me especially! And I've been practising for weeks and weeks!

GRANDMA Well, this Miss Gordon will have to come see me herself. These girl teachers with their new-fangled notions for training children — they are far too young and foolish to be teaching.

MAUDIE But she isn't—

GRANDMA Do not be impertinent with me, Maud Montgomery. I knew a girl once who died in her sleep after being impertinent. (Seeing the rebellion in MAUDIE's eyes.) Stop your whining now, child. This sulking is unbecoming and ungrateful.

She exits.

LMM She gave in that time.

MAUDIE (Bitterly.) When she found out all the Simpsons and Macneills were allowing their daughters to go.

LMM leans down to look in MAUDIE"s eyes.

LMM (In mock scolding, to cheer her up.) But plain dresses only! No ridiculous puffed sleeves!

MAUDIE (Wiping away her tears, beginning to smile.) And lights out at nine.

LMM No paying calls or having company over! 6

MAUDIE Or singing in the house.

LMM And no novel-reading!

MAUDIE Only poetry!

LMM But not on Sundays!

MAUDIE And as for college—

LMM They were bitterly against that idea.

MAUDIE Or becoming a teacher like Miss Gordon—

LMM The only grown-up who sympathized with me, who understood about books and studies and ambitions.

MAUDIE (Rapturously.) I do love books! Not merely to read once but over and over again. I hope when I grow up I'll be able to have lots of them.

MAUDIE picks up one of the books on the floor and starts to read, lying on her stomach across the foot of the bed. LMM gazes at her.

LMM Half the village were family, but mine was a childhood that was always... apart. I was only ever a visitor in their homes. To some of them, a friend. To others, an outsider. I'll never forget hearing one of my aunts use those two rankling words: charity case... 7

MAUDIE (Reading.) "Chance cannot change my love, nor time impair" ~ isn't that terribly romantic?

LMM smiles fondly and strokes MAUDIE"s hair.

LMM I grew to believe myself insignificant, of no importance to anybody. When the visits were over, they were not my mother and father, not my siblings. (Looks around.) Here, there was only Grandma... Grandfather shut up in his study... and me. My oldest friends were my broken old dolls and the barnyard cats, and my own reflection in the glass... And yet ~ in my imagination was a world very different from the one in which I lived.

MAUDIE Books are a delightful world in themselves. Their characters seem as real as my friends of actual life.

LMM This world would be, to me anyway, a terrible thing without them. The one constant thing in my life.

MAUDIE I love best the poets who hurt me, when I come across a line that thrusts itself into my heart. Browning hurts me worse than any poet I have ever read — so I love him most.

LMM shakes her head at her younger selfs strange passion.

LMM The natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply. I think mine is such a nature.

SCENE 4

NATE enters. 8

MAUDIE Nate!

MAUDIE puts down her book and jumps up.

NATE Come for a walk, Maudie?

They stroll across the stage, LMM trails behind them. Lights fade out over stage right as they rise over stage left, revealing furniture arranged to represent a one-room schoolhouse.

MAUDIE and NATE sit down at the edge of the stage, kicking their legs lazily. LMM wanders through the schoolhouse, touching imaginary walls.

LMM (Gesturing.) There were the initials cut into the porch! There was the old nail I used to hang my hat on ~ we girls each had our own particular nail. There, written above it by Nate, my name! Here, the bench Mollie and I shared ever since we were teeny wee things, where I pored over poetry when I should have been wrestling with fractions. There on the wall, the scribbled names of dozens of flirting couples... and the old hacked door.

MAUDIE Do you know when the Montreal Witness results are in?

NATE shakes his head.

LMM Other than Miss Gordon, there was no one else in Cavendish I could talk to about literature.

MAUDIE You'll probably beat me. I'll admit your essay is better than mine, though it is a bit flowery—

NATE Maud... 9

MAUDIE Yes?

NATE I heard Clemmie talking...

LMM She was precisely the style of girl I detested ~ she was crazy over Nate, but we talked of things she didn't understand. She wasn't to be trusted.

NATE And, well... which of your boy friends do you like best?

MAUDIE (With a laugh.) Well, which of your girl friends do you like best?

NATE looks at her as if deciding something, then reaches into his pocket. He thrusts a letter into her hands and hastily crosses to downstage right.

MAUDIE sits there looking surprised for a moment, then eagerly unfolds the letter.

MAUDIE If Nate says he likes anybody else best I'll hate him! (Reads silently.)

A spotlight appears on NATE. He recites the letter to the audience. MAUDIE"s expression changes as she realizes his letter isn 't lightheartedfun, but a serious declaration.

NATE (In deadly earnest, hands shoved in his pockets.) Well Maud, it must be done. Here goes. Of all my female friends the one whom I most admire... no, I'm growing reckless... the one whom I love — if the authorities allow that word in a schoolboy's vocabulary — is L.M. Montgomery, the girl after my own heart. Yes, Maudie. I've always liked you better than any other girl, and now.... I suppose you'll laugh and call me sentimental. Well, maybe I am. But I know how I feel. I expect you'll prove stubborn too.

MAUDIE lowers the letter; spotlight goes out over NATE, -who exits. 10

MAUDIE (Looking pained.) I don't care a bit for Nate that way — I really don't! I only just like him splendidly as a chuml I don't mean to take any notice of his nonsense.

Lights shrink to a spotlight over LMM. MAUDIE exits.

LMM At that moment I knew something alien had intruded into our comradeship, something which threatened to mar it forever... Yet I did feel a queer, foolish, triumphant little feeling about it. I'd often wondered if anyone would ever care for me that way, and someone really did.

SCENE 5

Lights rise fully. All the furniture has been covered and pushed back.

We hear sprightly, energetic music with the sounds of gulls and waves breaking.

MAUDIE runs breathlessly onstage, barefoot, hair streaming, and holding her boots.

MAUDIE Who cares for boys when there are shores and trees?

She puts down her boots, grabs LMM's hand, and pulls her downstage.

In time with the wave sounds, they stand at the edge of the stage and then shuffle backwards, as if playing tag with the tide. They play this game repeatedly as they talk.

LMM The bracing tang of salt air~

MAUDIE And shells as big as your fist! 11

LMM Eating dulse by the shipyard!

MAUDIE Bathing in the sea!

LMM Rambles in the woods!

MAUDIE Fishing in the brook!

LMM And ghost stories and apple orchards—

MAUDIE And flower gardens--

LMM And the homestead fields!

The light becomes the colours of a sunset.

Letting go of LMM's hand, MAUDIE reaches one foot off the edge of the stage, as if dipping a toe in the ocean. LMM breathes in deeply, drinking in the beauty around her.

LMM And the red glow of the setting sun on the sea...

A large wave is heard breaking. MAUDIE shrieks and holds up her hands as if she 'sjust been splashed in the face. She laughs, grabs her boots, and jaunts offstage, swinging them.

The wave sounds stop; the music softens. 12

LMM Everything around me held a kind of magic charm, emanating from my own fancy! I had, in my imagination, a passport to fairyland! I was happy, though I didn't know it.

The music changes to a long, sustained note. YOUNG ANNE's silhouette appears in the sunset light. She reaches out her hand to an unseen companion behind her.

YOUNG ANNE Come on, Diana!

YOUNG ANNE laughs a beautiful, silvery laugh.

LMM No! (The shadow looks at her.) You are not to come yet!

The music stops; YOUNG ANNE and the sunset disappear.

LMM Not yet.

SCENE 6

Light streams in from stage left as though filtering out of a lighted building at night. Offstage we hear girls' voices singing to cheerful concert music. LMM walks towards the light. She leans against the side of stage and closes her eyes, listening.

The girls' song ends. The crowd claps, then all begin singing "God Save the Queen. " LMM opens her eyes and smiles, lost in pleasant nostalgia.

LMM It was a different world then... The Victoria myth was in full flower. Every home had a picture of the queen. I thought her ugly — imagine, a great epoch with a dumpy, dowdy little woman as a symbol! I suppose poor Victoria hadn't any 13

chance to be bad if she wanted to be. And I do think she got tired of being so exceedingly proper all the time.

The singing ends. GRANDMA enters from stage left, followed byMAUDIE. MAUDIE is dressed in a white dress and white slippers, with a wreath of pink tissue roses in her hair and a wand in her hand. She waves to unseen people offstage.

MAUDIE Goodbye Lu! ByePensie! Bye Mollie! See you on Sunday! (GRANDMA takes the flower wreath off"MAUDIE's head and roughly straightens the girl's hair with her fingers.) Grandma, they encored me! They actually encored me!

NATE enters from stage left, holding a book. He tries to work up the courage to approach.

GRANDMA What frivolity. When I was a girl we'd never have made such a spectacle. But it seems that sense and decorum are not fashionable nowadays.

CLEMMIE enters behind NATE and sees him eyeing MAUDIE. She flounces over to MAUDIE.

CLEMMIE (With overdone sweetness.) Evening, Mrs. Macneill. Maud dear! You were just darling! (Throws her arms around MAUDIE ostentatiously.)

LMM Clemmie always could put on a good show when she felt like it.

NATE finally approaches.

NATE I thought you were splendid, Maudie. And look, I've got you a present to celebrate. (Hands her the book.)

MAUDIE IvanhoeX Oh, I've been dying to read it! 14

CLEMMIE (To GRANDMA, in a gossipy tone.) It's just absurd the way Maud and Nate go on, always passing notes to each other in school, walking round together at recess, and talking.

GRANDMA frowns. MAUDIE looks mortified. CLEMMIE exits, smiling deviously.

GRANDMA Come, Maud. It's time you were in bed. And Mr. Lockhart— (Takes the book and hands it back to him.) You'll desist in giving novels to my granddaughter in future.

MAUDIE (Coldly, because she is embarrassed.) I'll see you later, Nate.

Lights shrink to a spotlight on LMM.

LMM Why did Grandmother have to scorn anyone who did a thing she never did? Life with her meant the utter suppression of all individuality! The older I got, the more I resented it.

SCENE 7

Lights reveal the bedroom at stage right. MAUDIE sits at the desk, staring out the window as she composes a poem. LMM looks at her; her face softens.

LMM I cannot remember a time when I was not writing, or when I did not mean to be an author. I loved spinning stories, sitting in my room and shaping my fancies into verse... (With a laugh, LMM goes and sits on the bed.) I was always very particular about calling this room "my boudoir"! (Sighs.) One never hears about boudoirs any more. But I had mine and I dreamed many a bright dream there...

NATE knocks and enters at stage left. MAUDIE and LMM look up. 15

MAUDIE Nate! What are you doing here—

NATE (Pulls two books from his pockets or a satchel.) I've snuck in Ivanhoe for you, and look, I've got a copy of Rob Roy, too.

LMM'sface registers the unease that MAUDIE's hides.

MAUDIE (Feeling uncomfortable but not wanting to be mean.) Nate, that's sweet of you, but you really shouldn't have done that.

NATE (Ignoring this.) Have you had any luck with the Examiner?

MAUDIE Only more rejection slips. But I don't see that the stuff they do print is any better than mine! I'm determined I'll see my name there yet.

LMM (With a smile, to the audience.) My literary ambitions were as yet untainted by mercenary considerations.

NATE What are you working on now?

MAUDIE Um, just some verses.

NATE Will you read some to me?

MAUDIE (Pauses.) Alright. "In Lover's Lane." I know a place for loitering feet, Deep in the valley where the breeze Makes melody in lichened boughs, And murmurs low love-litanies. 16

And there my love and I may walk, And harken to the lapsing fall, Of unseen brooks and tender winds, And wooing birds that sweetly call— (Breaks off with a start.)

GRANDMA enters, sees NATE, and glares at MAUD. NATE looks as if to say something to GRANDMA, but she gives him a steely look.

NATE Uh, goodbye Maud.

NATE exits, tripping over himself in his haste. When he is gone, MAUD turns in her chair and stares at her feet defiantly.

GRANDMA You deceived me, Maud. You know your grandfather and I don't approve of you having company, and still you meet with that Baptist boy. And these — novels. (Picks up one of the books.) They are not fit for a young girl. You are a bad, wicked child.

MAUDIE wheels around and looks GRANDMA in the face.

MAUDIE (Seething.) I don't agree with you.

GRANDMA It isn't the point whether or not you agree with me. When I was your age I knew enough to respect my elders and to hold my tongue—

MAUDIE Well that was a long time ago, wasn't it!

GRANDMA looks aghast for a moment, but launches into her speech again.

GRANDMA You come from one of the founding families of this island--

MAUDIE I don't care! I'm the only girl in my class who has to come home for lunch— 17

GRANDMA What kind of child would turn up her nose at a hot meal?

MAUDIE Who has to wear baby pinafores, and boots in summer when everyone else is barefoot—

GRANDMA You are better than the common run!

MAUDIE Who can't cut my hair in bangs, when every other girl else has them! Who doesn't have birthday parties—

GRANDMA You will be respectable!

MAUDIE I would rather be spoiled!

They stare each other down.

GRANDMA Ungrateful, thankless child! Kneel down and ask for God's forgiveness.

MAUDIE No.

GRANDMA You will pray, Maud.

MAUDIE I will not!

Lights go out over MA UDIE and GRANDMA. A spotlight remains on LMM. 18

LMM Something inside me was outraged. To force a human soul to utter words of prayer and contrition when not in a fit state to do so ~ when full of bitterness and rebellion!

Lights rise again. MAUDIE is kneeling in prayer with GRANDMA standing over her.

MAUDIE (Sullenly.) Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless Father. God bless Grandmother. God bless Grandfather. God bless Aunt Annie. God bless Uncle John. God bless Nate. God bless Miss Gordon...

LMM Her brand of religion did not leave me with the joys of prayer. Only anger, humiliation and disgust.

Lights out.

SCENE 8

Lights rise on another day. MAUDIE is next to LMM on the bed, writing furiously in the journal.

GRANDMA enters, holding an open letter.

GRANDMA I've had a letter, Maud.

MAUDIE (Jumping up excitedly.) From Uncle John? Am I to go to Silver Bush?

GRANDMA No. 19

MAUDIE Aunt Emily?

GRANDMA From your father.

MAUDIE (Frozen.) Father!

GRANDMA Yes. You are to go out West at the end of the summer to live with your father and his new wife.

GRANDMA exits. MAUDIE stands there, speechless. LMM walks over to her and puts a hand on the girl's shoulder.

LMM This was the letter I'd been waiting fourteen years for.

Lights go out, GRANDMA exits.

SCENE 9

Lights rise; NATE is there. In a worn suitcase, MAUDIE is packing the journal and some of the books.

NATE Will you like it there, do you think, in Sas-kat-chewan?

MAUDIE I think I'll enjoy the travelling part, but I really don't know if I'll like the prairie. Grandma says it'd swallow up the island a hundred times over, it's so big! And I'll have a new mother—

NATE (Handing her a book.) Don't forget Pickwick. 20

MAUDIE (Putting it in the suitcase.) Thanks. Anyway, Stepmother seems nice from her letters and I mean to love her if I can, just as if she were really my mother.

NATE (Impatient to get to his point.) Maud, you know I'll be going to Acadia College in September.

MAUDIE (Annoyed that he's not listening.) Yes, it's wonderful for you Nate, everyone is so proud.

NATE And... we'll write to each other?

LMM and MA UDIE exchange a glance.

MAUDIE Of course I'll write to you ~ and to Grandma and Mollie and Pensie and Lu and everyone. And I'll expect long newsy letters from all of you. (He looks suddenly sullen; she closes the suitcase.) Well... I'm afraid I have to say goodbye, Nate.

She quickly holds out her hand to him; he shakes it rather sulkily. NATE turns and exits the way he came, hands in his pockets. They watch him leave.

MAUDIE (To LMM.) Nate is so nice when he is sensible and so horrid when he isn't!

LMM I was sorry to say goodbye to him... but not as sorry as I would have been if he hadn't spoiled things by fancying himself in love with me.

Lights fade out over Maud's bedroom.

SCENE 10

Bustling music begins. 21

Lights reveal a train car bench at centre stage. GRANDMA, MAUDIE and LMM enter. MAUDIE holds the suitcase and wears a travelling cloak. GRANDMA and MAUDIE exchange a stiff goodbye. LMM and MAUDIE walk over and sit on the bench; MAUDIE sets down the suitcase beside her.

LMM watches MAUDIE, who leans out an imaginary window.

LMM I'd never been far afield. A visit with my cousins once or twice a year, or to Charlottetown, twenty-five miles away, were my only excursions beyond my little world. A trip to town was a very rare treat — once in three years! — and held as much novelty and delight as a trip to Europe would now.

MAUDIE Town is a wonderful place, everyone is dressed up! And you can have all the nuts and candies and oranges you want, and look at all the beautiful things in the shop windows--

MALE VOICE All aboard!

MAUDIE opens the suitcase, takes out the journal, and settles into her seat. The light over GRANDMA goes out; she exits.

The music grows rhythmic and full of energy, initially infused with Celtic instruments. Light and sound effects give the illusion of a train moving forward. With each new place mentioned, the effects give the impression of going through tunnels, of days and nights passing.

MAUDIE continues to look "outside," turning back excitedly to write down what she sees. LMM moves between looking at us and smiling at MAUDIE.

LMM The Western railway had just been built. And in ten days it would bring me to Father. It was my first time off the island. 22

MAUDIE We're in New Brunswick! We're passing through rough country... There is nothing but steep, wooded hills... Now and then we pass a little clearing where a log cabin stands with a cluster of ragged children around it.

LMM Then through Quebec, the plains of Abraham, the Montmorency Falls...

MAUDIE We're crossing the St. Lawrence River!

LMM The view from the suspension bridge was magnificent. The thronged streets were brilliantly lit with electricity.

MAUDIE Montreal is a fine city but I'm sure I wouldn't like to live here.

LMM The Parliament buildings in Ottawa...

MAUDIE Ontario is a beautiful place - I'm delighted with Toronto... This must be "cold Superior's rock-bound shore"!

LMM An expanse of tossing water, as far as the eye could reach.

The music changes, we begin to hear some Cree instruments mixed in.

MAUDIE Fort William is a nice place. The mountain scenery is very beautiful, but it is pretty rough.

LMM The streets were full of unsightly stumps among which promenaded numerous pigs! 23

MAUDIE Now we're whirling over the prairies of Manitoba. They are beautiful but monotonous. I don't admire Winnipeg.

LMM It looked as if someone threw a big handful of streets and houses down and forgot to sort them out afterwards.

MAUDIE But no doubt the centre of the city is better.

LMM Fields covered in sunflowers, flying through the day and night.. (The train slows.) Regina... Duck Lake...

MALE VOICE Prince Albert!

MAUDIE puts the journal in the suitcase. The sound/light effects stop. MAUDIE picks up the suitcase; they stand and walk downstage.

MAUDIE Three thousand miles from home.

Feeling vulnerable and alone, MAUDIE reaches for LMM'S hand.

They turn to their right. The music stops.

SCENE 11

Lights reveal a man sitting in an armchair at stage right, bent over a book. He looks up. It is FATHER. His eyes are twinkling.

FATHER The time has come, the walrus said. 24

MAUDIE (Hesitates.) To... talk of many things.

FATHER Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax.

MAUDIE Of cabbages and kings!

He stands, his face breaking into a gentle smile. She runs into his arms, bursting into tears and dropping the suitcase. He swings her around in a bear hug, chuckling.

FATHER Maudie — my darling girl!

MAUDIE Father!

LMM (Stays where she is.) I loved him with all my heart, better than anyone else in the whole world.

He releases her. She stands before him, drying her eyes.

FATHER Just look at you. Now let me see, how long has it been...

LMM (With just a hint of coldness.) I hadn't seen him in five years.

FATHER Why, you're not a child any more, are you. You're... how old?

MAUDIE Fifteen, Father.

FATHER Fifteen years old. Fancy. 25

Dim lights reveal a bed in the shadows of stage right. A woman 'sform, that of STEPMOTHER, is visible under the covers, but her face is obscured.

STEPMOTHER (Hypochondriacally.) Hugh! I need you... my head...

Lights go out over STEPMOTHER's bed.

FATHER looks like he's been reminded of something he'd momentarily forgotten.

FATHER Come, Maudie. Come and meet your stepmother.

MAUDIEpicks up the suitcase; FATHER leads her offstage.

LMM He was just like a father out of a story, he was so handsome. His eyes shone with love when he looked at me. I never saw anyone look at me with such eyes, before or since...

MAUDIE returns without the suitcase, alone.

MAUDIE Stepmother's only twelve years older than me... she's... I don't think she likes me very much.

LMM looks towards stage right, where the bed was, but then impulsively takes MAUDIE's hands.

LMM Let's just forget her!

Lights out. 26

SCENE 12

Bustling music plays, with twangy, Western sounds.

Lights rise on a makeshift classroom at centre stage. There is a chalkboard off to one side and, in place of desks, a rough, tree-hewn bench. The only solid-looking furniture is a teacher's desk with drawers.

LMM and MA UDIE stand beside MR. MUSTARD, who holds a grammar book.

Music ends.

MUSTARD (ToMAUDIE, officiously.) Welcome to Prince Albert High School. I am Mr. Mustard, your teacher. (To the class.) We have a new scholar with us today, class.

WILL enters, late for class.

MUSTARD Miss Lucy Montgomery—

MAUDIE It's Maud, actually—

MUSTARD From Cavendish, P. E. Island. Please take your seat.

LMM and MAUDIE sit on the bench. WILL darts over and squeezes himself between them.

MUSTARD (To the class.) Let me begin by reminding you that I object most strongly to the use of slang in the classroom, and will not be lenient with those who use it here. (No longer paying attention to his students, apostrophizing to an absent crowd.) The purity of English undefiled is one of the hallmarks of any civilized country... 27

MUSTARD starts writing on the chalkboard, occasionally mumbling bits of grammar to himself.

WILL looks atMAUDIE out of the corner of his eye for a few seconds. Then he reaches behind her and taps her on her far shoulder. Confused, she turns to look, then she turns back and sees him smiling at her mischievously.

WILL It's gonna be hard to pay attention to old Mustard with such a beautiful head of hair beside me.

MA UD laughs; LMM smiles.

WILL Lucy was it?

MAUDIE (Wrinkling her nose.) No! Lucy's my grandmother. I'm Maud.

WILL I'm Willy ~ uh, Will Pritchard. So, how are you liking it here?

MAUDIE The countryside around here is strange — it's so flat! And this school, it's different from the one I'm used to. It has so many rooms...

WILL Well, it used to be a hotel. Now it's a school and a ballroom and the Town Council and the Freemasons' Lodge. And 'round back is the jail. When the Mounties arrest a drunk, see, they lock him up in one of the cells behind here. (He gestures behind them.)

They put their ears to an imaginary wall, listening for criminals.

MUSTARD Exclamatory constructions may be in the indicative or imperative mood!

They jump, then snicker. MUSTARD'S voice returns to a murmur. 28

WILL Don't mind him. Sometimes he takes out that big rawhide whip in his desk and makes a show with it, but most of the time we do as we please. Anyway, I got stuck in one of those cells once ~ I was in there an hour before someone came and let me out! (MAUDIEgiggles.) Where did Mustard say you come from? An island?

MAUDIE "An island," indeed! It's the only island there is. (She says this proudly, but is instantly reminded of her homesickness.) I live with my father now... and my stepfamily.

WILL Betcha miss your old home though? (MAUDIE nods, with a lump in her throat. WILL wonders what to do to make her feel better. He decides on being a goof, and nudges her side with his elbow.) Well, I'll show you the ropes 'round here and make a Westerner of you before you know it! You can tell all your friends 'bout wearing buffalo hides and roping steers! (She laughs, so he goes on.) One time, my Pa and I, we was up by Little Red River, tracking our bull that got loose, see, only it got angry and it turned on me, but I got away by the skin of my teeth—

MUSTARD jerks up from the board. They quickly assume innocent expressions, but he strides over to them.

MUSTARD Slang! Slang, Mr. Pritchard! "By the skin of my teeth" is a vulgar, common phrase.

MAUDIE No it isn't.

MUSTARD looks at her, surprised.

MUSTARD What?

MAUDIE "By the skin of my teeth." (MAUDIE hesitates, but no one else speaks, so she goes on.) It isn't slang. It's in the Bible. 29

MUSTARD stiffens. He looks as if he's going to yell.

MUSTARD Take your lunch now, class.

WILL, MAUDIE andLMM rise and start to leave.

MUSTARD Miss Montgomery. My desk, please.

MA UDIE and LMM stop. WILL looks at MA UDIE apprehensively, but she shrugs. He exits, still looking back at her.

MUSTARD Girls should not speak out of turn. I must impress upon you the folly of contradicting one's elders. (Opens a drawer of his desk.) It is my duty. (Reaches for the whip in the drawer, but looks up at MAUDIE's face. Seeing her wide, innocent eyes, a flicker of softness passes over his face.) I... er... (He shuts the drawer.) Consider this a warning. (MAUDIE doesn't know whether she's meant to go or stay.) Run along.

MAUDIE walks away from the schoolroom, looking back rather confusedly. LMM follows her. Lights go out over MUSTARD, who exits.

SCENE 13

Lights reveal WILL, sitting on a log at stage left, waiting for her. He jumps up.

WILL Did he whip ya? (MAUDIE shakes her head.) He gives me the strap 'bout once a week. I'm used to it.

MAUDIE (Gloomily.) Oh.

Pause. 30

WILL So, what's it like? Your island.

MAUDIE (Fearing she's being teased.) You ~ you really want to know?

WILL 'Course.

She sits on the log, he does the same.

MAUDIE Well... (She turns to him.) It's the loveliest place in the world. There's red earth and meadows full of purple lupins. There are brooks, and woods ~ apple and cherry and maple and spruce — with shadowy nooks and sunlight streaming through the branches. From my room, in our farmhouse, I can smell clover on the wind, and listen to the trees whisper in the orchard. And wherever you go, you hear the sea.

WILL I never seen the sea!

MAUDIE When I was eight, a great ship sank off Cavendish Beach. The crew came to stay in town — the captain slept at our house! He'd come all the way from Norway, and he had such tales to tell. I'd like to see the world myself some day... But I shall never forget the sight of that poor ship, fighting to stay afloat on the cruel waves.

WILL gives a little laugh.

MAUDIE What?

WILL Where'd you learn to ~ to tell a story like that?

MAUDIE I've always known, I suppose. (Proudly.) There've been lots of storytellers in my family, the Montgomerys and the Macneills too! My great-great-grandfather's cousin was a poet in Scotland — like Robbie Burns! 31

WILL Robbie Bums, eh? Huh...

WILL stands suddenly, remembering the time.

WILL I gotta get to chores or Pa'll have my hide! See ya, Maud.

MAUDIE (Standing.) Bye!

WILL runs offstage.

SCENE 14

Lights go out over the log as they rise on the Montgomery parlour at stage right.

LMM and MAUDIE stroll over to where FATHER sits in his armchair, perusing a newspaper. MAUDIE is skipping around, full of energy.

MAUDIE (Gleefully, clasping LMM's hand.) Willy is awfully nice ~ the nicest boy I ever met.

LMM (Puts a hand fondly on MAUDIE's shoulder, with a hint ofwistfulness.) He was my style. We were kindred spirits.

They reach FATHER.

FATHER Look what I have here, Maudie.

He hands MAUDIE the newspaper. 32

MAUDIE The Charlottetown Patriot? Why...

Realization dawns on her, and she flips to the poetry section excitedly.

MAUDIE My verses! "The Legend of Cape Leforce"! It's my poem!

FATHER (Laughing.) Grandpa Montgomery sent it over.

He scoops her up in a hug.

LMM The moment a writer sees her first brain-child in black type is never to be forgotten. It's the same awe and delight a mother has when she looks for the first time on her firstborn.

MAUDIE There are... (Counts.) Two — three printer's errors... but it's my poem, my poem in a real newspaper!

LMM It was my first sweet taste of success and of course it intoxicated me. I think it was the proudest day of my life.

STEPMOTHER'S VOICE (From offstage right.) Hugh... Tell Maud that Kate is ready for her bath...

LMM (Looking resentfully towards stage right.) She acted as if my success were a personal insult to her, and never mentioned it to me at all.

FATHER Yes, Mary! Well Maudie — Maud I should say. Mary thinks it a childish nickname, and I suppose she's right. You'd better run along now.

MAUDIE Yes, Father. 33

She starts to exit stage right, still clutching the paper in a daze. FATHER stops her.

FATHER Maudie. I myself find her... difficult, sometimes. But she is my wife. You'll... put up with some things ~ for my sake? (The sparkle goes out of MAUDIE's eyes for a second.) My own little writer?

He looks desperate, like he needs everything to be all right. She sees this.

MAUDIE (Brightens instantly and kisses him on the cheek.) Of course, Father.

MAUDIE exits. FATHER sits again.

LMM (Circles him.) My father was once a young sea captain. He saw places I've never seen — far-off ports in South America, the West Indies, England! A drifter. But he always struggled on land. First he lost his business, then he lost Mother... and then the West called him away. There would be a place for him there, he said. The land of opportunity for men of courage and vision... He died a poor man.

They both look towards stage right.

I think she always resented him for that.

Lights out.

SCENE 15

Flickering lights rise over stage left, and the sounds of a rainstorm are heard. MAUDIE and WILL enter, laughing. They are carrying picnic things and sheltering under a cloak. They kneel.

LMM sits at the desk at stage right, remembering. The journal is back on the windowsill. 34

MAUDIE I thought Mustard would never leave!

WILL Fancy him being an old school chum of your stepma's!

MAUDIE (Rolling her eyes.) Stepmother pretended to be asleep as soon as she heard his voice in the hall. I had to make her excuses and entertain him for a whole hour ~ leaving didn't seem to occur to him! And he is such a bore... If he calls again I'll set the clocks ahead and see if that tricks him into going.

WILL (In a pompous voice.) Miss Maud, do tell me your thoughts on the unadulterated beauty of the English language... (They double over in laughter, then a peal of thunder makes MAUDIE jump. He laughs at her.) You ain't used to prairie storms!

MAUDIE (Shaken.) No, I'm not! They're much milder back home. (They sit companionably for a moment, listening to the rain.) Will, when I first came here I thought of Cavendish every moment. Everything seemed wild and strange. I find it so lovely here now... the yellow grasses and the big skies, all rose and gold and crimson. It is wild, but — it's beautiful too... There's witchery in your western twilights.

Pause.

WILL Maud?

MAUDIE Mmm?

WILL I was thinking that tomorrow, after church, if it's fine we could take some buckets and go berrying up by the Indian camp — there should be saskatoons out now, and it's awful pretty by the riverbank. What do you think? 35

MAUDIE blushes and nods.

WILL And say Maud, I been thinking ~ we should write each other a "ten year letter"!

MAUDIE A what?

WILL A letter to our future selves. We have to promise not to open them 'til ten years have passed.

MAUDIE (Dreamily.) Ten years is a long time. I wonder where we'll be when we read them.

WILL (Softly.) Perhaps we'll be reading them together. (MA UDIE laughs, purposefully keeping the mood light, but WILL is in earnest.) Here. (He reaches down behind them, picks up a cluster ofwildflowers, and pins it to her dress.) Daisies and sweet clover.

LMM Innocence and beauty...

MAUDIE locks eyes with WILL for a moment, but breaks the silence with a friendly smile.

MAUDIE Well, should we get back?

Lights fade out over the children, who exit. The sound effects stop.

LMM No girl ever forgets that first thrill. I stepped over the threshold of young ladyhood in that moment... How far away those dear old days seem now! Half childhood, half girlhood. How like a dream it all seems... 36

SCENE 16

Lights rise on two armchairs in firelight at stage right. FATHER sits in the one furthest from the desk, cleaning a pipe. MAUDIE stands in front of the other, holding a newspaper.

LMM walks over and perches on the arm of MAUDIE's chair.

MAUDIE (Reading to FATHER with feeling, making dramatic gestures with her arms.) And on this lonely wind-swept cape Right where the murdered captain fell, A hasty grave the sailors made, And winds and surges rang his knell. Forgotten in his lonely grave He slept, while years unnumbered fled, And dark traditions of the spot Enwrapped it with unfading dread. (Looks expectantly at FATHER.)

FATHER (Pause, while he thinks of the right word.) Chilling.

MAUDIE Grandpa Macneill told me the tale. He said his father actually saw the grave when he was a boy!

FATHER There were some awful savage men in those wild old days.

MAUDIE Father, do you remember when I wrote my first poem?

FATHER Now let me see. You must have been about...

MAUDIE Nine. 37

LMM Poetry was my first love, my first ambition. I never had any real talent for it though.

MAUDIE (Furrows her brow, recites from memory.) "Now autumn comes, laden with peach and pear. The sportsman's horn is heard throughout the land. And the poor partridge, fluttering,fall s dead."

FA THER and MA UDIE look at each other, then laugh.

FATHER You've improved a bit since then, I think!

MAUDIE It was blank verse!

FATHER (Lighting his pipe.) Very blank.

FATHER smokes his pipe, while MAUDIE gazes adoringly at him.

LMM How I loved being alone with Father. We could be as jolly and chummy as we liked, with no one to cast black looks and sneers at us. (Looks towards offstage right, thinking resentfully of STEPMOTHER.)

FATHER (Thoughtfully.) You know Maud, that young Pritchard boy seems to worship the ground you tread on.

MAUDIE (Embarrassed, but pleased.) It won't come to anything... Will and I are just good friends.

A small smile escapes her.

A knock on the door is heard. FATHER gets up. MAUDIE is still smiling slyly to herself. This makes LMM smile fondly at her. 38

LMM It's a nice feeling, being liked.

FATHER exits.

FATHER (OFFSTAGE) John! What a nice surprise, come in!

FATHER returns with MUSTARD.

FATHER How are you? I'll just tell Mary that you're here.

MUSTARD Actually, Hugh, it's -- um — it's Miss Maud that I've come to see.

FATHER Ah. Well, I'll... let you be, then.

FATHER exits, shooting an eyebrows-raised look of mirth at MAUDIE as he goes.

MUSTARD sits down next to MAUDIE. He shifts uneasily, opening and closing his mouth several times.

MUSTARD (Bursts out, finally.) Miss Montgomery? May I have a word? (MAUDIE looks at him with trepidation. He gives a ghastly sort of smile, and stammers.) I didn't plan on — speaking to you ~ so soon ~ perhaps this isn't the right time, but... Do you think, Miss Montgomery, that our friendship will ever develop into anything else?

MAUDIE Um... I don't see what else it can develop into, Mr. Mustard.

He reaches out a hand and touches her cheek. She recoils. Horrible pause as they both try to think of what to say. 39

MUSTARD Why ~ er ~ I thought that my calling at your father's house would have... my intentions towards you... it's just as you think.

MAUDIE Mr. Mustard-

MUSTARD I hope you aren't ~ offended... I do not wish any misunderstanding.

MAUDIE Certainly not, Mr. Mustard. I shall always be your friend but nothing more. I'm very sorry this has happened. I hope you won't think badly of me because of it.

He makes an awkward little bow, pauses, then leaves.

LMM stands, furious.

LMM What possessed the man? I was a chit of sixteen, and never half decent to him! All I'd done was make fun of him to his very face, and he knew it! I resented his clumsy attentions bitterly ~ I felt self-conscious and positively ashamed. My first proposal, and he ruined it... But I let everyone think I was amused.

SCENE 17

Lights shrink to a spotlight over LMM, who goes and sits on the edge of the stage, lost in thought.

Lights rise on the Montgomery parlour again, where WILL is laughing uproariously in front of a blushing MA UDIE.

MAUDIE Shh... Will... my stepmother will hear! 40

WILL Yes yes, she must get her beauty sleep! So... you might say that Mustard - actually ~ mustered!

MAUDIE swats him on the shoulder for the pun, with an expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace.

MAUDIE The whole town is talking about it! Even Father can't ask me to pass him the mustard at the table without grinning! I wish I could just — scream. But I suppose that would make too much of a sensation in the neighbourhood.

WILL (Shuts up for a second but can't leave it alone. Mimics in a silly voice.) It's my dearest wish, Miss Maud, for us to sit by the fire and study grammar together always--

After laughing so hard they aren 't even making noise, they end off by sighing and holding their stomachs.

MAUDIE It's lovely having you here Will. Mrs. Montgomery — I mean, Stepmother — she doesn't like me having friends over.

WILL (Gently, guessing the answer.) Are you happy here, Maud?

MAUDIE I... I can't seem to please her, no matter what I do. She keeps the pantry locked tight, for fear, I suppose, that I might help myself to a bite to eat — but I know she goes through my things when I'm at school! (Pause.) She hates it when I wear my hair up. She says I'm too young. But her real reason is that she's afraid a grown­ up looking stepdaughter will make her seem older ~ I'm sure of it. The only hours I live in this house are when she is out of it. And I'll say so, even if she is expecting. (Being able to express her feelings has lifted a weight from MAUDIE. She turns to WILL, full of gratitude.) Will, I've never met anyone I could confide in as I can in you! Do you... do you believe in twin spirits?

He puts his arm around her. She rests her head on his shoulder. 41

LMMpulls her legs under her and turns towards them, overcome by deep emotion.

Lights fade out overMAUDIE and WILL.

LMM Show me two children, young and innocent... I'll return to the time I saw magic at every turn... with no thought of marriage or the future!

LMM holds her left hand out in front of her, looking at the engagement ring on her ring finger. In a sudden panic, she tries to pull off the ring . Standing, she gets it off. She strides over to the desk, opens it, throws the ring inside, and closes it.

LMM stands there, thinking over what she has just done, holding her left hand to herself possessively. Slowly, she lowers her hands.

LMM I can't stop time. The Angel of Years moves on.

SCENE 18

We hear slow, prolonged notes of music — one, then another, then another.

Dim lights reveal STEPMOTHER in her bed again at stage right, face still obscured. We hear STEPMOTHER groaning in childbirth, then a baby's cry.

Lights revealMAUDIE sitting in a chair and rocking a cradle at centre stage. LMM watches the scene.

MAUDIE Today a son and heir was born to the house of Montgomery.

LMM Father was pleased as punch over having a boy. 42

STEPMOTHER Maud... Maud! Come here...

Coughing, MAUDIE gets up to attend to her stepmother.

Lights out.

SCENE 19

Lights rise. The bed and the cradle are out of sight. MAUDIE is kneeling on the floor and folding laundry, clearly exhausted.

MAUDIE I can plainly see that Stepmother intends me to stay home and do the work from now on. I came out here in the hope of going to a good school, and instead I must look after her children— (Breaks into a coughing fit.)

LMM (Walking over to MAUDIE.) I hadn't been to school in two months.

FATHER enters, sees MAUDIE on the floor, coughing among the laundry. He cannot bring himself to do anything.

LMM (Quietly.) I didn't say a word. I would have put up with anything to save him trouble.

The music shifts to one sustained note.

YOUNG ANNE's silhouette appears, and is joined by those of MATTHEW andMARILLA, played by MUSTARD and GRANDMA. The old man takes YOUNG ANNE's hand, and the old woman puts a hand on her shoulder — the picture of familial love.

LMM looks at the shadows for a moment, then turns to FATHER. 43

LMM I wanted, so badly, to be your daughter! To live at last without sneers and criticisms ~ with someone who wanted me! But she'd worked me like a slave and I'd gone beyond my strength.

The shadow people disappear; the music softens. MAUDIEputs the pile of laundry out of sight, and FATHER takes a letter from his jacket pocket.

Taking each other's hands, MAUDIE and LMM walk over to stand before FATHER.

FATHER (With a tremble in his voice.) I had a letter back from your grandmother last night, Maudie. It's all arranged. I... I think it's for the best.

MAUDIE stares at him for a moment, then nods resignedly. He looks as if he wants to hug her, but exits. MAUDIE's face crumples and she buries her face on LMM's shoulder.

Lights out.

SCENE 20

The music is now the haunting, wistful melody. Lights reveal LMM looking out the window by the desk, deep in thought.

A few moments later, lights reveal the railway station at centre stage. MAUDIE is there with FATHER, MUSTARD and WILL, the suitcase at her feet.

LMM (Remembering.) It was clear and cool among the sweet grasses and leaves, with the birds singing in the poplars. I felt the charm of that north land, felt that I could have loved it and been contented there... if Stepmother had been a different woman.

MUSTARD, awkward as ever, shakes MAUDIE's hand and mumbles something, then exits. 44

WILL quietly approaches MA UDIE.

WILL Goodbye, Maud. I hope you'll be happy... Don't forget me.

MAUDIE I could never—

WILL Goodbye.

WILL reaches for her hand, leaving a folded note in it, then steps back to let MAUDIE say goodbye to FATHER.

LMM (AsMAUDIE hugs FATHER, picks up her suitcase, walks to the bench, and sits down.) I won't forget those ten minutes if I live to be a hundred. I felt as if I were in a dream. As Will and Father's faces passed out of sight, I realized I was really going home.

The lights fade over FATHER and WILL, who exit.

LMM I never saw them again...

MAUDIE unfolds the note and reads it. Her eyes well up.

LMM Will said he loved me and always would.

SCENE 21

The rhythmic music plays again, this time infused with Cree instruments at first, then Celtic sounds as they draw near the island.

LMM Flying along the rails, I felt forty different ways at once. 45

MAUDIE My heart breaks to leave—

LMM Yet I ached for home. Oh, it did me good to see the spruces again!

MAUDIE Here I am in sight of the island!

They both stand and walk to downstage centre.

The music softens.

MAUDIE (Looking around.) Charlottetown used to seem so much bigger...

GRANDMA enters. She primly allows MAUDIE to kiss her on the cheek, and exits with the suitcase.

LMM They hardly knew me at first, they thought I had changed so much.

MAUDIE It seems at once so strange and yet so natural to be in the old school again.

LMM Everyone looked older, and there were so many familiar faces missing.

NATE walks across the stage, hunched over a book, with a giggling CLEMMIE clutching at his arm.

CLEMMIE (Sings at MAUDIE.) Miss Pridey, Miss Pridey, you may have button boots, but you are living on charity! (Laughs cruelly.)

MAUDIE Nate has grown a lot taller. He looks thin and scrawny. Clemmie has just got more Clemmyish, if that is possible. 46

LMM It's a lonely sort of feeling, when you feel you belong to past days and have no business in the present at all.

MAUDIE (Looks towards stage left.) They are rebuilding the Cavendish schoolhouse. It will never be "our old school" again.

LMM What memories haunted that poor little school...

MAUDIE Miss Gordon came by this evening to say goodbye. She is moving to Oregon. I wonder if I shall ever have another teacher like her?

LMM I feared we would never all be together again...

MAUDIE I can't quite give up hope that I may get some more education, though my grandparents are bitterly against it.

The music speeds up, indicating confusion and passage of time.

MAUD appears under a spotlight at stage left, on stage for the first time. She and MAUDIE look at each other, and freeze.

LMM Some of us can recall the exact time when we reached certain milestones on life's road. The wonderful hour when we passed from childhood to girlhood. The enchanted, beautiful hour — or perhaps the shattering and horrible one — when girlhood was suddenly womanhood.

They unfreeze; MA UD walks over to MA UDIE.

As the other two speak, MAUD takes off MAUDIE's pinafore and dresses her in a cream challie dress. She puts the old clothes out of sight, then pins pansies in MAUDIE"s hair. 47

MAUDIE Grandfather has given in at last! I am to try for teacher's college in Charlottetown!

LMM I wanted desperately to make a living for myself, and teaching seemed the only thing possible.

POSTMAN (played by MUSTARD) walks across the stage, leaving MAUDIE with a letter, which she hurriedly opens.

MAUDIE I am the happiest girl on the island! The pass list came out today and I placed fifth!

LMM Out of two hundred and sixty-four. Though if I hadn't made that silly mistake in arithmetic, I likely would have led.

MAUDIE School life in Cavendish is over for me, but not for others. Prayer meetings will go on, girls will walk in the country lanes, go driving with the boys, sit in the back seats and laugh...

LMM But I was going far away, among new faces and strange ways of life. It made me blue to think about it.

The music shifts. MAUDIE freezes, and MAUD, having finished with MAUDIE"s costume change, walks to the other side of LMM. The three of them now stand in a row facing the audience, with LMM in the middle.

MAUD I love teacher's college — it is simply delightful! I've made up my mind to do the two years of work in one year. It may kill me but I am determined... I wonder if I shall ever do anything worthwhile in the way of writing? It is still my dearest ambition.

LMM I plodded on, sending away stories and poems, envelope after envelope... 48

MAUD Though I hardly sleep with all these dreadful exams... they make it seem as though nothing else in life matters.

POSTMAN walks across the stage again, leaving MAUD with a letter, which she opens.

MAUD (Gleefully.) Dear Miss Montgomery, we are pleased to accept your story for publication, and we are able to offer you a payment of~

LMM Fifty cents worth of... flower seeds.

MAUDIE unfreezes.

MAUDIE It doesn't seem possible that the year is through! Today we had Commencement in the Opera house. (Touching her dress.) I wore my cream challie with a bunch of pansies, and got five firsts and three seconds—

MAUD And I led my class in English!

MAUDIE Then we sang "God Save the Queen" and it was over.

MAUD (With a disbelieving laugh.) And now here I am, with a teacher's license to my name! (Rather bitterly.) I have to apply for teaching posts by mail, as Grandfather has forbidden me to drive to any interviews.

MAUD and MAUDIE freeze; LMM steps through them.

LMM There came to me the sudden chill realization that I was "grown up," and the knowledge was not half so sweet as I had once dreamed it would be. 49

MAUDIE exits stage left, looking back with a smile full of hope. LMM watches her until she is out of sight.

LMM I faced an unknown future. What my girl-self once thought of as the bright, beautiful future. (Looks over at MA UD.) I was so sure then that it would be beautiful!

Lights go out.

SCENE 22

The music changes to long, sustained notes.

We see the silhouettes of GROWN-UP ANNE, holding a suitcase, and MARILLA (played by GRANDMA).

MARILLA Oh Anne, you've grown up now and you're going away. You look so tall and stylish and so — different altogether ~ as if you didn't belong here anymore.

GROWN-UP ANNE Marilla! It won't make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change. I shall always be your little Anne who loves you!

GROWN-UP ANNE throws her arms around MARILLA. The shadows and the music fade out.

SCENE 23

Lights rise over two armchairs at centre stage, on which lies unfinished knitting or embroidery. GRANDMA and MAUD enter and take off their shawls.

LMM is at the desk, remembering the scene. 50

GRANDMA I'm glad you've given up the idea of teaching school another year. There's plenty for you to do here helping your grandfather and me at the post office.

LMM They thought I should have had my fill of independence, that I should come home and accept a proposal from some farmer or other...

GRANDMA and MAUD sit and begin to knit/sew.

GRANDMA Besides, what kind of a man would you meet way out in Bideford? It's much better for you here.

LMM shoots a look at the audience, as if to say "See? "

MAUD No, I won't be teaching again. (GRANDMA nods approvingly.) I am going to study literature at a university.

GRANDMA (Looks upfront her work in disbelief.) What sensible woman needs to fill her head with Latin and Greek and such nonsense, when she should be staying at home to be a credit to her family? You'd ruin your chances and then no one would have you! Frivolous girl.

MAUD But Grandma, they've been admitting women for almost ten years at Dalhousie! If people out here would realize that things are changing-

GRANDMA I see you fancy yourself above "people out here"! You think the island men are unworthy of you I suppose? (MAUD says nothing.) I won't have a granddaughter of mine putting on these snobbish intellectual airs.

MAUD (Forcing herself to remain calm.) I am almost twenty-one years old. And I have the money to go. I have my year's salary from the Bideford school, and one of my 51

professors from Charlottetown has put me in touch with a Dr. Archibald MacMechan—

GRANDMA You'd squander a year's salary on a selfish whim!

MAUD Who is an eminent scholar and writer, and he has agreed to design an English course for me that will give me more classical training.

GRANDMA Classical training, my eye! Why on God's good earth do you need--

MAUD I've a stack of rejection letters but no more publications. I can only conclude that I need more education.

MAUD returns to her needle, leaving GRANDMA to gape uncomprehendingly at her.

GRANDMA I don't know how you can continue to write those lies — or who will ever pay you for them!

GRANDMA throws down her knitting/sewing and exits in a huff. LMM walks over from the desk to stand behind MAUD's chair.

LMM (In MAUD's ear, imitating GRANDMA.) Rank folly and waste of time...

MAUD I've heard those words from the first day I picked up pen and paper.

SCENE 24

Light changes to a spotlight over MAUD. She stands and addresses the audience. 52

MAUD Halifax Herald, 1896. "A Girl's Place at Dalhousie College." By Maud Montgomery. The time is past when female education meant a smattering of foreign languages, when girls were trained to warble pretty little songs and instructed in the mysteries of embroidery. When, if a woman dared make a stand against popular prejudice, she was sneered at as a "blue-stocking." When, if she could not or would not marry, she lived a life of meek dependence on some relative, or of drudgery in one of the few and underpaid occupations open to her. Today, this is all changing. A girl is no longer shut out from knowledge simply because she is a girl! Now, she can compete with her brothers! If she marries, her husband will find in his wife an increased capacity for assistance and sympathy, and her children can look up to their mother for wise guidance! If she does not marry, her life is still full and happy and useful! She has something to do and can do it well, and the world is better off because of her!

LMM joins MAUD in the spotlight. She puts a comforting hand on MAUD's shoulder.

LMM One year of university was all I was to have. I'd hoped that my grades and the money I'd finally started to make from writing would change their minds. But Grandfather refused to pay for me to stay.

Lights out. Bustling, confused music plays.

Lights rise over a schoolroom at centre stage, with a chalkboard in the middle and desks in front of it, facing upstage. MAUD is writing "Miss Montgomery" on the chalkboard, and SCHOOLBOY and SCHOOLGIRL are sitting in the desks.

Music softens.

LMM enters and addresses the audience.

LMM (To the audience.) Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make country schoolmarms. 53

SCHOOLBOY

(Raising his hand.) Miss!

MAUD turns to look.

Lights out. Music grows louder.

End of Act One 54

Act Two

SCENE 1

The haunting, beautiful music plays.

We see LMM at her desk in 1911, lost in thought, holding a copy of Aims of Avonlea.

As she speaks, the silhouette of YOUNG ANNE appears.

LMM (Reciting.) "Something had changed forever. The page of girlhood had been turned, as if by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and its gladness."

The silhouette of GROWN-UP ANNE (played by MAUD) appears beside that of YOUNG ANNE. YOUNG ANNE exits, and GROWN-UP ANNE takes her place.

LMM looks over at the shadow of the new Anne.

Lights out. Music ends.

SCENE 2

Dark stage.

We hear voices singing the Richardson version of the Canadian anthem.

ENSEMBLE O Canada! Our fathers' land of old, Thy brow is crown'd with leaves of red and gold. Beneath the shade of the Holy Cross, Thy children own their birth, No stains thy glorious annals gloss, Since valour shield thy hearth. Almighty God! On thee we call, 55

Defend our rights, forfend this nation's thrall, Defend our rights, forfend this nation's thrall!

Lights rise over MAUD in the Bedeque schoolhouse, wiping the board. LMM sits on top of one of the desks. On another of the desks is an apple.

Maud throws down her rag in a moment offrustration.

MAUD What good am I doing them? How can one person manage forty ignorant children, crowded into a single cramped schoolroom? No one here cares about education.

She starts picking up books from the desks.

A young man, HERMAN, passes by the school carrying a load of empty egg crates or something similar. He sees MAUD through the open doorway and stops.

MAUD Parents want their boys at home to help on the farm. And as for the girls, once they find a mate, what's the point? I might as well be teaching them to weave baskets.

HERMAN Afternoon, Miss.

MAUD Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Leard.

HERMAN You settling in here all right then?

MAUD Yes, my students are an... eclectic mix.

LMM (To the audience.) We are never half so interesting once we learn that language is given us to conceal our thoughts.

HERMAN (Puts down his load.) You must enjoy teaching an awful lot. 56

MAUD (Too cheerfully.) Yes, very much.

He nods slightly and turns to go.

MAUD No ~ sometimes. Sometimes I do. What I mean is — at my first school, up at Bideford, the children were dear souls. They all cried when I left! But then I went to Belmont ~ a wretched old hole of a village. The children were unmanageable, my landlady served boiled mutton twenty-one dinners in a row and my room was so cold I slept in my clothes every night. I felt buried alive... (HERMANgazes at her with interest.) I... I don't know why I'm telling you all this!

HERMAN Well, Bedeque's not such a bad place. I lived here all my life and I don't know as I'd wanna be anywhere else.

HERMAN AND MAUD Well I'll-

GIRL 1, played by YOUNG ANNE, is heard calling.

GIRL 1 (OFFSTAGE) Herman! Where've you got to? You promised you'd walk me home!

Pause.

HERMAN picks up the apple, takes a big messy bite out of it, hands it to MAUD, then picks up his load of crates.

HERMAN (With a teasing nod.) See you back at the house.

MAUD (Ratherprimly.) Please tell your mother I'll be along shortly for dinner.

HERMAN exits. MAUD watches him go, then looks quizzically at the apple in her hand. 57

SCENE 3

Lights rise over stage left to reveal Maud's bedroom in the heard house — a bed with a dingy blanket and a similarly dingy rug on the floor. On the bed is Maud's suitcase, lying open with clothes half unpacked.

MAUD, carrying a satchel, enters with LMM.

MAUD (Calling back.) Yes, breakfast at seven will suit me — thank you, Mrs. Leard.

LMM sits on the bed and traces the edges of the worn suitcase.

LMM Another boarding house... How many rooms have I left in my wanderings, and how many more am I fated to leave?

MAUD sits on the rug beside the bed. Taking student essays out of her satchel, she arranges them in piles on the floor rather violently.

MAUD I am accused of marking down Sally Nelson's examination papers on purpose! And I am said to laugh when the children make mistakes-

LMM Well, I did laugh when Blake Fenton defined an alligator as "a large kind of insect." I couldn't help it!

MAUD Now the mothers are saying, "There is no discipline in the school, no discipline whatever." There is such a mean, petty streak in so many of them... (Leans against the bed.) Still, there is always the lure of something further on, something in hiding just around the next bend, to lend spice to it...

GRANDMA, a figment, appears under a spotlight. 58

GRANDMA Is this really what you want? Sleeping under other people's roofs like a common domestic? Eating their meals, using their cast-off furniture...

Wistful music starts again.

MAUD What I want...

LMM So many things... To travel, to see England and Scotland, Italy and Greece, the Taj Mahal and the pillars of Karnak and the Holy Land... To know — not just believe — that the world is round.

MAUD But on a teacher's salary... I might as well dream of going to the moon. There is nothing else I can do. I'll have to go on forever, prattling on about Henry the Eighth's wives and the inexhaustible resources of the Dominion.

GRANDMA The females of your family were all proud, respectable women. Not the sort that had to work.

MAUD What if there is no bend in the road? Sometimes I think I see it stretching straight out before me to the skyline, in endless monotony... If I could only make enough by my pen!

LMM But it was never enough...

GRANDMA Think of where you come from, think of your pride—

MAUD (Standing.) I am staying here!

Music ends. 59

MAUD I must do this for myself or go crazy with wondering what I might have been and done.

Spotlight over GRANDMA goes out. She exits.

LMM A schoolteacher is a slave of time.

Lights out.

SCENE 4

Cheery gramophone music plays. Lights rise on a social in the Bedeque church.

MINISTER, played by MUSTARD, is just finishing his blessing. Around him are MAUD, HERMAN, and four other townspeople — GIRL I, played by YOUNG ANNE; GIRL 2, played byMAUDIE; YOUNG MAN, played by WILL; and CHATTERING WOMAN, played by GRANDMA.

MINISTER For this fine company and this delicious baking, may the Lord make us all truly thankful.

TOWNSPEOPLE Amen.

LMM enters and settles herself at the edge of the stage.

LMM (To the audience.) For downright stupidity in village life, church socials take the cake. People look primmer and more hopelessly uninteresting than at any other time.

MINISTER Ladies, you've outdone yourselves once again. 60

LMM (Rolling her eyes.) The main things to do seem to be to look demure or disapproving according to your age... (CHATTERING WOMAN scowls at GIRL I, who is batting her eyelashes at YOUNG MAN.) To act cranky in any game other people try to start...

GIRL 2 (Standing excitedly.) Let's play Blind Man's Bluff!

The others don 't budge. She sits down, embarrassed.

LMM And to stuff your face with indigestible baking, the effects of which will be with you for a week.

CHATTERING WOMAN Plum puff? (MAUD and HERMAN reluctantly take a doily and a handful of pastries each.) I made them for my niece Eliza's wedding last spring and everyone said they were as light and flaky as any on the South Shore! (Switches her addresses to MINISTER.) But of course we Spencer women are known throughout the island for our pastry-making, just as the MacKay women are known for their preserves and the MacAllisters for their cheeses! (MINISTER takes out a pipe and starts walking offstage. Oblivious, she follows him, chattering away.) It was a lovely wedding, Eliza wore cream silk and carried a bouquet of orchids ~ orchids, can you imagine? So exotic. She has always been the beauty of the family and so popular with the young men, though Julia has improved a lot in recent years. She'll never be as good-looking as her sister but in her own way she's a real pretty girl...

GIRL 2 (In another bid to impress.) You know, I heard that if you save a piece of wedding cake and put it under your pillow, you'll dream of your future husband!

GIRL 1, ignoring her, grabs YOUNGMAN's hands.

GIRL 1 Let's play a kissing game! Girls on this side, fellows on this side. (GIRL 2 obliges, but MAUD sets down her pastries and slips out. HERMAN looks like he 61

wants to follow her.) You too, Herman! (HERMAN reluctantly sits.) There. Now everyone put a token in the middle...

GIRL 2 giggles nervously. The lights go out over the social and the music grows quieter.

MAUD (Looks back, relieved no one has followed her out.) Those insipid, jelly-fish girls! So many of them have only three ideas in their heads ~ to get something good to eat, something fine to wear, and a beau! I like all these in due proportion myself but I don't allow them to crowd everything else out! No doubt I bore them as much as they bore me.

She leans against the side of the stage, looking up at the night sky.

LMM joins her.

MAUD I have an ideal of what a wedding should be. It should be... a June morning. A glorious sunrise would blossom over the silvery east.

Soft, dreamlike music starts. As MAUD speaks, we see the following shadow show:

The silhouette of GROWN-UP ANNE appears. She is wearing a wedding dress. Slowly, she lifts her veil over her head to cover her face. She turns to the side. GILBERT, played by HERMAN, enters. They come together and, as MAUD finishes talking, turn to face the audience, hand in hand.

MAUD I would rise early and dress, make myself beautiful for him, the one man in all the world. Then in the hush of dawn I would go down and meet him, and we would go, alone, to the heart of some great wood. The wind of the morning would sing our bridal hymn, and we would pledge to each other a love for all eternity. Then we would walk, hand in hand, back to the busy world.

The shadows fade out. 62

LMM Our ideals change as we grow older. Change and... lower. We are driven to compromise with the insistent Real.

They both look up at the sky. Lights fade out. Music ends.

SCENE 5

Moonlight rises on the Leard parlour — a sofa and two end tables. On one of the tables is a water pitcher and a glass. MAUD, dressed for the day, is hunched over the other table, writing. LMM sits at her feet.

HERMAN, in nightclothes and hung-over, stumbles in for water. He sees MAUD and almost drops the glass.

HERMAN What ~ Maud? What are you doing awake?

MAUD I am always awake at this hour, Mr. Leard.

HERMAN At ~ five in the morning?

He shakes his head and finishes pouring his water.

MAUD Feeling the effects of last night are you?

HERMAN (Rubbing his forehead.) I might've had a few too many.

She continues to write; he gulps down half the glass.

HERMAN Have you always been... this way? 63

MAUD What way?

HERMAN Rising with the dawn every morning to — write?

MAUD Since teacher's college I guess. I got into the habit and I've never really stopped.

HERMAN Teacher's college, eh? And your family, what do they think? Of you, writing'?

He takes another sip.

MAUD My grandparents? They try not to think about it. Anything new their souls abhor. Even bicycles, heaven preserve us, are part of the direct equipment of the Prince of Darkness. (HERMANlaughs, nearly choking.) Unfortunately it's not so funny to live with them.

HERMAN You've been to ~ university - haven't you?

MAUD (With a wry smile.) To my eternal shame. (Mimicking.) Educated women should get some sense forcibly knocked into them, the men who admit them are Antichrists... and so on and so forth.

HERMAN What are you working on now?

MAUD Oh, just a potboiler. With... a lost ruby, a lunatic, an idiot boy, a mysterious turret chamber and a lot of old standard fluff like that. I'll be quite ashamed of it but I shall expect a good cheque for it.

She looks back down at her work. HERMAN turns to go, but stops. 64

HERMAN Haven't you ~ don't you want beaus like other women?

MAUD Who says I haven't had them?

HERMAN And?

LMM And I had almost concluded that it was not in me to love as some people seem to do in life and all in novels.

MAUD To most men I've met, love means finding a tolerably good-looking girl to feel proud of as a wife. (With some annoyance.) Why is it when a man sees that a girl is pleasant to him, he assumes she wants to bind herself to him forever?

He doesn 't respond, but gazes at her with the same curiosity and intensity as in the schoolhouse.

MAUD Sorry. (Still he just looks at her.) Good night, Mr. Leard.

HERMAN Good morning, Maud.

He exits.

LMM Was he handsome? I never could decide. Whether in features or expression I can't say, but there was~

MAUD Something fascinating about his face.

MAUD tries to get back to work, but she puts down her pen, distracted. Lights out. 65

SCENE 6

Bustling music.

Lights rise on the Bedeque schoolhouse.

MAUD is standing in front of the chalkboard holding a book. SCHOOLGIRL and SCHOOLBOY, played by YOUNG ANNE and NATE, sit in desks with their backs partially to the audience, also holding books. LMM sits between them with her back fully to the audience.

Music stops.

MAUD Alright, let's have our Viola and our Zanoni, starting from page ninety-one. Viola, you are a beautiful young opera singer ~ Zanoni, an ageless sorcerer. Remember, this is the Terror of the French Revolution! Try and put some feeling into it.

MAUD nods encouragingly to SCHOOLGIRL and SCHOOLBOY, who stand.

SCHOOLGIRL (Reads, badly.) Since I have known this man, since his dark eyes have haunted me, I am no longer the same. I long to escape from myself, to glide with the sunbeam over the hilltops, to become something that is not of earth.

SCHOOLBOY (In a comically deep, booming voice.) Thou only, in all the earth methinks, hast the power to wound or delight me.

The girl opens her mouth to read her line, but the boy cuts in.

SCHOOLBOY (In a silly, effeminate voice.) Mould me to what thou wilt!

The children snicker. 66

MAUD (To the boy.) If you are just going to make fun, you can sit down and hand over your text to a more serious actor!

They sit, still giggling.

MAUD Look at what Bulwer-Lytton has given us here, class. Zanoni is a personification of youth! A strange, mysterious hero who is always young, always exciting. Viola is instantly drawn to him, to his masterfulness. He takes her away from herself, from her need to think. With him, she can just be... (MAUD has fallen into a reverie. She realizes her students are staring at her.) It's almost four. We'll finish with Zanoni on Monday.

The students exit, handing her their books. Perching on a desk, MAUD opens one and reads.

LMM turns to face her.

LMM People think that girls don't feel, that they are somehow sheltered from passion. But in imagination young girls can have very vivid love affairs... It's a wonder any real men ever interested me, I was so in love with a fictional one!

MAUD clasps the book to her chest and closes her eyes, imagining a love scene.

A few moments later, HERMAN enters. He watches her, amused.

HERMAN Maud?

MAUD stands, trying to hide her embarrassment.

LMM smiles and walks out of the schoolroom scene and into Maud's bedroom in the heard house, which a dim light reveals is set up on the other side of the stage. 67

She sits on the rug in front of the bed, remembering the scene that we continue to watch.

MAUD Oh! Mr. Leard. I was just -- thinking of a lesson for next week. (HERMAN takes the book out of her hands and flips to one the illustrations. He raises his eyebrows.) It is rather melodramatic. But I'd hoped it would get the children reading. I loved it dearly as a girl.

HERMAN What, all the magic spells and things?

MAUD And eternal youth and sacrifice and doomed love...

HERMAN Well, you won't find many wizards 'round these parts.

MAUD (With a grin.) And doomed lovers?

He smiles back.

HERMAN Shall we walk back together?

MAUD (Too quickly.) Yes.

He offers his arm; MA UD takes it.

SCENE 7

Lights fade over the schoolroom as they rise fully on the bedroom, where LMM still sits. On the bed is Maud's shawl and a pile of unopened letters. 68

HERMAN escorts MAUD to her room then exits, smiling at her. MAUD sits on the bed, wraps herself in the shawl, and starts opening her mail.

MAUD (Opening a letter.) Can it really be '98? The century is growing old — only two more years for it to live.

LMM How many hours of my life have I spent writing and reading letters... I suppose they lend a little spice to a dead-and-alive sort of existence.

MAUD All those girls, those playmates of my childhood...

A white spotlight appears. MAUDIE and a playmate, played by YOUNG ANNE, skip in, giggling. They sit facing each other, cross-legged, and begin a singing and clapping game.

MAUD (Scanning the letter.) Pensie has married a New Glasgow man. The whole affair was kept very close. Considering our old friendship I think this was very shabby treatment. I suppose she has dropped out of my life forever.

MAUD picks up another letter and opens it.

As she speaks, the girls perform a friendship ritual, directed by MAUDIE. They close their eyes and hold hands for a few seconds. Then, giggling again, each snips a lock of hair from the other with a pair of scissors.

MAUD Amanda is obsessed with clothing and gossip — Lu and I used to be intimate in a superficial way, but we've grown so far apart that our friendship is merely a hollow show... (Setting the letter down.) I think of them lovingly and regretfully. lean never feel that the women they are today are the same people as my friends of long ago. 69

LMM Why did I invest so much in them? They never truly knew me, or my struggles, though we swore eternal faith to each other! And now I barely recognize them. They do not know my language, and I have forgotten theirs.

MAUD I wish I'd never met them at all. The memory of the girls they were only hurts me.

Still giggling, the two girls exit.

MAUD notices another letter and picks it up.

MAUD What's this one ~ F. Campbell, Silver Bush Farm, Park Corner, P.E.I. Why... it's little Frederica! Uncle John's youngest. (MAUD opens the letter. Her expression changes to one of surprised joy. She reads aloud.) Cousin Maud. The last time we saw one another, I was the eight-year-old girl who stood at your mirror, watching you comb your hair to go out with the big girls.

FREDE, a figment, appears under a spotlight.

FREDE AND MAUD I've missed your visits to Silver Bush...

FREDE ...You were just as much one of my sisters as Clara or Stella. Only nicer, for you never teased me as they do.

MAUD Yes, she was always a plain little thing. The cat who walks alone, she used to call herself.

FREDE I don't know if you knew that I always looked up to you, Maud. I'd like to see you again, to know how you are. I think it's brave what you're doing, leaving home and being independent. With love. Frede.

Spotlight over FREDE goes out. She exits. 70

MAUD Brave ~ and independent! If only we could see ourselves as others see us! Still... I would rather be myself. I would rather be me, Maud, than be anyone else.

MAUD gets up, pulls the suitcase out from under the bed, and takes out a hand mirror.

SCENE 8

Looking at her self in the mirror, MAUD gets a mischievous look on her face.

She reaches into the suitcase again and takes from it a hat and hatpin. She puts on the hat and begins posing in the mirror, alternately regal and coy.

HERMAN enters. He stares at MAUD for a few seconds, amused.

HERMAN What are you doing, Maud?

MAUD (Sighing.) Being wonderfully frivolous when I should be marking papers.

HERMAN Well, I think you should quit being frivolous and pay some attention to me.

MAUD laughs and unpins her hat.

MAUD (Smiling.) Do you now?

HERMAN takes a step closer to her.

HERMAN There's a meeting up at the Baptist Young People's Union. I think you oughta let me drive you to it. 71

MAUD (A little shyly.) Alright.

He reaches for her hand. Her smile fades.

MAUD Herman, you really shouldn't be in here.

He pulls her closer to him.

HERMAN Why not?

MAUD (Primly, pulling her hand away.) You know perfectly well why not.

Ignoring her stiff body language, he reaches over and holds her face in his hands. When she doesn 't say anything, he kisses her passionately.

LMM I cannot tell what possessed me. I could not speak ~ I could not forbid him.

They kiss again.

Lights out.

SCENE 9

A single piano plays.

Lights reveal a snowy, moonlit night. MAUD enters, followed by HERMAN. They are wearing winter attire and laughing.

LMM is at the desk, engrossed in the journal.

HERMAN (Incredulously.) You're saying your father's people were knights — in castles? 72

MAUD Allies of Mary, Queen of Scots! (Assuming a comically regal posture.) This is noble blood you see flowing through these veins!

She giggles; he pulls her to him by her scarf.

HERMAN I love seeing you smile like that, when you're not playing the schoolmarm... You're beautiful, Maud.

MAUD (She gazes at him for a moment, but, unused to compliments, she changes the subject.) Do you know what/love, Herman? I love... pearls. And hats. Lace and veils and silk stockings and pink ribbons for my hair ~ and dancing!

The piano changes to music box chimes: "Beautiful Dreamer" or a similar old-fashioned love song. MAUD puts one of HERMAN'S mittened hands in hers, and his other hand on her waist. She leads him around in a few awkward circles, but he is a terrible dancer. She laughs.

HERMAN I reckon castles and dancing and fineries are good for some.

He brings her face very close to his. She stops laughing.

HERMAN (Tenderly kisses her cheek.) I'd be happy with a little farm and a big brood of kids.

MAUD opens her mouth to reply, but is silent.

SCENE 10

The music box melody changes back to a piano. Lights reveal nighttime in the heard parlour again. This time, a copy o/Vanity Fair lies open on one of the end tables. 73

Taking off his coat and mitts, HERMAN goes and sits on the couch. He picks up the book and thumbs through it.

HERMAN (With feigned fatigue.) My eyes hurt. Will you read to me?

She pauses, but takes off her winter things and sits next to him on the couch. He gives her the book and, without asking, pulls her closer to him.

MAUD Where—

HERMAN Here. (Points to a paragraph.)

MAUD (Reading.) '"Oh Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame!' cried Miss Sedley. 'How can you'"-- (HERMAN begins slowly kissing MA UD 'S cheek and neck.) --'"how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts? Revenge may be wicked, but it's natural,' answered Miss Rebecca. 'I'm no angel.' And, to say the truth, she certainly was not."

HERMAN pulls MAUD into an embrace.

LMM Herman had the power of blotting out everything but himself. With him I feared nothing, cared for nothing ~ grieved for nothing!

MAUD (Forcing herself to pull away from him.) It's past midnight. You'd better go.

He grins and exits. She sits there looking after him, smiling but troubled.

LMM I was under the old, fatal, paralyzing spell, which only those who have experienced it can understand or condone...

MAUD gives a little shake, forcing herself to speak lightly. 74

MAUD What a curious thing marriage is!

LMM I had never really thought about it before, save in an aloof, abstract way, as something more or less inevitable, some day in the future.

MAUD Always in the future...

LMM I had never really loved, but like every other girl in the world, I had an ideal. A visionary dream of the man I thought I could love.

MAUD (To LMM.) He would be handsome, of course ~ does any girl ever dream of a plain lover?

LMM (To MA UD.) Educated, my equal in birth and social position, and—

MAUD (To LMM.) Most important of all~

LMM (To MA UD.) Intellect! I could never care for a man who didn't meet me on equal ground in mental power.

MAUD I am and always have been a proud woman. I know, very well, what I should do, and yet... (Turns away from LMM.) Oh ~ in fiction, good people are clearly good, and bad people clearly bad. But we are, every one of us, whether we own up to it or not, angel and devil mixed up together!

Lights out.

Music ends. 75

SCENE 11

Lights reveal MAUD in her bedroom in the heard house, sitting on the rug with her back against the bed, writing.

HERMAN enters, followed byLMM, who hovers at the side of the stage. He watches MAUD write for a few seconds. Then he walks over to her, grabs her notebook, and tosses it aside.

HERMAN (Frustrated.) Why do you do this to yourself, Maud? (His face softens; he pulls her to her feet.) You're so thin and worn looking. Why not give up your scribbling for a while?

He hugs her.

LMM There were times I wanted to give in... desperately! To lose myself in him, to think of nothing but his warmth. The warmth that life had stifled out of me...

HERMAN (Releasing her and taking her hand in his.) I never met any girl like you, Maud.

LMM To be in the arms of someone whom we love with all our heart is, after all, everyone's real idea of happiness, if we would be honest enough to admit it! There are dear and sweet minor happinesses, but that is the only perfect one.

HERMAN walks behind MAUD, puts his hands on her shoulders, and begins kissing her neck. LMM, still on the couch, closes her eyes in remembered rapture.

HERMAN (Softly, in her ear.) Be with me...

HERMAN runs his hands over MAUD's body, feeling her on top of her clothes. She closes her eyes and lets him touch her for a few moments, but, with a gasp, pulls away. 76

HERMAN I love you, Maud.

HERMAN freezes; MAUD looks into his eyes, then takes a few impassioned steps towards the audience.

MAUD Whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of a sweetheart, it was the great moment of your life!

LMM approaches MA UD.

LMM (Imploringly, to MAUD.) He had no trace of intellect, culture or education, no interest in anything beyond his farm!

MAUD (Fiercely, to LMM.) With him I know rapture like I have never in all my life experienced or imagined! He electrifies me.

LMM He was not my equal in mind! I did not respect him ~ I knew I could never marry him!

MAUD (Near tears, turning to HERMAN.) But I love him! I want him~

MAUD puts her arms around HERMAN and leans against his chest.

LMM And the price the woman can pay... what if people found out, what if there was a child-

MAUD (Turning away from him to yell at LMM.) I don't care! I don't care about what is right, about what people think, I am beyond all that— 77

LMM (Near tears herself.) But what if he stopped loving me? After I gave myself to him. What if he grew to resent me for giving in? To despise me for my weakness.

MAUD is stricken by this.

LMM And after a year or two of bliss, then what? What if he changed, then what would I have?

MAUD lets go of HERMAN, who unfreezes.

HERMAN (Putting his hands on her hips, gently bringing her to him.) Be with me.

Seeing love and vulnerability in her eyes, he tries to kiss her again, but MAUD pushes him away.

MAUD Herman, we can never see each other again!

HERMAN What — Maud, what are you talking about?

MAUD You must leave me alone. You must. (She won't look at him.) Leave me!

After a pause, HERMAN exits, confused and hurt.

MAUD (Looking after him.) I'd rather you think me an unprincipled flirt — you will never, never know how I have loved you!

She covers her face with her hands. LMM walks over to her.

LMM That was the wisest thing I ever did in my life. And the hardest. 78

MAUD (Wildly.) Can this be for the best — have I really done right? I don't know--

LMM (Sitting down next to her.) It will only hurt to think otherwise.

MRS. LEARD (OFFSTAGE) Miss Montgomery!

MAUD presses her hands to her flushed cheeks for a moment, then stands.

MAUD Yes?

MRS. LEARD, played by GRANDMA, enters with a telegram.

MRS. LEARD A telegram's come for you.

MAUD Thank you, Mrs. Leard.

MRS. LEARD exits. MAUD opens and reads the telegram.

MAUD (Sitting down in shock.) Grandfather is dead.

LMM (Reciting from memory.) Alexander Macneill died today. Failure of the heart. Sudden and painless death.

MAUD But, that can't be... They were all in good health the last letter I had from Grandma... (Realizing what this news means.) I shall have to go home...

Lights out. 79

SCENE 12

Tense, confused music plays.

Dim lights rise on the Macneill parlour. GRANDMA sits in one armchair, wearing a black dress and knitting/sewing. MAUD enters holding a suitcase, also dressed in black. MAUD and GRANDMA freeze.

LMM enters behind MAUD. The music softens.

LMM If any person wants to see clearly just how much she has changed, let her return to a place where she has once lived.

MAUD and GRANDMA unfreeze. MAUD puts down the suitcase and takes off her coat. She sits down next to GRANDMA. LMM stands beside her.

NATE and CLEMMIE enter. Music ends.

NATE My father sends his condolences, Mrs. Macneill, and if there is anything he can do~

GRANDMA (Haughtily.) You may inform the pastor that my husband's service will be a Presbyterian one, Mr. Lockhart.

NATE Of course. (Mumbles, after a pause.) Sorry for your loss, Maud.

MAUD gives him a small nod.

CLEMMIE I was so sad to hear about your dear grandfather. You must be so bereaved. When my grandpa died, I mourned for two weeks in black muslin with white trim.

MAUD Yes. Thank you Clemmie.

CLEMMIE makes a show of linking arms with NATE; they exit. 80

Tight-lipped, GRANDMA resumes her work -without a word. MAUD looks at her.

LMM I cannot say that I ever had a very deep affection for Grandfather. I was always afraid of him. Still, one cannot live all one's life with people and not have a certain love for them.

MAUD tentatively puts a hand on GRANDMA's shoulder. GRANDMA flinches and hurriedly exits, trying to hide the pain in her face.

MAUD stands, looking after her.

MAUD So this is it for me. I am young. I have a scanty, superficial education. I have three hundred dollars ~ Father gave me two hundred and I've saved another hundred from my writing. I've no training for anything except teaching, which I can't do while Grandma needs me... (Paces.) Sometimes I feel a sort of savage despair at my helplessness! Grandma has five living children and not one of them makes, or has ever made, any effort to share the responsibility of caring for her! (Stops.) How many other women are in my place — the unmarried daughters and maiden aunts of this world...

LMM My days filled themselves with the womanly duties of cooking and cleaning and sewing--

MAUD Picking fruit for canning, and making candles-

LMM Tending the garden and running the post office--

MAUD Taking over more and more of what Grandma cannot do. (Sits down at the desk.) What is left of me are the few still hours when I am the only being awake. My life consists of this desk, these pages, this quietness... (Pause.) I think of Herman often — the way in which I miss him frightens me... But I don't hope for change. All of that must be played out now on paper. 81

SCENE 13

A single piano plays.

MAUD walks to centre stage and pulls back a sheet, revealing a post-office counter. LMM takes MAUD's place sitting at the desk.

CAVENDISH TOWNSPEOPLE - NATE, CLEMMIE, EWAN (played by MUSTARD), CAVENDISH MAN (played by HERMAN), and CAVENDISH GIRL (played byMAUDIE) — enter in a line carrying envelopes and parcels.

One by one, MAUD takes each person 's mail. The people exit as they came.

LMM (As MAUD works.) The monotony was dreadful. I kept my rebellion to myself and nobody suspected it. But it was there, seething and fermenting... I studied people and events, thinking and speculating and reading. As the days passed and other hopes and interests failed me, nearly everything I thought or did or said was from a desire to improve my work. And somehow or other, through it all, I wore a mask of outward gaiety.

Music ends.

MAUD takes out an ink pad and begins stamping letters.

GRANDMA enters, carrying an empty mailbag in one hand and a newspaper in the other. She walks over to the post office, noticeably slower than we have seen her before.

GRANDMA (Setting down the bag.) Wasn't there a Herman Leard where you boarded in Bedeque?

MAUD Yes - I believe so. What about him? 82

GRANDMA He is dead.

MAUD (After a shocked pause.) How...

GRANDMA With influenza. It is in the Pioneer.

MAUD is stricken dumb. GPANDMA leaves the newspaper on the counter and exits the way she came, oblivious to MAUD's reaction.

When GRANDMA has gone, MAUD puts down the stamp, takes the newspaper, and walks over to her bedroom. She stands beside her bed, clutching the frame to steady herself.

LMM (Reciting from memory.) It is with deep regret that we record the death of Mr. Herman Leard of Bedeque, who was probably the most popular young man in that district. His was one of the largest processions seen in the vicinity for years. Mr. Leard was twenty-nine years old yesterday, the day of his funeral.

The figment of HERMAN appears behind MAUD under a white light. He puts his hands on her shoulders and kisses her cheek.

MAUD Perhaps it is easier to think of him as dead, as mine ~ all mine in death, as he never could be in life, so no other woman can ever lie on his heart or kiss his lips...

MAUD turns to embrace HERMAN, but the light over him goes out, and he exits.

MAUD collapses to the ground beside her bed, clutching the newspaper, her body racked with sobs.

LMM For weeks I only wished to die... 83

Slow, sustained notes of music begin. LMM goes over and crouches beside MAUD.

LMM I hardly slept a moment. I could not eat, every mouthful had to be forced down. I yearned to be in the grave with Herman, pressed to his heart, with all pain and loneliness lost forever in unending, dreamless sleep...

GRANDMA enters.

With some physical difficulty, GRANDMA bends down and touches MAUD's shoulder, but MAUD throws her hand off. GRANDMA pauses, then exits.

MAUD (Wildly, through her tears.) Love will not come to me — friendship is lost to me! All that is left is regret and hopeless longing!

LMM Everything was changed and darkened...

MAUD I am not Maud Montgomery at all. She was an altogether different person who lived long ago, with nothing at all in common with this new me!

LMM I felt as if I'd sprung suddenly into existence, a new creature, born of sorrow and baptized of suffering.

MAUD I have lost the soul-food of friends ~ I care nothing for the outer world about me! I feel cut off from beauty... A veil seems to have dropped between my soul and nature.

LMM I could not write, I even prayed—

MAUD God, help me conquer, help me live this down even if my heart is crushed in the struggle! 84

Music ends.

MAUD God, do other people suffer like this? If they do, how can they live?

Lights fade out.

SCENE 14

Lamplight reveals MAUD lying still in her bed under the quilt. LMM watches her from the desk.

LMM Solitude with dreams is glorious... solitude without them has few charms. I dreaded the night inexpressibly...

GRANDMA hobbles into MAUD's bedroom, wanting, in her own way, to be of comfort.

GRANDMA You had some calf-love romance with that Leard boy, I suppose.

MAUD remains silent.

GRANDMA He was a church member, Maud. He is with the Lord now.

GRANDMA starts to leave, but MAUD speaks.

MAUD Do you know what I'm thinking of?

GRANDMA pauses. MA UD sits up in bed.

MAUD My first kitten. Do you remember? I was nine. The dog wouldn't leave her alone, so I shut her in the barn to give her some peace. When I came back to let her out, 85

she was writhing in pain. She was dying. She'd eaten a dead rat, full of rat poison. And instead of a mother — to take me in her arms, to tell me she understood ~ do you remember what you said to me? You said, "You'll have something to cry for someday."

GRANDMA looks as if she is about to say something, but changes her mind.

GRANDMA You know that animals have no souls.

GRANDMA exits.

MAUD sits therefor a moment, then nods resignedly. Lights go out over the bed; only the desk remains lit.

LMM I have heard hell defined as a world from which hope is excluded... I was surely in hell then. I understand now what drives some people to suicide. I cannot feel alone like that again. I cannot. I do not think I could live through it without going insane...

MAUD walks into the light and gazes out the window above the desk.

MAUD I am living too much among books and visions and dreams... I am naturally prone to introspection, but this house is making me morbid. In the jolly, human society of friends I could forget my cares and unwholesome brooding...

Lights reveal GRANDMA in her rocking chair in the parlour. MAUD walks over to her.

MAUD I'm going out, Grandma.

A flicker of relief passes over GRANDMA 'sface.

GRANDMA Good.

MAUD nods and turns to go. 86

GRANDMA (Without looking at her.) Go put on a shawl. And mind you don't eat too much and upset your stomach. The way girls devour their food nowadays is perfectly appalling.

MAUD looks blankly at GRANDMA for a few seconds, then exits.

Lights go out over GRANDMA.

SCENE 15

Music begins. It is steady, repetitive and rather trancelike.

Spotlights reveal the townspeople of Cavendish talking to each other --NATE, CLEMMIE, EWAN, CAVENDISH WOMAN (played by GRANDMA), CAVENDISH MAN (played by HERMAN), and CAVENDISH GIRL (played by MAUDIE).

MAUD wanders through the crowd, nodding politely at every person. LMM watches from the desk.

MAUD I feel a good deal like a stranger in Cavendish. I see now in the village a narrow, uncultured fanaticism of an intensely disagreeable type. Things can never be the same for me here as when I was a girl, and the knowledge of this confronts me like an unquiet ghost at every turn.

LMM Everywhere I went, everything I did, I carried with me a secret aching sense of blankness.

MAUD I teach Sunday school ~ yes, me, who hates to be told to pray! The truth of it is my pupils seem rather stupid and commonplace. 87

LMM I dragged myself to choir practice, sat around sewing circles making clothing for faraway heathen children. I dressed my best and looked attentive. Inwardly I was bored to tears.

MAUD With such people I have nothing in common. I live among them — I eat, sleep, and talk among them — but I am not one of them... What do these people have to exist for? They seem to get no pleasure out of life! Yet they seem content enough.

LMM I suppose a man born blind never misses his sight...

MAUD I am very careful to be shallow and conventional. Depth and originality are wasted here. Sometimes I think it useless even to look for kindred souls in the multitude.

LMM My self control was only outward — underneath it, the capacity for passionate feeling was as strong and vivid and greedy as ever...

MAUD But I am such a coward that I cannot translate it into the real, and must drift along the current of conventionality.

One by one, their spotlights fade out and the townspeople exit.

SCENE 16

MAUD walks to the edge of the stage.

MAUD There is a fearful "goneness" in my inner girl! If I could somehow have that old gladness and beauty back again, if only for an hour...

The trancelike music changes to the beautiful, haunting melody. 88

MAUDIE enters under a white spotlight, wide-eyed and hopeful. She walks to MAUD's side. MAUD looks at her like an old, dear friend. They wrap their arms around each other.

LMM stands, deep tenderness in her eyes. She picks up the journal and hugs it to her chest.

MAUD Perhaps if I lay my head once more on the pillow of my girlhood, its spell may charm me back to paths of tranquillity and murmur "Peace, be still" over the stormy waters of my soul.

They break apart; MAUDIE exits as she came. MAUD watches her leave sadly.

LMM It has always seemed to me, ever since early childhood, that amid the commonplaces of life I was very near a kingdom of ideal beauty. Between it and me hung only a thin veil. I could never draw it quite aside, but sometimes a wind fluttered it and I caught a glimpse of the realm beyond...

MAUD (Contemplative.) A book can seem to me a gateway to that world... When I step in, and I walk with happiness and youth and pangless pleasure again. I forget my own petty interests and cares, and burst out into a broader soul-world...

Suddenly MAUD strides over to the desk, passing LMM.

MAUD Enough with sweet, insipid Sunday School heroines ~ it is the sinners we love and pity! I shall write a young girl as she really is.

MAUD takes pen and paper from the desk, sits, and begins to write.

The music changes. It is full of energy.

MAUD She will question... she will run... she will make mistakes... she will laugh! 89

LMM (To the audience.) I cast moral and Sunday School ideals to the winds and made my Anne a real human girl.

MAUD I always revelled in fairy tales! I will give her family... a true friend... love. She will have everything — everything she deserves.

The music softens. The shadow of YOUNG ANNE appears.

MAUD writes furiously.

LMM (To the audience.) Anne flashed into my fancy already christened, even to the all important "e" at the end of her name. She began to expand in such a fashion that she soon seemed real to me. She took possession of me.

MAUD (Standing and reading what she has just written.) A child, about eleven, garbed in an ugly dress of yellowish-gray. A face, small, white, thin, and much freckled, with a little pointed chin. Large eyes, which look green in some lights and moods, and gray in others; eyes full of spirit and vivacity. A faded brown sailor hat, and beneath the hat, two braids of thick red hair.

The music ends.

YOUNG ANNE enters, on stage in the flesh for the first time.

YOUNG ANNE I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables? I am very glad to see you.

Lights out.

SCENE 17

Piano music. 90

Through a scrim we see LMM and YOUNG ANNE, standing side by side.

LMM (Looking at YOUNG ANNE.) If my story were like hers, I would, with a few amusing mishaps along the way, have been a grand success in no time. But life, in its prosaic way, just went on...

Lights go out; the scrim disappears. Music continues.

SCENE 18

Lights rise on a seance. MAUD, CAVENDISH WOMAN (played by GRANDMA), and CAVENDISH MAN (played by HERMAN) are seated in tableau around a round table. There is a fourth, empty chair beside MAUD.

LMM sits at the desk, the journal open in front of her.

Music ends. The people at the seance unfreeze. As CAVENDISH WOMAN speaks, CAVENDISH MAN looks bored and MAUD smiles and nods.

CAVENDISH WOMAN It was a tremendous funeral! There were over a hundred carriages in the procession I'm sure — she had a very large connection, you know. Poor sweet Abigail, she was the handsomest corpse you ever laid eyes on! Wasn't she, Ed?

CAVENDISH MAN Mhmph.

CAVENDISH WOMAN Such a beautiful funeral address the minister gave. And the flowers, oh! You should have seen them! No expense was spared. But of course it was Old Abel's extravagancies that killed her. There's no doubt in my mind. Wicked man, he got roaring drunk before the service and insisted on reciting the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah — Abel knows most of the Bible and all the Psalms by heart, you know--

EWAN enters. CAVENDISH MAN jumps up in relief. 91

CAVENDISH MAN (ToEWAN.) Ah, Ewan, so glad you've come. (To MAUD.) Miss Montgomery, I believe you met the Reverend when he preached here last year?

EWAN (With a polite bow of the head.) Miss Montgomery.

MAUD nods.

CAVENDISH MAN He's just been called to be minister for the year.

MAUD Congratulations, Mr. MacDonald.

CAVENDISH WOMAN Ooo, sit, sit! Let's get started!

The men sit.

CAVENDISH WOMAN Whom shall we contact?

Pause.

EWAN Napoleon?

CAVENDISH MAN He didn't cooperate last time.

MAUD Let's try... Queen Victoria.

CAVENDISH WOMAN solemnly places both her hands on the table and closes her eyes. The others follow suit.

CAVENDISH WOMAN Your Majesty. We are here. We are listening... 92

CAVENDISH MAN (Opening his eyes and nudging MAUD.) Who ever thought old Victoria could die, eh?

MAUD smiles.

CAVENDISH WOMAN Shh!

CAVENDISH MAN assumes the position again.

CAVENDISH WOMAN We must be perfectly silent.

After a pause, the table gives a jolt, clearly the work of CAVENDISH WOMAN'S foot.

MAUD snickers. She tries to stop, but can 't help herself.

MAUD (Unable to resist.) How spirited she is!

The men snicker too, then burst into laughter and open their eyes. CAVENDISH WOMAN stands, glares at MAUD, and exits, pouting.

CAVENDISH MAN stops laughing abruptly, makes an awkward, apologetic sort of bow, and runs after her.

MAUD andEWAN sit in silence.

MAUD I've, urn, seen this kind of thing done with a proper medium. It was rather curious!

EWAN It's all silly tricks of the hand. As a churchman, I wouldn't take part in anything I thought wasn't harmless. 93

MAUD I don't for one minute believe in communication with the dead, of course, but I have come to think that we have a sort of power in ourselves — a means of accessing the subconscious. The answers spiritualists attribute to "the spirits" likely come from our own minds, I think.

EWAN Perhaps they do.

MAUD Well, one has to admit it's a little uncanny, give it what scientific explanation you please!

He smiles. They sit therefor a moment longer.

SCENE 19

Lights go out over the seance as they rise on the Cavendish post office. MAUD walks over and begins sorting mail, while EWAN talks to her from the other side of the counter. LMM remains at the desk.

EWAN (Shocked.) Are you saying you don't believe in heaven and hell?

MAUD I think that, perhaps, we have mistaken ideas about heaven ~ what it is and what it holds for us. I don't believe it can be so very different from life here as most people seem to think. I believe we'll just go on living, a good deal as we live here, and — be ourselves just the same, only it will be easier to be good and to... to see clearly.

LMM (To the audience.) I don't think I believe in any particular kind of afterlife. I am certain of life after death, that's all. I have not yet formulated any working belief to replace those which I have outgrown... Perhaps it will come in time. These things must grow, like everything else. 94

EWAN (A little skeptical, but polite.) I see.

LMM (To the audience.) I wonder how he'd react if I told him I doubt the divinity of Christ?

EWAN Well... this is awfully heavy talk for a summer afternoon.

MAUD (With a laugh.) A lot of 'ologies and 'isms!

EWAN I'd better wish you a good day, Miss Montgomery. I enjoy our talks... Very much... May I — may I call on you at home some evening?

MAUD Yes, of course.

He bows and exits. Lights go out over the post office.

LMM How many courtships have I dreamed up in my head... How many have I written... (Stands.) The life of a country minister's wife had always appeared to me as a synonym for respectable slavery ~ a life in which a woman of any independence of belief or character must cloak her real self! A life of stifling orthodoxy and conventionalism ~ why, she wouldn't even be able to play whist! And yet...

Lights rise on MAUD and EWAN standing by the fire in the Macneill parlour.

EWAN Miss Montgomery... there is something I have been hoping for that would make me... very happy. (Takes a ring box from his pocket and gets down on one knee.) Will you share my life with me... will you be my wife?

He freezes. 95

MAUD (As if convincing herself, and us.) He is respectable... He has a kind smile... I am always glad to see him — I feel the loneliness of my life more keenly when he goes away...

LMM walks over to her.

LMM I would have a home, companionship... and, more than anything—

MAUD I want children. Childless old age is a bitter thing to contemplate...

LMM Perhaps romance does not come into life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down. Perhaps it creeps to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways — perhaps... perhaps... love unfolds naturally... out of friendship.

EWAN unfreezes.

MAUD I cannot marry as long as my grandmother lives. If you can wait until I'm free-

EWAN I'll wait.

MAUD Then... yes.

He hesitates, almost as if he was expecting to be turned down.

MAUD (With a faltering laugh.) Yes, Ewan.

EWAN stands and puts the ring on MAUD's finger, then, timidly, he kisses her. EWAN exits; MAUD stares at the ring as though in a trance.

MAUD His kiss roused no more feeling in me than if another girl had been kissing me... 96

LMM One takes a risk in any marriage-

MAUD (To LMM.) I am content. (Staring at the ring again.) I'm content...

GRANDMA (OFFSTAGE) There's a queer sort of parcel come from Boston for you, Maud!

MAUD (Calling back.) Thank you, Grandma! (She walks to the desk, on which is aflat rectangular parcel. She glances at the label.) L. C. Page and Company...

She unwraps the parcel with shaking, hurried fingers. She lifts from the wrappings a neat stack of paper: a printed manuscript o/Anne of Green Gables. She shrieks and drops the manuscript.

Lights out.

SCENE 20

Loud, energetic, sweeping music begins.

Lights reveal a group of people — played by MAUDIE, GRANDMA, WILL, and HERMAN — gathered at stage left next to a large pile of boxes. A white spotlight shines down on a figure sitting atop the pile. She wears a straw hat and her back is to the audience.

The people are chattering excitedly about Anne. The children cry out with glee when BOOKSELLER, played byEWAN, enters with a pair of scissors and opens a box.

MAUD and LMM enter from stage left. MAUD is wearing a smart dress and hat. They stand next to each other at the side of the stage, watching the people.

Taking a list and pencil from his jacket pocket, BOOKSELLER distributes copies ofAnne of Avonlea to the crowd. They open their books immediately. 97

The music softens, becomes dreamy.

MAUD What is it that they love so about her?

The figure on top of the boxes turns to face the audience. It is YOUNG ANNE. As in the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, she sits clutching a faded carpetbag, her eyes full of hope.

GIRL FAN (MAUDIE) (Reading.) "Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it"~

FEMALE FAN (GRANDMA) (Reading.) "...that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her"-

BOY FAN (WILL) (Reading.) "...the power of future development that was in her."

Exits, reading.

MALE FAN (HERMAN) (Reading.) "She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen."

Exits, reading.

FEMALE FAN (GRANDMA) (Reading.) "Anne was one of the children of light by birthright. After she had passed through a life, with a smile or a word like a gleam of sunshine"—

Exits, reading.

GIRL FAN (MAUDIE) "...the owner of that life saw it, for the time being at least, as hopeful and lovely."

BOOKSELLER exits, checking over his list. GIRL FAN is so engrossed in her book that she sits down on one of the lower boxes to read, her pose mirroring YOUNG ANNE's above her. 98

LMM and MAUD both gaze at GIRL FAN.

MAUD It has always been my favourite dream to write a book that will live. To connect with the great heart of humanity, throbbing through all its varied phases of passion and pain...

LMM (Shaking her head.) The critics will never take me seriously. To them I am nothing more than an entertainer of women and children. And the fact that I write best sellers, well! That's three counts against me, as far as they're concerned. I will never be George Eliot, or Mrs. Gaskell. My books are trivial and petty compared to their masterpieces. My contribution to literature will be a negligible one.

MAUD (Looking up at YOUNG ANNE.) But Anne... somehow I think they'll remember Anne.

MAUD exits stage left.

Music fades out.

SCENE 21

Brass band music starts suddenly.

Full lights over centre stage. YOUNG ANNE's spotlight dims.

JOURNALIST I and JOURNALIST 2, played by EWAN and GRANDMA, sit on two chairs. They face a third, single chair, which is empty. Fastened above the chairs is a large showy sign: "Boston Authors' Club — Reading by L. M. MONTGOMERY, Famed Canadian Authoress of ANNE of GREEN GABLES."

LMM walks over to the scene. She looks up at the sign. 99

LMM (To the audience, straining to be heard over the music.) My publisher agreed on "L. M. Montgomery" — not Lucy Maud, which I have always loathed.

MAUD enters from stage left, wearing an elegant dress and carrying a monogrammed writing portfolio. GIRL FAN, the picture of excitement, jumps up.

GIRL FAN (MAUDIE) (Loudly.) Oh Miss Montgomery! May I have your autograph?

MAUD signs the girl's book.

The music crescendos. LMM covers her ears and grimaces.

LMM (To the audience, straining to be heard.) Americans are a noisy nation. I had heard this before and now I found it out for myself. They do not seem to be able to enjoy themselves unless there is a tremendous noise about them all the time!

The brass band music ends with a flourish.

JOURNALIST 1 As the young authoress entered the room, one thought came to us: it is a repetition of history! Another Charlotte Bronte walks among us.

MAUD walks over to the journalists and shakes their hands. GIRL FAN follows, staring in awe at her newly signed copy.

JOURNALIST 2 Miss Montgomery is slight and short, almost childishly small, though graceful and symmetrical. But beneath her retiring manner and feminine simplicity we glimpse a determined character, warm heart, and vigorous, creative brain.

JOURNALIST 1 Hers is a face of balance and refinement. (Tracing MAUD 'sface with her hand.) The smooth high forehead shows a love of stories and sympathetic perception, the height above the temples and the arched eyebrows suggest poetic feeling and artistic taste, while the full eyes show facility of expression. 100

JOURNALIST 2 We were charmed with her unique personality no less than with her books.

Putting her portfolio on the empty chair, MAUD stands in front of it, looks around, and nods at her audience.

LMM It was the first time I had ever worn a low-necked dress.

MAUD looks nervous and unsure how to begin.

JOURNALIST 1 The setting of your books is so magical, Miss Montgomery. Tell us, is it drawn from life?

MAUD Indeed it is. (Assuming a serene, confident air.) I would not be standing before you today were it not for Prince Edward Island — my island. My home. For few things am I more thankful than for the fact that I was born and bred there. It is a beautiful place ~ the most beautiful place in North America, I believe. Elsewhere are more lavish landscapes and grander scenery, but for chaste, restful loveliness it is unsurpassed. It is an island of colours - the rich red of the winding roads, the brilliant emerald of the meadows, the glowing sapphire of the sea...

A soft Celtic-infused melody begins to play.

MAUD Save for a few places, the sea is always visible somewhere, if only in a tiny blue gap between distant hills, or a turquoise gleam through dark boughs of spruce. Great is our love for it. Its tang gets into our blood, its siren call ever rings in our ears, and no matter where we wander in lands afar, the murmur of its waves summons us back in our dreams to the homeland. For lands have personalities just as human beings do. The shore... {Pauses, her gaze becomes unfocused.) The shore was not so quiet and solitary then as it is today. Those were the days when the mackerel fishing was good, and the shore was dotted with fishing houses. (Lapses into wistfulness.) There is not a house left there now...

The music fades out. 101

JOURNALIST 2 Would you read to us, Miss Montgomery, from the sequel?

MAUD comes back to herself.

MAUD I can do better. I have a third Anne book forthcoming.

GIRL FAN lets out a ridiculous squeal. MAUD remains smiling butLMM rolls her eyes.

MAUD opens the portfolio and reads.

MAUD Anne of the Island. Chapter twenty-two. "Marilla was thinking of her whole past life, her cramped childhood, the jealously hidden dreams and the blighted hopes of her girlhood, the long, gray, narrow, monotonous years of dull middle life that followed. And the coming of Anne ~ the vivid, imaginative, impetuous child with her heart of love, and her world of fancy, bringing with her color and warmth and radiance, until the wilderness of existence had blossomed like the rose." (MAUD closes the portfolio, is silent for a moment, then looks up.) When I wrote Anne, I hoped to please young girls, but to my astonishment, I am read by adults the world over, including men! I get so many letters — two or three almost every day.

LMM (To herself.) And I have answered them all...

MAUD How far little red-headed Anne has travelled! I've received letters from fiir trappers in the north, soldiers in India, missionaries in China, traders in Africa... His Excellency Earl Grey, our Canadian Governor General, even your nation's famous writer, Mr. Mark Twain! That was an especial thrill. What a small big world it is... Truly, we are not so different from each other as we like to imagine.

GIRL FAN (MAUDIE) Is Anne a real girl? 102

MAUD (With a smile.) Does she not stand at my elbow even now? If I turned my head quickly should I not see her, with her eager, starry eyes and her long braids of red hair?

YOUNG ANNE's spotlight brightens. MAUD looks up at her.

MAUD To tell that haunting elf that she is not real, because I never met her in the flesh... No, I cannot do it. She is so real that although I've never met her, I feel quite sure I shall some day...

JOURNALIST 1 (Grandly, rising to his feet.) Well, I'm sure that all of Miss Montgomery's admirers will be wanting their copies autographed, and that she will be more than happy to oblige!

The JOURNALISTS and GIRL FAN swarm around MAUD.

LMM What wouldn't I have given, as a child, to be thought so important!

JOURNALIST 2 (EscortingMAUD offstage.) Truly Miss Montgomery, I envy you your gift! How I wish I could write as you do...

The JOURNALISTS and MAUD exit.

GIRL FAN, seeing that MAUD has forgotten her portfolio, snatches it up and runs eagerly after her with it.

LMM I wonder how much they would have envied me on all those dark winter mornings of my apprenticeship... writing with frozen fingers in frozen houses, with yesterday's ashes still in the grate...

MAUD returns alone, looking worn-out. 103

MAUD (Rubbing her cheeks.) I'm sure a smile must be glued to my face! Everyone kept calling me "Anne," and seemed to think I must or should be as big a chatter box as she!

LMM They all seem to think I am Anne. I smile rather grimly when I contrast my lot with what the world doubtless supposes it to be.

LMM All those adoring girls, gazing at me with reverent eyes... The contrast between my real self and what those worshippers of Anne believe me to be is too ludicrous! And yet — there is something very sweet in the admiration of those innocent young souls. They are so uncritical, so ungrudging! They have such faith in the real flesh and blood existence of Anne... I hate to destroy it.

Lights out.

SCENE 22

Lights rise on a young woman, FREDE, sitting on cushions on the floor. She is reading a book and eating a plate of homemade doughnuts. Firelight flickers over her face.

MAUD and LMM enter. MAUD is back in her travelling outfit.

MAUD Frederica Campbell.

FREDE Maud?

MAUD Hello, Frede!

FREDE gets up. They embrace, laughing. 104

FREDE I'm so happy you're here! Oh sit down, please! Have a ~ cushion!

She spreads the cushions out and they sit.

MAUD picks up FREDE"s book.

MAUD (Reading.) "And little other care hath she, than to look down on Camelot." Tennyson and doughnuts? Don't mind if I do!

FREDE Oh, it is so good to see you, Maud!

MAUD It's been far too long... So, you live in Cape Traverse now!

FREDE Yes. I went to ever so many interviews and had nearly given up hope, when the board offered me a position here. Mother worries over me to no end!

MAUD Oh, I would love to see Aunt Annie again, and Uncle John too! Silver Bush was always so full — so warm. It must have been nice to grow up among lots of people... I envy you for that.

FREDE How long can you stay?

MAUD Not long I'm afraid. I'm on my way back from Boston. My publisher's sent me on a book tour and I'm due back in Charlottetown tonight.

FREDE (Smiling.) You're rather famous now, aren't you Maudie? 105

MAUD I suppose I am. All the letters, Frede. You wouldn't believe it! If anyone wants to find out what has become of her submerged friends, let her write a book. People from Prince Albert, and teacher's college, and Dalhousie—

FREDE Dalhousie! How I would have loved to go.

MAUD You still could... Frede, you're far too clever a girl to be wasted teaching rural island schools. Why don't you let me help you, why don't you let me pay--

FREDE I'm nearly twenty-five, Maud dear. Could you really see me in a classroom full of teenagers?

MAUD smiles rather sorrowfully and says nothing.

FREDE I don't suppose I'll marry either. It's too late for me I think.

MAUD Oh, don't say that! Don't talk about things being "too late." There is always another bend in the road...

FREDE Well, just in case — what say you ~ let's marry each other and have affairs with men!

MAUD A Boston marriage, how wonderfully unorthodox!

FREDE The local spinsters would die of horror!

They laugh. 106

MAUD It's so nice to have someone to really talk with... I haven't had a good talk in... well, it's lovely.

FREDE When we were little you always seemed to have your own secret world... some inner pleasure. You always seemed happy to be yourself— with a book in your hand, sitting under some tree.

MAUD When I go to the woods, I am dreamy and solitary, and I feel I love the woods better than any place on earth. But I'm also very fond of sparkling conversation, and the good human times of life! I suppose there are a hundred different "me"s. Some good, some not... It's better than being just two or three, I think — it's more exciting. More interesting.

FREDE reaches to squeeze MAUD's hand.

FREDE There's something in you, Maud, that isn't in other people. (PatsMAUD's hand and grins.) I've made up my mind. The first of us to die must communicate with the other from beyond the grave, if possible.

MAUD (Laughing.) I'll see to that.

They fall silent, knowing it's time to part. They rise. FREDE gives MAUD a kiss on the cheek.

FREDE Goodbye, cousin mine.

MAUD and LMM start to walk away, but MAUD compulsively turns and grabs FREDE's hand.

MAUD Frede... I know I haven't been the most faithful correspondent, but... will you write to me again ~ very, very often? 107

FREDE Of course I will, Maudie dear. (They hug.)

MAUD and LMM walk across the stage.

FREDE (Calling after them.) Goodbye, and give my love to Grandma Macneill!

FREDE waves. The light over her fades out. She exits.

MAUD She suits me exactly. She is a God-send!

LMM I have not, since girlhood passed, made friends easily or lightly...

MAUD To sit before an open fire with a kindred spirit and talk of "cabbages and kings" is about a good a thing as life can offer!

LMM I used to think that love, with a man, was the only happiness. I know now that there are many different happinesses. When I'm with Frede my worries don't loom so blackly... I believe that dog-days will pass, that it is a pretty good old world after all...

MAUD I don't know why I didn't tell her about Ewan...

SCENE 23

Lights rise on the Macneill parlour where GRANDMA sits in her rocking chair, having just had tea. LMM sits down in the other chair, beside which are stacks of bundled letters. 108

LMM Grandma's parlour never changed. Each time I walked through that door, every chair stood in precisely the same place, every cushion was placed at the same angle.

MAUD takes off her hat and begins clearing all the tea things onto a tray.

MAUD They had a fine reception for me, Grandma. We dined on oyster cocktail, and green turtle consomme, and devilled squab on toast, and ice cream—

LMM (To the audience.) To tell the dreadful truth, the only thing I really liked was the ice cream--

MAUD Then they gave me a box of roses and made a toast!

GRANDMA It is perfectly amazing, the fuss people make over fluff.

LMM (Bitterly.) Other things remained the same too.

MAUD (Ignoring GRANDMA 's comment.) It's no wonder the publishers would take pains to please me I suppose. They've made a fortune off of Anne and left me with a fraction.

GRANDMA is not even listening, but trying with difficulty to get up from her chair.

GRANDMA Give me your arm, child. (MAUD goes to her and helps her stand; GRANDMA hobbles offstage.) More letters came while you were gone. Clear them out of the parlour, will you. It looks cluttered.

GRANDMA exits. MAUD looks at the letters, hands on her hips, as though facing an unavoidable chore. Sighing, she scoops them up and carries them over to the bed. 109

MAUD sits, grabs one bundle and unties it.

MAUD {Flips through one letter after another.) It's always Anne — they want more and more Anne! (Tossing the letters down, exasperated.) I wish I'd never written about "kindred spirits" in my book — every freak who has written to me about it claims to be one! If I am to be dragged by Anne's chariot wheels the rest of my life, I'll bitterly repent having ever created her. Some days she weighs on me like an incubus...

LMM picks up the discarded letters and puts them, one by one, back in MAUD'S hands.

LMM (Reciting their contents, without having to look.) "To L. M. Montgomery. Thank you so much for writing Anne...'''' "Dear Miss Montgomery. Your Anne is such an inspiration to me. Please write another Anne book..." "Dear Anne. I love you from the bottom of my heart. I want more than anything to find a Gilbert of my own. If we have a daughter I will call her 'Anne.'" (After a pause, to MAUD.) A public who expects a certain style from an author rather resents having anything else offered it.

MAUD More to the point, I can't afford to damn the public. I must cater to it for a while yet.

MAUD notices a single letter lying on top of the desk. She stands, picks it up, and opens it.

EWAN appears under a spotlight.

EWAN United Free Church College, Glasgow, Scotland. November the fifth, 1910. Dear Maud. I hope you and your grandmother are both well. I've immersed myself entirely in my studies... Indeed, lately I find myself unable to stop thinking about them. I am much preoccupied... 110

EWAN AND MAUD I lie awake at night...

MAUD "...grappling with doctrine, with troubling notions I cannot seem to banish from my mind." (Skimming.) "The elect and the reprobate"... "eternal hellfire and damnation"?

EWAN I cannot see a way around it. Some of us must be predestined for hell... The idea haunts my thoughts, and invades my dreams...

MAUD (Looks up, frowning.) What is wrong with him? There is something terribly wrong with Ewan.

LMM (Looking at EWAN.) For weeks I'd noticed a strangeness in him. A detachment and a pessimism in his letters.

MAUD There must be something worse than headache and insomnia to account for his despondency...

The spotlight over EWAN goes out; he exits.

MAUD (Turning to LMM.) Perhaps I am being morbid. Perhaps things are not so bad after all.

LMM A new day, with no mistakes in it?

MAUD Yes, that bend in the road... It may be only a trick ~ it has always seemed to be a trick hitherto ~ but it serves.

MAUD exits. Ill

LMM When you know things you have to go by facts. But when you dream there's nothing to hold you down.

SCENE 24

MAUD and GRANDMA enter the parlour in the midst of an argument.

MAUD If we could just hire a servant-

GRANDMA Nonsense.

MAUD Grandma, the housework on top of my writing is getting to be too much for me!

GRANDMA Give up the scribbling then.

GRANDMA sits in her chair.

MAUD But to be kept from my work by a succession of petty worries, it's—

GRANDMA (Rocking in her chair and looking the other way.) Flighty girls of your generation have no concept of economy. As long as air and salvation are still free, there is no need of spending.

MAUD But Grandma-

GRANDMA Extravagance! 112

MAUD (Turning to LMM.) Nothing has the slightest influence on her — one might as well talk to a pillar of granite! She grows more and more like a peevish child.

LMM I was living in subjection to a woman whose domineering narrow-mindedness had intensified with age. And there was so much I could have done! Fix up this old house, travel a little, entertain friends...

MAUD (Turning to GRANDMA, defeatedly.) But I am helpless as a chained prisoner... (With a bitter laugh.) Success has changed nothing, except to double my responsibilities! I am a. famous woman... yet my living conditions are not even physically comfortable. I can do nothing with my earnings to make life easier and more cheerful for the two of us! It seems a mockery that this money should come to me... Sometimes I feel I can't bear it a day longer, her ceaseless tyranny in small things. I fear it is making a bitter woman of me.

GRANDMA gets up from her chair and exits.

MAUD (Passionately, to LMM.) Life is a starved, ugly thing ~ but if I possessed even a little freedom, I could make it a rich, beautiful thing! I know I could ~ it is in me!

Soft, dreamy notes of music begin.

YOUNG ANNE andMAUDIE enter. Their arms are linked, and they smile and whisper to each other. LMM and MAUD look over at them.

LMM Does life ever frighten you, Anne, with its blankness? Its swarms of cold, uninteresting people...

YOUNG ANNE (To MAUD.) Come...

YOUNG ANNE takes MAUD's hand; MAUDIE takes LMM's hand. The girls lead the women to the edge of the stage. They look out. 113

MAUDIE Drink it in...

At first MAUD is reluctant, resentful. But after a few moments, the spell of the scene works its magic on her and the bitterness leaves her face.

MAUD How good it is to be out in the purity and silence of the night... How great and still and wonderful everything is!

MAUDIE The soft, warm rain of the afternoon has infused the air with fragrance — smell the dying fir, the wet leaves...

YOUNG ANNE Isn't it splendid to see the new morning coming up over those long hills and glowing through those fir tops? I feel as if I'd washed my very soul in that bath of earliest sunshine... And look at that sea! All silver and shadow and vision of things unseen... We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.

MAUD The island is always lovely but tonight it seems more beautiful than I have ever known it... Oh, it is good to feel well and vivid and alive!

Each girl takes one of MAUD's hands and leads her to the desk, where she sits and begins writing a letter.

LMM Whatever gods there are, there is no place I have ever felt so close to them.

SCENE 25

Lights reveal FREDE sitting by her fireplace at stage left, reading a letter.

As MAUD speaks, LMM walks over to the desk and leans against it. 114

MAUD (Reciting.) Frede dear, I think I am nearer the heart of things. I see now that to write has always been my central purpose, around which every effort and hope of my life has grouped itself. I am no longer an isolated, selfish unit. I have begun to see myself as one with my kind — to see deeper into my own life and the lives of others. I am learning to look below the surface comedy of life.

Lights go out over FREDE, who exits. Music ends.

MAUD finishes up her letter and seals it. She rises to go.

GRANDMA (OFFSTAGE) Post for you, Maud.

GRANDMA enters and hands MAUD another letter.

MAUD Thank you, Grandma. Will you put this one for Frederica in the mailbag? (Gives it to her.)

GRANDMA (Shaking her head.) The amount of paper you go through in a week, girl...

GRANDMA exits. MAUD opens the new letter, and reads it.

Pause.

MAUD Will Pritchard? No - no it can't be, not Willy!

WILL, a figment, appears beside her under a white light.

WILL Will you come out with me, Maudie? It's a fine day and the lilies are blooming.

MAUD Not Will... Will, so full of life and fun... 115

MAUD reaches out a hand to him, but the spotlight on WILL fades out and he exits. MAUD stands there, stone-faced.

LMM In my life I have taken each loss a little more quietly, a little more restrainedly, until now the tears are all silent ones.

MAUD goes to the bed, reaches under it, and picks up a little wooden box. She sits on the bed. Opening the box, she takes out a letter, slowly unfolds it, and reads it silently.

LMM The ten-year-letter seemed like a message from the dead ~ from the world of spirits. A link between me and my lost self..

A dried flower falls from the folds of the letter. MAUD picks it up and looks at it with tenderness.

MAUD Wasn't it only yesterday that we sat in the old high school and laughed? Wasn't it only yesterday that we walked by the river?

LMM Those dear old days... how much has come and gone since then! And now he's buried on that faraway prairie...

MAUD He was the nicest boy I ever knew... Our friendship was perfect— (Her voice breaks.) Oh God, Will! Will, if you could only come back and be my friend again! I'm not thinking of love — indeed, I feel rather a distaste for it! If I could choose to bring back you or Herman, I'd choose you! I just long bitterly for companionship ~ to know that you are there... Oh Will, where are you? Are you anywhere?

MAUD holds the letter to her chest, tears streaming silently.

LMM Surely, surely, those who knew each other so well and dearly here will meet again in some fair Hereafter... 116

MAUD covers her eyes with her hand. LMM sits on the bed. She puts an arm around MAUD and leans her head against her.

LMM (Looking out.) When suffering comes, the process of soul evolution begins. Until you have lost a loved one or been made to suffer for love, you haven't the remotest conception of real life. You have never felt or known real sorrow. (Softly, to MAUD.) Patience, sad heart. There is eternity. This life is only a cloudy day in a succession of varied lives.

They sit in silence for a moment.

MAUD stands, slowly walks over to the mirror, and looks at her reflection.

MAUD Can the pale, sad-eyed woman in the glass really be the merry girl of olden days?

LMM That strange, dreamy childhood of mine... it clashes with the real world hopelessly — irreconcilably. I must learn to keep the two apart, so that the former might remain for me forever unspoiled.

MAUD The girl I was is dead as though sod were heaped over her. Who or what I am now I do not know.

SCENE 26

Lights rise over GRANDMA in her rocking chair with a bible in her lap.

GRANDMA Maud! Come here!

LMM It struck me then how very frail and old Grandma looked. 117

GRANDMA Read to me.

MAUD Yes, Grandma.

MAUD goes to her. She takes the bible from her, sits, and opens it at a bookmark. As she reads, GRANDMA rocks and gazes straight ahead, her eyes unfocused.

MAUD From the Book of Joshua. "Be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. For the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

GRANDMA Maud, go put the kettle on. Your grandfather will be home soon.

MAUD Grandma... grandfather is—

GRANDMA You know how particular he is about mealtimes.

MAUD says nothing, but reaches over and pats GRANDMA's knee. They sit together for a moment.

MAUDIE and FATHER appear in the vine-flickering spotlight from Act One, Scene 2.

MAUDIE Where is Mother?

FATHER In heaven. 118

MAUDIE Where is heaven?

FATHER points upward, and they both look up. LMM and MAUD look up, too.

LMM For years I thought it was in the attic of the church.

The lights out over FATHER and MAUDIE, who exit.

MAUD I cannot climb up to her. I am alone.

SCENE 27

EWAN appears under a spotlight.

EWAN United Free Church College, Glasgow, Scotland. March the fourth, 1910. Dear Maud. I trust this finds you well. My course is nearly over. I'll finish up at the seminary by summer, and come back to the island directly. I expect to get a church somewhere in Ontario. I think fondly of you being there, setting up house in the manse and greeting the congregation with me...

The spotlight goes out over EWAN, who exits.

LMM I had come to feel a queer impersonal affection for him, as for some imaginary lover in a dream.

MAUD If marriage meant only a series of conversations on intellectual subjects, I could marry Ewan very well... (Stands, suddenly fretful.) Is this one of those nightmares? When you find yourself marrying someone you hate or don't know, without the slightest idea how it came about? (With a cynical sort of laugh.) Ewan doesn't love me any more than I love him- 119

LMM And I know without real love, any intimate bond becomes a fetter and can only lead to bitterness of soul...

MAUD What will I feel when he touches me? Will I quiver with repulsion in my every nerve?

Silence.

LMM I could come to love him...

MAUD If I could only see Frede for a few hours and talk things out! But she has gone home to nurse her mother and has no time for letters. There is no living mortal to whom I can go for advice or help...

LMM Oh, sometimes, I think it is no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after a while and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came!

MAUD stands and walks to the edge of the stage.

MAUD He has been waiting for me for five years. I cannot break it off. I cannot.

LMM I am thirty-six years old. What is my alternative — living in a cheap boarding house in Charlottetown, writing potboilers for a living? Finding another backwater school? How long would I last before I withered inside at the monotony... (LMMgoes to MAUD, takes her hand, and looks her in the eyes.) Ewan would give me a place where I could be mistress. He could give me a family!

GRO WN- UP ANNE enters. 120

MAUD (To GROWN-UP ANNE.) I don't know what to do with you! They want more, always more Anne, but what do you have to do with me anymore? What do / know of happy love affairs?

LMM Anne has ceased to be an inspiration. She is perfect. I drift about, tempest-tossed and mocked by fate...

MAUD goes to the desk, takes out the portfolio, sits and writes a paragraph.

Soft, sad music begins. Suddenly GROWN-UP ANNE sinks to her knees, sobbing.

MAUD (Reading aloud what she has just written.) "Oh, the black years of emptiness stretching before her! She could not live through them — she could not! She cowered down by her window and wished, for the first time in her gay young life, that she could die, too."

GILBERT, played by HERMAN, enters. GROWN- UP ANNE looks up; her expression is one of unutterable relief.

GROWN-UP ANNE Gilbert! Oh Gil!

GROWN-UP ANNE runs to embrace GILBERT.

LMM I gave Anne her happy ending. A fairy tale romance for the readers.

MAUD They need to believe in her. They need to believe in happiness...

Lights out.

Music ends. 121

SCENE 28

Lights rise on GRANDMA lying still in the bed, which has been moved to stage left to indicate another bedroom in the Macneill house.

MAUD enters with a tea tray. She sets it down on an end table and taps GRANDMA on the shoulder.

MAUD Here's your tea, Grandma.

MAUD leans closer.

MAUD Grandma?

She shakes her.

MAUD Grandma? Grandma!

Her face crumples. She sits on the bed and lovingly touches GRANDMA's face.

Lights rise on LMM standing next to the desk.

LMM I know she never wanted me. She'd raised six children before me; she thought she was done with it all. We of the younger generation didn't know her before age and infirmity stole most of the brightness from her life. We could not remember her as young, happy ~ lovable!

MAUD Had I known her as she was, perhaps I could have loved her... I did love her­ der voice breaks.) She's gone ~ Grandma's gone! Thirty years of her sitting in her chair and telling me what to do — and now she's gone! (With deep, shocked pain.) When I go I shall dream that she is here, waiting for me, sitting cold by a fireless hearth, wondering where I am! 122

Lights out.

SCENE 29

When the lights come back on, GRANDMA is gone and MAUD is covering all the furniture, including the desk, with sheets.

LMM stands in the middle of the stage, her hands resting on the covered furniture around her.

LMM It is terrible to love things, and people, as I do... I wonder if old dreams haunt rooms — if, when one leaves forever a place where one has hoped and suffered and laughed, something of that person, intangible yet nonetheless real, remains behind... like a voiceful memory.

MAUD finishes and looks around the room.

MAUD Time must move faster out there... away from this house... this stillness. (She stands there, overcome. Her eyes are wide, full of tears, alternating between grief and disbelief.) I love this home more than I love, or shall ever love, any other place on this earth! I shall never be able to forget it, or the ceaseless, secret longing for it. (She lifts a sheet to open the door of the wardrobe, from which she takes a wedding dress. She holds the dress over herself) Maud Montgomery will never leave this room. Maud MacDonald will...

MAUD drops the dress and sinks to her knees, shaking with quiet sobs.

LMM I wept a lost dream ~ a dream that could never be fulfilled ~ a girl's dream of her perfect mate, to whom she might give herself with no reservations. (Kneeling by MAUD.) We all dream that dream. And if we surrender it unfulfilled, we feel that something wild and sweet and unutterable has gone out of life!

Lights go out, and come back on. MAUD is gone. LMM is now kneeling and crying where MAUD was, next to the wedding dress. The early morning light 123

is coming in the window. After a moment, LMM rises to her feet and breathes a steadying breath.

LMM There are times when I hate life. And other times when I love it fiercely. Thank God that the soul, the mind is free — nothing can trap it!

MAUDIE and MAUD enter, holding hands.

MAUDIE (To LMM.) Stay with me.

LMM looks at her child-self with love and pain. She reaches out and hugs her tight, kissing the top of her head. They break apart.

LMM and MAUD look at each other. MAUD hands LMM the wedding dress from the floor and the journal from the desk. Then she takes the engagement ring off her finger and puts it on LMM's. They squeeze hands for a brief moment.

LMM (To her girl selves.) Goodbye.

Lights go out over MA UD and MA UDIE. They exit.

LMM walks across the stage, turns to look at the room once last time, and nods slightly.

LMM

(Almost a whisper.) Goodbye.

She exits, taking the journal and the wedding dress with her.

The beautiful, haunting music begins.

End 124 AFTERWORD

Life has not been—never can be—what I once hoped it would be in my girlhood dreams. — L. M. Montgomery, 1917 (Selected Journals 11.206)

Lucy Maud Montgomery, or Maud as she liked to be called, was marked by

sadness very early in life. The death of her mother was an event she claimed to

remember vividly, even though she was less than two years old when it happened. Like

her most famous character, Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables, she was

effectively an orphan, but in Maud's case this was because her father married again and began a new family. Like Anne, she was raised by an elderly couple, but they were

cold, rigidly conservative, and left her yearning for affection all her life. Maud, like

Anne, taught at rural schools for a time, but she felt herself wasted on the uninspiring, tiring work. As Anne did, she studied literature at a university—quite remarkable for a woman of her background at that time—but without the financial support of her family,

she was forced to drop out after one year. And like Anne, she fell deeply in love in her twenties, but she felt her beloved beneath her intellectually, and broke it off. With the responsibility of caring for her guardians until they died, she lived at home until she was thirty-six years old. When she finally left, it was to marry a man she respected but did not love, and who, as she found out too late, suffered from mental illness. She never lived on Prince Edward Island again, though she returned to it over and over in her fiction.

In 1982, the journals of L.M. Montgomery were purchased by the University of

Guelph's Archive and Special Collections, and came under the editorship of Professors 125 Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. With their publication in five volumes from

1985 to 2004, the journals have brought to light unexpected elements of Montgomery's

personality and life story. In a 2004 Globe and Mail article, one commentator went so

far as to say:

[W]e've had to radically revise our perception of the Princess of Prince Edward Island as a sentimental, dutiful, upbeat, nature-loving Victorian- era holdover. Montgomery may have been all of that. But [...] the author was, as well, a brooding, illness-plagued, mean-spirited, tart- tongued, barbiturate-popping, wine-loving, hissy-fitting snob [...] as unorthodox and disturbed as Anne Shirley was plucky and sweet. (Adams Rl)

As troubling as such extreme statements may be to many of her devoted fans, there were

certainly two sides to this woman writer: the cheerful face she presented to her public,

and the questioning, sensual, tempestuous, at times resentful person she kept hidden

from all but a trusted few.

An enigmatic, divided personality such as Montgomery's provides a wealth of

material for a dramatist. In his 1994 play The Wooden Hill, playwright and former UNB

Writer-in-Residence Don Hannah focuses on the later years of Montgomery's life, when

she was living with her husband in retirement in Toronto, coming to terms with her son

leaving to fight in the second World War. I am less interested in the end of

Montgomery's life; rather, my interest lies in her early years, in the roots of her transformation into this darker, second self. My goal from the start was to undermine the still-frequent parallel drawn by the general public between the narrative of Anne and the author's personal history. I set out to explore the version of Montgomery's early life described in the journals, while interrogating the faith invested by so many in the idealized figure of Anne. What became of most interest to me were the child and the 126 young woman inside the public figure of L. M. Montgomery. The bittersweet relationship between Montgomery and her past, as well as her love-hate relationship with Anne, came to form the major themes of my play.

To limit my scope, I came up with the idea of having the entire play take place temporally in one location, on one night of this woman's life: the night before her wedding. Her grandmother, the guardian she resented for years, has just died. Her family farmhouse, the only real home she has ever known, has been stripped, its furniture about to be sold. After a lifetime of being tied to home and thirteen years of near total stasis, everything is about to change. She will never live on her island again.

Who would have been on her mind on that particular night of her life? Her grandmother, her father, her few close friends? Her soon-to-be husband, Ewan? The lost love of her life, Herman; or at least, the idea of a perfect mate? I've imagined in my play that she revisited all these things, along with Anne, the character that changed her world and, most importantly, her girlhood, the happiest and most precious part of her troubled life.

As Susanna Egan and Gabriele Helms have pointed out, "we live in an auto/biographical age that uses the personal narrative as a lens onto history and the contemporary world" (Egan and Helms 5). In recent years, as the popularity of life- narratives has spread to the Canadian stage, theatre and auto/biography studies have intersected. Playwright Andrew Moodie, discussing his biographical play The Real

McCoy about the Afro-Canadian inventor Elijah McCoy, insists that "the only responsibility an artist has is to create a work of art. Period. Use whatever form of truth, in whatever fashion, to do that" (Moodie 319). I could have, as Moodie says of his 127 work, "played fast and loose" with the facts, and written a play inspired by or loosely based on the life of L.M. Montgomery—but this was not my intention. Rather, governing all my choices was my desire to write the story that I believe Montgomery herself would have wanted to tell, had she had the chance to present her life's narrative to a sympathetic audience.

Although I have omitted events and characters and made certain small changes to history to heighten the drama of the scenes, I tried throughout to be as faithful as possible to the story of Montgomery's life as she recorded it. Telling an entirely "true" story is, of course, impossible for any biography, given "the strategic fictions that the representation of a life must necessarily incur" (Bennett 33). What is more, there is the fact that years after the writing of her early journals, Montgomery recopied them into large ledgers and destroyed her original notebooks—to what extent she edited the entries as she transferred them, we will never know. Accepting the impossibility of total biographic accuracy, what concerned me most as I wrote the play was the fact that

Montgomery very deliberately left behind this version of events. The journals are what I sought to bring to life, letting the tensions of their writer's self-constructed identity linger below the surface of my narrative.

The mainly chronological, realist structure of the play invites the audience to live

Montgomery's last night in Cavendish along with her, travelling through the pages of the journal as she does. I thought of the stage as the journal—as the space or arena of

Montgomery's mind—with time speeding up at some moments and slowing down at others as she jumps ahead to certain places in her memory. Much of the dialogue comes directly from the journals, although I have pared down Montgomery's at times verbose language, editing and rearranging selected phrases. In the scenes that are purely fictional, I have tried to blend my words seamlessly with hers, assuming her voice and thoughts as my own.

I initially considered using multimedia projections throughout the play, incorporating Montgomery's photography into the story to create a sort of patchwork theatrical experience. But I soon decided against this kind of jarring, postmodern style. Rather than employing Brechtian techniques of alienating the audience to provoke a critical, distanced view of the actions on the stage, I aimed for just the opposite. My purpose, above all, was to tell an emotionally compelling story, a

"profoundly personal" (Grace 275) drama rather than an overtly political one, in the immediacy of which the audience is caught up. Placing a more Aristotelian emphasis on pity and empathy, the experience of a climactic release of emotion is precisely what I intended for the audience. Both the storyteller-protagonist and her audience, then, take part in the play's cathartic journey.

All the common events of maturation—the realization of mortality, the loss of innocence and the gaining of wisdom—were made more painful for Montgomery because of her over-analytical, intensely sensitive nature, the same nature she gave to her best-loved heroines. "What a curse feeling is!" (571.205) Montgomery exclaims in the journals. Yet she continued to believe that an existence as a creature of deep love and feeling, albeit one of great strife, was superior to the less painful, less intense lives lived by other kinds of people. "It is better to possess [this sensibility], living in a garret, than to be the inhabitant of palaces without it" (129), she writes in Anne ofAvonlea. 129 From the child days of the Story Girl to the teenage adventures of Anne

Shirley to the grown-up career of Emily Starr, Montgomery repeatedly fashions in her

novels a life path for a certain kind of girl. This girl she constructs—an ideal that is at

times connected to but ultimately separate from the author herself—is a thoughtful,

intelligent, imaginative, creative, ambitious, sensitive, spiritual, and loving girl.

Although this heroine is frequently taken into womanhood and matrimony by the end of

her story, it is at that point that she unvaryingly becomes less developed and less

appealing than her younger self. Essentially, Montgomery creates a trajectory of

girlhood only to problematize it, bringing an end to its appeal midway through. Her real

interest lies not with the future problematic realities of her girl creations, but with their

stasis—with fictional reenactments of a perpetual, imagined girlhood, a perfect age in which eternal friendship and idealistic romance are glorified.

There emerges in both the journals and novels a fixation with three stages of

female development: childhood, girlhood, and womanhood. For Montgomery, the transitions in and out of girlhood are the pivotal ones of life, upon which she dwells frequently in her early journals in particular. Montgomery's distinction between "child,"

"girl," and "woman" is perhaps most clearly defined in the novel Emily Climbs:

Some of us can recall the exact time in which we reached certain milestones on life's road—the wonderful hour when we passed from childhood to girlhood—the enchanted, beautiful—or perhaps the shattering and horrible—hour when girlhood was suddenly womanhood—the chilling hour when we faced the fact that youth was definitely behind us—the peaceful, sorrowful hour of the realization of age. (54)

These transitions are not immediate; they overlap as they flow from one stage to the next, as Marilla and Rachel Lynde discuss at the end of Anne of Green Gables. "There's 130 a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways," says Rachel, to which Marilla

retorts, "There's a good deal more of the woman about her in others" (331). Later in the

series, in Anne ofAvonlea, Anne reminds Marilla, "[0]ne can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once" (75). Montgomery writes a great deal about in-between

stages, speaking in the journals of "those dear old days of our early teens—half

childhood half girlhood" (571.181). At a given age, she suggests, an individual will be a mixture of two states, with one dominating the other.

From the beginning of my writing process, I had in mind a multi-part Maud

Montgomery, following a well-established precedent in Canadian memory plays—such as Michel Tremblay's Albertine in Five Times, David Young's Glenn, Marie Clements'

Copper Thunderbird, and Sharon Pollack's Doc—of splitting the consciousness of the protagonist between multiple actors. To represent the three stages of life with which

Montgomery was so fascinated, I decided upon three Mauds for my play: LMM, Maud, and Maudie. LMM is the Lucy Maud Montgomery of 1911, about to be married, standing in her childhood home one last time before leaving it for good. She is the world-weary celebrity who has decided, with sadness, that the best years of her life have already passed. LMM narrates and steers us through the story of her youth, shaping and refashioning events as she wishes to remember them, trying to push unwanted memories from her mind. The memory-journey of the play is her attempt at communing with her girl selves one last time before parting with her island forever.

The focal story of Act One is that of the child, Maudie. She is, to use the qualities Montgomery attributed to her late mother, a "spiritual, poetical girl full of fine emotions and noble impulses" (SJ 1.300). She is the child dreamer with her nose in a 131 book, running wild on the shores of the Island, the part of Montgomery most closely

related to the character of young Anne Shirley. Her, and Anne's, uninhibited effusions

of feeling often lead to ridicule or punishments from shocked or amused adults. But, for

the most part, the unconscious happiness of childhood is bound up with being

thoughtless, carefree, and unburdened of any real self-analysis. Assessing her childhood

as an adult, Anne in Anne ofAvonlea reflects, "I'm just beginning to realize how starved

and lonely it really was" (AA 238). Even children who are mistreated and neglected—

like Anne, who, before coming to Green Gables, lived as a servant with various families

and in an orphan asylum—do not realize the true nature of their situations until an older

age, and are still able to live happy, hopeful lives.

Although Montgomery writes a great deal about "the tortures [that] sensitive

children suffer" (The Alpine Path 26), she nevertheless concludes about her own

childhood, "I was happy and didn't know it" (571.280). She writes that in comparison

to later times of her life, she "wasn't afraid" (SJ 1.238) then to have strong or

unfashionable opinions, because she had yet to develop a critical sense of self and of the

world. "I had no conception of age at that time," Montgomery writes in her

autobiography. "Either you were grown-up or you were not, that was all there was about

it" (AP 28), she says. In Anne of Green Gables, she comically portrays this simplicity of

outlook: "Prissy is grown up, you know," says eleven-year-old Anne, "She's sixteen"

(150). Along with age, the gender divide does not have much of a place in

Montgomery's view of childhood. If not quite a state of genderlessness—girl children

do generally behave differently than boy children—it is clearly a place free from thoughts of the opposite sex as anything other than "merely possible good comrades" 132 (Anne of Green Gables 310). Mingling easily with each other as playmates, male and female children are equal citizens in a kingdom of make-believe.

Friendship at this age, "the instinctive, unconventional camaraderie of childhood" (AP 42), is, for Montgomery, simple and nondiscriminatory. In the play, when Maudie discovers that her childhood friend Nate Lockhart harbours more than friendly feelings for her, it is a sort of betrayal—an intrusion of something that does not belong. But she shakes it off, and in the next scene, the ageless, genderless freedom of a child is hers again:

We hear sprightly, energetic music with the sounds of gulls and waves breaking. MAUDIE runs breathlessly onstage, barefoot, hair streaming, and holding her boots.

MAUDIE Who cares for boys when there are shores and trees?

She puts down her boots, grabs LMM's hand, and pulls her downstage. In time with the wave sounds, they stand at the edge of the stage and then shuffle backwards, as if playing tag with the tide. They play this game repeatedly as they talk.

LMM The bracing tang of salt air—

MAUDIE And shells as big as your fist!

LMM Eating dulse by the shipyard!

MAUDIE Bathing in the sea!

LMM Rambles in the woods!

MAUDIE Fishing in the brook! 133 LMM And ghost stories and apple orchards—

MAUDIE And flower gardens—

LMM And the homestead fields!

The light becomes the colours of a sunset. Letting go of LMM's hand, MAUDIE reaches one foot off the edge of the stage, as if dipping a toe in the ocean. LMM breathes in deeply, drinking in the beauty around her.

LMM And the red glow of the setting sun on the sea...

A large wave is heard breaking. MA UDIE shrieks and holds up her hands as if she 'sjust been splashed in the face. She laughs, grabs her boots, and jaunts offstage, swinging them.

(Act 1, Scene 5)

Because children do not, in a sense, inhabit the real world, they are, Montgomery writes,

"happy, thoughtless mites with a world of [their] own" (51/1.50) whose "imagination^] refuse to be hampered by facts" (AP 53). This gives them the ability to recover quickly from sadness; as Uncle Alec fondly remarks in The Story Girl, "Nothing can quench their spirits for long" (208). It is the nature of a child to live in an eternal present, not to reflect a great deal about the past or the future. When faced with the idea of living forever, the Story Girl casually replies, "I expect we'd get tired of it after a while [but] I think it would be a good while before I would" (The Story Girl 225).

When we meet Maudie in the play, she is starting to leave childhood behind. She has childish outbursts of temper towards her grandmother and a child's passivity when faced with overwhelming situations, but she is certainly not thoughtless. Books, writing, and an understanding of the past are already important to her. She uses reading and journaling as a means of finding out about and interpreting the world, just as young

Anne is constantly trying to act "as if [she] were a heroine in a book" (AGG 88). Just

like Emily Starr and Rilla Blythe, Maudie begins to use diary-writing to record and

organize her experiences and opinions. For the young Montgomery and for several of her characters, this is also the age when creative writing becomes a valuable means of

self-expression. In the play we see Maudie writing poems and essays and achieving her

first publication at the age of fifteen.

According to Montgomery, while children exist solely within their own

subjectivity, young women begin to take an interest in their wider community. Their need for guidance often manifests itself, she observes, in "girlish enthusiasm and hero- worship" (5711.368). In Anne of Green Gables, Anne idolizes her schoolteacher, Miss

Stacey, and her Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Allan, to the point of adulation.

Montgomery greatly admired her teacher Hattie Gordon, dedicating Anne ofAvonlea to her. In the play, Maudie wants to model her life after Miss Gordon's by becoming a teacher herself, and LMM calls Miss Gordon "[t]he only grown-up who sympathized with me—who understood about books and studies and ambitions" (Act 1, Scene 3).

Along with lofty, serious ambitions and individualism, the journals also describe the fun and gratification of being "saucy and frivolous" among other young people.

Montgomery writes about enjoying a young world full of "dances and picnics and flirtations," and experiencing the "queer, foolish triumphant little feeling" (51/1.16) of being paid "boyish compliments" (SJ 1.294). In Montgomery's trajectory of girlhood, the symbolic moment of first romance is a pivotal one. Though marriage was something the young Montgomery thought of only "in an aloof, abstract way, as of something more 135 or less inevitable some day in the future—always in the future" (57 1.203), the arrival of romance was a significant, beautiful part of her life. In the journals, Montgomery claims that the first night a girl has an escort home is the moment she steps over "the threshold of young ladyhood," a "momentous occasion" (5.71.308) never to be forgotten.

In Emily Climbs, Teddy Kent's words of admiration for Emily are similarly glorified:

[W]hen you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life. (54)

The first man to recognize a girl's potential to be loved is, for Montgomery, an incomparable figure: "As a man he may mean nothing to her: as a symbol, he means more than any other ever can" (5711.203). In the play, Maudie's private, innocent moments with her schoolmate Will Pritchard are her first taste of this thrill. "It's a nice feeling, being liked" (Act 1, Scene 15), says LMM. The joy of being admired and desired is a powerful one for Montgomery, both in romance and in friendship. In the journals, she describes the qualities of her ideal suitor—"a visionary dream of the man I thought I could love" (571.208)—alongside her regard for the "unmixed joy" and "soul communion" (5711.175) of friendship.

A "girl's dream of the lover who should be her perfect mate, to whom she might splendidly give herself with no reservations," is a dream "[w]e all dream" (5711.66), she insists. In the early Anne books, Anne and Diana are united in the bond of imaginary romance, jointly devoted to the "melancholy Byronic hero" (AA 267) they have created.

The longevity of friendship and romantic idealism are closely linked; Maudie's certainty that her friendships "will outlive the years" (571.254) goes hand in hand with her faith in romantic ideals. The golden age of girlhood, the "dear old merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion" (571.161), was, for Montgomery, like a

"fair, unwritten white page where you may inscribe your name in letters of success" (57

1.194). Symbolizing this age of anticipation and ambitions, Maudie, like Anne, is full of

"strongly felt potentialities" (AA 248) and looks forward with a hopeful heart to "the bright, beautiful future" (571.253).

At the close of Act One, Maudie the child gives way to Maud the young woman, who takes over the plot of Act Two. One of Montgomery's most poignant passages concerning the arrival of "young ladyhood" is written from the perspective of Marilla in

Anne of Green Gables:

The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised little head, in her place. Marilla loved the girl as much as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss. (AGG 285)

The child-girl is fully gone, and in her place comes a new creature, the next stage of

Montgomery's trajectory of maturation. Often in Montgomery's stories the emergence of this fully developed girl coincides with a coming into one's own in beauty and fashion, and in the play Maudie symbolically removes her pinafore and dresses herself in the attire of a young lady. Although the end of an old chapter of life may be bittersweet, "the romance in the idea of that 'closed chapter'" (AA 254) never wavers.

Hope for the future makes up for the loss of other things, and although she has moments tinged with sadness, Maudie ultimately enjoys her new, emerging self, and exits the stage with a smile. 137 Maud is the third part of the play's triad—the young lady, full of passionate feeling but given to stormy moods of cynicism, striving and struggling to make a place for herself in society. Her eyes are fully opened to the possibilities of the world around her, and to the task of defining herself within it. In the journals, Montgomery writes how she gained "self-control" and an "understanding of [her] position" (571.301) as she left childhood behind. Though many of her thoughts may be the same, Maud's behaviour is somewhat different from Maudie's, for as Kilmeny learns in Kilmeny of the

Orchard, with self-knowledge comes the ability to articulate with "speech that [can] conceal and protect" (104). Maud knows better than Maudie how to avoid those childish statements that will be "laughed at or wondered over" (AGG 285), using her grown-up ability to analyze and moderate herself. Rather than wasting energy fighting with her grandmother as Maudie does, Maud goes ahead and pursues her goals with or without familial approval.

While Maudie plays with the local Cavendish girls, Maud is dissatisfied with shallow friendships of convenience and wishes for companions of the sort that she and

Anne call "kindred spirits," "bosom friends," or what Cornelia Bryant in Anne's House of Dreams refers to as "the race that knows Joseph." Whereas Maudie participates in hero-worship, Maud becomes the object of it, as fan mail begins to pour in after the publication of Anne. The admiration is gratifying, yet frustrating, as it produces falsely intimate relationships. This journal entry from 1916 demonstrates the fervour of one such extreme fan:

A lady came up to me and said, "Oh, Mrs. MacDonald, I want to tell you how much my little girl loves Anne. I found her with Green Gables the other day and I said, 'Child, how often have you read that book.' She said, 'Oh mother, I don't know. I just keep it and my bible together and read a chapter of both every day.'" In my salad days I may have dreamed of rivaling Bronte [sic] and Eliot. I certainly never in my wildest flights dreamed of competing with the Bible!!! (51/11.181)

This fan's idol-seeking brings up another important aspect of maturity: the loss of a child's instinctive closeness with God. Along with the onset of social consciousness, the end of childhood necessitates some new, mediated way of understanding the divine. At the end of Emily of New Moon, Emily reflects on how she has changed spiritually:

The sense of reality—nearness—of close communion had gone. Perhaps she had been outgrowing it gradually, as childhood began to merge into girlhood [...] A certain door of life was shut behind her and could not be reopened. (314)

Montgomery implies that while young children have no real interest in theology or etiquette, teenagers begin to look around them for guidance as they attempt to understand divine and earthly ways. Young men and women must look outside of themselves for social and religious principles, sometimes in the form of scriptural teachings and sometimes in the form of secular standards. For Montgomery, the ideal end of this process of self-definition is the conclusion that the best guide is an internal, imaginative one.

Although she married a Presbyterian minister and spent the rest of her life performing all the expected duties of a country minister's wife, Montgomery secretly held what would have been considered unconventional, even sacrilegious views. In the play, during a conversation between Maud and Ewan MacDonald, her minister suitor,

Maud skirts around her true thoughts, while LMM shares them with us:

EWAN (Shocked.) Are you saying you don't believe in heaven and hell? MAUD I think that, perhaps, we have mistaken ideas about heaven — what it is and what it holds for us. I don't believe it can be so very different from life here as most people seem to think. I believe we'll just go on living, a good deal as we live here and — be ourselves just the same — only it will be easier to be good and to ~ to see clearly.

LMM (To the audience.) I don't think I believe in any particular kind of afterlife. I am certain of life after death, that's all. I have not yet formulated any working belief to replace those which I have outgrown... Perhaps it will come in time. These things must grow, like everything else.

EWAN (A little skeptical, but polite.) I see.

LMM (To the audience.) I wonder how he'd react if I told him I doubt the divinity of Christ?

(Act 2, Scene 17)

Montgomery kept her true views from the public, only revealing them in the journals

and to a few trusted individuals. But in her inmost heart she eschewed established opinions, and longed to "shut the door of [her] soul on the curiosity and ignorance displayed by so many and retreat into a citadel of dear thoughts and beautiful

imaginings" (5711.96). The "wild sweetness of solitary dreaming" (5711.87) was her real idea of religiosity.

Questioning the religion of one's childhood goes hand in hand with questions of male-female relations. Without the intrusion of a real lover, girlish unity and hypothesizing can go on indefinitely. Girlhood for Montgomery is, after all, primarily about the realm of the mind, a place in which the perfection of symbols and ideals can never be tampered with. Imagined romance is less complicated, less distressing, and less disruptive than experiential love, and it is the shared girlish dream of romance—not womanly love—that Montgomery chooses to recreate, reenact, and reshape in her

fiction. But when possibilities become facts, when things that are about to happen do

happen, we are "driven to compromise with the insistent Real" (571.310). Stepping into

the real world is an instant threat to idealism.

"Our ideals change as we grow older—change and, alas, lowerl" Montgomery

exclaims in the journals. In Anne ofAvonlea, Anne worries over "the gulf between

theory and practice" (AA 152) and confesses that she hasn't "lived up to [her] ideals"

(AA 130), realizing, "[A]nd so there are two sides to it, as there seems to be to

everything in this world" (258). In Anne of the Island, when Anne's first proposal of

marriage turns out to be a decidedly unromantic and embarrassing experience, yet

another "maiden dream" is destroyed. The unpleasant chain of disillusionment,

Montgomery concludes, is connected to the "habit of living everything over beforehand.

It is never half as bad—or half as delightful—when it really, comes" (SJ 11.379). There

is for Montgomery "a good deal of truth in that old proverb about anticipation and realization" (5JT.143). "[Does] the painful process go on until everything [becomes] prosaic and hum-drum?" (AA 62), she laments.

As girls and boys grow into their identities of men and women, Montgomery implies that they cannot be friends in the same way. Inevitably, the "comradeship of yore" is made impossible and only two choices remain: separation, or "the friendship of a man and a woman with love as its finale" (SJ 1.243). Montgomery heroines often take their first step into womanhood with the realization of attraction, conveyed through downcast eyes and a blush. In Anne ofAvonlea, for instance, "Anne's remembered blush" gives Gilbert Blythe, her love-struck childhood friend, the hope to win her: [T]he Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness. (AA 277)

Unlike the start of innocent girlish romance, the onset of womanly love is a "pathway of passion and pain" (SJ 1.209), equal parts wonderful and heartbreaking.

Montgomery's 1898 love affair with Herman Leard, the son of the farming

family with whom she lived as a boarding schoolteacher, is often the most shocking part

of the journals to those previously unfamiliar with her biography. As a vivacious,

articulate, high-spirited girl—which she always was in public, no matter her inner mood—Montgomery drew both wanted and unwanted male attention throughout her life. More than a few men fell in love with her, and before accepting Ewan's hand,

Montgomery had already had one rejected proposal and one broken engagement.

Herman never proposed, but, as she wrote to a pen pal in 1907, "[he] was emphatically the love of my life" (Gillen 91).

He was twenty-seven and she twenty-three. She was strongly attracted to him almost from the moment they met, and after several weeks of flirting, the relationship became physical. They arranged secret nighttime meetings in his family's farmhouse, though Montgomery's upbringing "had saddled her with a Puritan conscience that polluted her joy in him and racked her with shame" (Bruce 84). "I would not have married him for anything" (Gillen 91), she wrote. Her pride and her reason forbade it:

He was my inferior in every respect. This is not vanity on my part at all. He simply was. He had no brains, no particular good looks, in short, nothing that I admire in a man. Yet I loved him as I can never love any other man. There was about him "the subtle something." (Gillen 91) When Herman suggested that they make their physical relationship a sexual one,

Montgomery faced "the most horrible temptation" (571.217) to give in. In the play,

Montgomery's two selves argue over the matter with one another:

LMM (Imploringly, to MA UD.) He had no trace of intellect, culture or education, no interest in anything beyond his farm! MAUD (Fiercely, to LMM.) With him I know rapture like I have never in all my life experienced or imagined! He electrifies me.

LMM He was not my equal in mind! I did not respect him — I knew I could never marry him!

MAUD

(Near tears, turning to HERMAN.) But I love him! I want him—

MAUD puts her arms around HERMAN.

LMM And the price the woman can pay... what if people found out, what if there was a child— MAUD (Turning away from him to yell at LMM.) I don't care! I don't care about what is right, about what people think, I am beyond all that—

LMM (Near tears herself.) But what if he stopped loving me? After I gave myself to him. What if he grew to resent me for giving in? To despise me for my weakness.

MA UD is stricken by this.

LMM And after a year of bliss, then what? What if he changed, then what would I have?

(Act 1, Scene 10) 143 It was not the fear of sinning or of getting pregnant that held her back. "No,"

she writes in the journals, "[T]hat which saved me from Herman Leard's dishonoring

love was the fear of Herman Leard's contempt. [... ] If it had not been for that I realize

that I would have plunged recklessly into that abyss of passion" (571.217).

Montgomery ended the relationship and, with difficulty, tried to resume her life without

him, masked under a "smiling face and an assumed gayety [sic]" (5JI.211). After the death of her grandfather, familial duty took her out of Herman's life for good: she was

forced to quit teaching and return home permanently.

It is always tragedy that signals the true end of girlhood in the novels; it is

always suffering that marks the beginning of "the process of soul evolution" (SJ 1.280).

Until a person has lost a loved one or been made to suffer for love, Montgomery claims, that person has "not yet attained to the remotest conception of real life and [has] never felt or known a sorrow" (SJ 1.287). For Anne and Diana in Anne of the Island, the pitiful decline of their school chum Ruby Gillis is their first sobering taste of reality, bringing the shadow of age and death into their lives. For the first time, the girls feel almost as if they are "old women with everything in life behind [them]" (Anne of the Island %\), as

Diana says mournfully. "If it is true that she is dying," replies Anne, then "any other sad thing might be true, too." Anne's final transformative moment of anguish comes at the end of Anne of the Island, when she is faced with both the knowledge of her love for

Gilbert and the prospect of his death:

Oh, the black years of emptiness stretching before her! She could not live through them—she could not! She cowered down by her window and wished, for the first time in her gay young life, that she could die, too. (237) 144 Similarly, in Emily's Quest, Emily's confrontation with death and mortality is the

first "parting of the ways of life," "a milestone to which in after years she could look back" (25). Emily descends into suffering, and her age becomes ambiguous as the years blur depressingly into one another. Her feelings of utter aloneness bring her to a point of

deep misery and, like Anne, she despairs:

[T]o-night I have been horribly lonely. Misery overwhelmed me. I seem never to be able to stop half-way in any emotion and when loneliness does seize hold on me it takes possession of me body and soul and wrings me in its blank pain until all strength and courage go out of me. To-night I am lonely—lonely. Love will not come to me—friendship is lost to me... (100)

Up until this point in Montgomery's trajectory of maturation, the heroines of the novels and the girl Montgomery of the journals have shared a path from childhood through to young womanhood. As Carol Shields notes, Anne Shirley and L.M.

Montgomery start out "as equals, both of them eager for the wholeness of life" (D18).

At heart, Montgomery implies, the two are the same intelligent, imaginative, ambitious, sensitive, and loving girl, taken, through no fault of their own, on diverging life paths.

In Montgomery's philosophy, each possesses the capacity to be happy—whether or not they are made to suffer is out of their hands. When womanhood arrives, and the similarity between the journal-heroine and the novel-heroine is all but obliterated,

Montgomery would have us believe that the difference is in the world, not the woman.

At the end of one path is blissful wifehood. In the novels, each heroine is rescued by her author, taken out of her pit of despair, and given an idealized, fairytale­ like husband. Montgomery rejoices in creating such endings, writing, "[F]or pure, joyous, undiluted delight give me romance. I always revelled in fairy tales" (SJ 1.235).

To her heroines, Montgomery gives the fate she would have desired for herself: [T]o be in the arms of a man whom I loved with all my heart and to whom I could willingly look up as my master is, after all, every woman's real idea of happiness, if she would be honest enough to admit it. There are dear and sweet minor happinesses. But that is the only perfect one. (SJ 11.146)

At the end of the other path, however, there is only lasting sadness interspersed with minor, imperfect, incomplete happinesses. This is the lot Montgomery ascribes to herself in the journals, a situation in life that, ultimately, allowed her only "reasonable"

(571.322) happiness. Whereas her heroines are rescued from their misery by love,

Montgomery sketches for herself a portrait of the fundamental loneliness of womanhood.

Her abandonment by her father, her lonely and stifling home life, the deaths and desertions of childhood friends, the pain of her aborted, passionate affair, and the captivity of a loveless marriage are the paving stones on Montgomery's road of suffering. "Spiritually, and mentally I have always had to stand alone" (571.255), she writes in the journals. Her entries vividly depict the anguish of a woman whose girl-self is "as dead as if the sod were heaped over her—dead past the possibility of any resurrection" (571.186). "I feel acutely that girlhood is gone forever" (571.195), she writes; life has "changed and darkened" (571.194) and "blistered the fair page of my girlhood with despair and shame" (571.223). The "pale, sad-eyed woman" takes the place of the "merry girl of olden days" (571.204) and Montgomery emerges as an

"altogether new creature, born of sorrow and baptized of suffering, who is the sister and companion of regret and hopeless longing." Feeling "outside of life" (571.226), she has become a woman with "no illusions and few ideals [to whom] life is flat, stale, and 146 unprofitable" (571.226). Like her character Emily, she has come to "dread the night

inexpressively" (571.170).

In a subtler way, the shadow of the other, darker path is also felt in the novels—a nuance that I hint at in the Anne scenes of my play. There is undeniably "an element of the marvelous in Anne's effortless pilgrimage through the turbulent passages of life"

(Seelye 339). Her "aura of possibility" and "power of future development" make her

seem "to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen" (AA 248); but, like a fairytale girl, she lives in a world of darker shadows, a place where anxiety, deprivation and fear are just around the corner. In Anne of the Island, for instance, Anne, thinking that

Gilbert loves another, regretfully resigns herself to "a future where work and ambition must take the place of love" (241). But Anne, of course, is spared from this fate. As

LMM says in the play, "I gave Anne her happy ending. A fairy tale romance for the readers" (Act Two, Scene 27).

Many critics have commented on how Anne fades into the background in the later novels and ceases to emote, grow, change, and plan. Rubio and Waterston, the editors of the journals, propose that "when her independent heroines marry,

[Montgomery] suggests a veiled but perceptible disharmony between their earlier aspirations and their eventual situations" {Selected Journals Il.xiv). Gillian Thomas notes the sad fact that if young Anne were to meet with her grown-up self, "she would probably not find that she was a 'kindred spirit'" (41). Montgomery seems reluctant to develop the personalities of woman heroines to which she herself cannot relate, and their fairytale lives seem ever-so-slightly hollow. Regarding Anne of the Island, Montgomery writes in a journal entry, "There is less of real life in it than in any of my other books [...] Anne's experiences there certainly are not a reflection of my own" (57II.170).

For Maud in the play, while the child Anne is a delight, the grown-up Anne becomes a

burden:

MAUD (To GROWN-UP ANNE.) I don't know what to do with you! They want more, always more Anne, but what do you have to do with me anymore? What do I know of happy love affairs?

LMM Anne has ceased to be an inspiration. She is perfect. I drift about, tempest-tossed and mocked by fate...

(Act 1, Scene 25)

One salvation from the sadness of lost dreams is the sense that we are not alone

in the loss. Being able to share the pain of melancholic nostalgia and the hardship of

present suffering with someone else and find, in that mter-subjectivity, a new joy, makes

one "no longer an isolated, selfish unit" (571.195). "In the jolly, human society of my

girl friends I forgot my cares" (57 1.198), Montgomery writes. In the play, Maudie is

comforted by the friendship of Will Pritchard, while Maud befriends her cousin,

Frederica Campbell. But the company of friends, although a temporary distraction, does not offer permanent comfort to Montgomery, whose painful "day of reckoning" (57

1.171) comes after every cherished visit is over. Miss Lavender's lament in Anne of

Avonlea describes many of Montgomery's sentiments in the journals: "Oh, sometimes, I think it is no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came" (245-46). One by one, either through death or abandonment, all of Montgomery's friends depart, leaving her with the loneliness of having no close confidant. As the years pass and "there is no living mortal to whom [she] can go for

advice or help" (571.194), time and time again Montgomery is forced to retreat back

into herself. Montgomery in the journals speaks of respite for "the lonely people" (57

1.293), for whom life becomes not "an ecstatic, rapturous affair at all but something one

can jog along very comfortably with" (57 1.287). "I have a few pleasures which depend

not on others and cannot be taken away from me" (SJ 1.223), she writes. She gestures to

"two great refuges and consolations—the world of nature and the world of books" (SJ

1.301) as her only lifelong friends in times of sadness. The journals also make mention

of myriad small, independent pleasures—photography, gardening, letter-writing, cats,

fashion, being mistress of a house filled with her "own household gods" (571.268), even

simple comforts like a good meal and a hot water bottle at night. Counting her blessings, Montgomery is able to "guard against absolute misanthropy" (SJ 1.286). The

greatest of her refuges is, of course, the pleasure and relief of writing.

When "we are together we can laugh with the abandonment of sixteen" (57

11.258), Montgomery writes of her rare, precious moments of friendship. By using her pen as a friend, she conjures up the same effect. As Rubio and Waterston suggest,

Montgomery "uses writing to elevate her mood. She turns her troubles into humour.

Sees the funny side; turns off the world, takes her grim stuff and recasts it in humour"

("Untangling" 279). In the "solace of imaginary adventures" (5711.368), she finds the

"chance to slip back through some magic loophole into the olden years" (5711.168).

Through her girl-stories, Montgomery resurrects "dreams [she] thought [she] had forgotten the secret of (5711.254), granting her own wish to have "that olden gladness and beauty back again" (5711.265). As long as she can write about Anne, Emily, Jane or Pat, she can "reenter a world of beauty, whimsy, wit, and idealism" (Writing A Life

116). Although this ideal may be sadly transitory in reality, Montgomery allows herself,

through selective memory and skilled storytelling, to hold on to it forever in an

imaginative capacity.

Keeping fresh in her mind the feeling of being a girl is, as Rubio and Waterston

propose, the key to Montgomery's "movement into a dream life. She slips into other

time zones. The past floods forward. Fiction separates her from reality" ("Untangling"

284). Memory of girlhood, Montgomery says, is the vital "link between me and my lost

self, between the present and the past" (57 1.196), "a tie that can never be utterly broken"

(£1/1.23). Her girl-stories can be read as a sort of meditative exercise for writer and

reader, a constant repetition that produces the mental or spiritual state of girlhood, what

she calls her "kingdom of ideal beauty" (571.301). Through memory, that "indefinable

something that has passed away" (51/1.161) can never be wholly lost.

A woman's friends, her husband, and even her children may disappoint her through abandonment in life or separation in death. Trees are cut down, shores become quiet and solitary, houses are abandoned, womanhood can become "lonely" (5711.52),

"thwarted," and "unlovely" (5711.131); and yet, there is a way of coping with life's inevitable vicissitudes. To readers who choose to partake of her imaginative world of lifelong girlhood, Montgomery leaves a legacy of idealism: of inner beauty, tranquillity, and dreams. As Elizabeth Epperley writes in The Fragrance ofSweetgrass, "L.M.

Montgomery's writing changes people's lives [and] profoundly affects the way people think about themselves" (3). In a 1917 journal entry, Montgomery describes her fascination with the ardent hopefulness of a group of young Anne fans: Those poor girls sat in an adoring circle and gazed at me with the awed, reverent eyes of idealizing girlhood. [...] [T]he contrast between my real self and what those worshippers of Anne believe me to be is too ludicrous. And yet there is something very sweet in the admiration of those young innocent souls. They are so uncritical and ungrudging. (SJ 11.232)

Montgomery is, as Muriel Whitaker notes, "one of those perennial authors whom

girls in their early teens cannot resist" (50)—indeed, she remains as popular among young girls today as she was a century ago. Catherine Sheldrick Ross, a scholar of

Montgomery's modern readership, notes the escapist element of Montgomery's stories,

and yet, Ross writes, "the movement isn't all in one direction, away from the social world" (32), since readers can incorporate "the reality of the book" into their own lives.

In other words, the idealism of Montgomery's world serves to inspire, to refresh, and to encourage readers—the very same process sought by Montgomery while writing. "In reading and rereading about all those imaginative children, readers are nurturing their own creativity" (33), just as Montgomery continued to nurture the best parts of herself in writing and rewriting. As Perry Nodelman suggests, instead of "a fruitless nostalgia—a lust for something we simply cannot have anymore" (Nodelman 37), Montgomery's texts offer a state of mind.

By placing herself on a greater trajectory and surrounding herself with fellow heroines as travelling companions, Montgomery gives herself a direction and a family.

She "writes her own story over and over" ('Untangling' 289), using her heroines to imagine new bends in the road:

There is always the lure of something further on—something in hiding just around the next bend—to lend spice to it. It may be only a trick—it has always seemed to be a trick hitherto—but it serves. (SJ 11.336) 151 This repetition sounds like a chant, a meditation, a prayer—it may never be anything

but a "trick," but it is the best, the only comfort available in a thwarted life.

Montgomery knows that she may be deluding herself, that she may be making the return

to mundane reality all the more painful, yet the temptation of the "pleasant antidote" (57

11.368) of revisited girlhood is strong. She gazes upon her lost girlhood with trepidation,

chiding herself for giving in to the lure of memories, but she is unable to resist. "These pilgrimages to shadow land are eerie things with an uncanny sweetness. I will make no more of them" (5711.254), she says, but she cannot help but linger, for a moment, in a world that is "strangely, perfectly, weirdly happy" (5711.274). "This power of mine,"

she writes, "has been all that has saved me many times in my life from absolute breakdown. [...] I have always been able to escape from 'intolerable reality' and save my nerves by a double life" (5711.368). This "double life," "whose currents] [flow] on side by side" (571.212), is an ever-wavering dichotomy of ideal and reality.

Ultimately, to be a perpetual girl is to refuse to live in the real world. This is the tragic paradox of Montgomery's vision of eternal girlhood. There can be no stasis apart from death; girls must become women, old orders must pass away, and new stages of being must take over. Through stories—"those unfailing keys to a world of enchantment" (571.223)—and through her constructed and reconstructed memories "of old days, old friends, and childish aspirations for the beautiful and sacred" (571.262),

Montgomery persists in detaching herself from reality. This, for her, is the only way to be one of "those exceptional natures that do not grow old in heart" (571.303) and do not age "in mind and soul" (5711.195). This mental existence is bittersweet; it is not and can never be wholly satisfying. But Montgomery, like Marilla gazing on Anne's vanishing 152 girlhood, cannot help but cling to it. Like Manila, LMM at the end of the play can, to the last, "only put her arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing that she need never let her go" (AGG 304). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, James. "The Full Lucy (Maud Montgomery)." The Globe and Mail 17 January 2004: Rl. Bennett, Susan. "3-D A/B." Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. Eds. Sherrill Grace and Jerry Wasserman. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2006. 33-48. Bruce, Harry. Maud: The Early Years ofL.M. Montgomery. Halifax: Nimbus, 2003. Clements, Marie. Copper Thunderbird. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2007. Devereux, Cecily. '"See my Journal for the full story': Fictions of Truth in Anne of Green Gables and L.M. Montgomery's Journals." The Intimate Life ofL.M. Montgomery. Ed. Irene Gammel. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005. 241-258. Egan, Susan, and Gabriele Helms. "Introduction." Auto/biography? Yes. But Canadian? Eds. Susanna Egan and Gabriele Helms. Canadian Literature 172 (Spring 2002): 5-16. Epperley, Elizabeth. The Fragrance ofSweetgrass: L.M. Montgomery's Heroines and the Pursuit of Romance. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992. Gillen, Mollie. The Wheel of Things: A Biography ofL. M. Montgomery. Halifax: Formac, 1975. Grace, Sherrill. "Sharon Pollock's Doc and the Biographer's Dilemma." Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. Eds. Sherrill Grace and Jerry Wasserman. Vancouver: Talon, 2006. 275-88. Hannah, Don. The Wooden Hill. Toronto: Playwrights Union of Canada, 1997. Montgomery, L. M. The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career, 1917. Toronto: Nimbus, 2005. —Anne of Avonlea. 1909. New York: Bantam, 1984. —Anne of Green Gables. 1908. Ed. Cecily Devereux. Toronto: Broadview, 2004. -Anne of Ingleside. 1939. New York: Bantam, 1988. —Anne of the Island. 1915. New York: Bantam, 1987. —Anne of Windy Poplars. 1936. New York: Bantam, 1988. -Emily Climbs. 1925. New York: Bantam, 1998. -Emily of New Moon. 1923. New York: Bantam, 1998. -Emily's Quest. 1927. New York: Bantam, 1998. -The Golden Road. Boston: L.C. Page & Co., 1913. —Kilmeny of the Orchard. 1910. New York: Bantam, 1993. —The Selected Journals ofL.M. Montgomery. Vol. I. 1889-1910. Ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1985. —The Selected Journals ofL.M. Montgomery. Vol. II. 1889-1910. Ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1987. —The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Vol. III. 1921-1929. Eds. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1992. —The Selected Journals ofL.M. Montgomery. Vol. IV. 1929-1935. Eds. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1998. —The Selected Journals ofL.M. Montgomery. Vol. V. 1935-1942. Eds. Mary Rubio 154 and Elizabeth Waterston. Toronto: Oxford UP, 2004. -The Story Girl. 1910. New York: Bantam, 1998. Moodie, Andrew. The Real McCoy. Toronto: Playwrights Canada P, 2006. --"I'm Not God's Gift to Black People." Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. Eds. Sherrill Grace and Jerry Wasserman. Vancouver: Talon, 2006. 317-320. Nodelman, Perry. "Progressive Utopia: Or, How to Grow Up Without Growing Up." Such a Simple Little Tale: Critical Responses to L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Ed. Mavis Reimer. Metuchen, N.J.: Children's Literature Association and Scarecrow P, 1992. Pollack, Sharon. Doc. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 1984. Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. "Readers Reading L.M. Montgomery." Harvesting Thistles: The Textual Garden of L.M. Montgomery. Ed. Mary Henley Rubio. Guelph: Canadian Children's P, 1994. Rubio, Mary Henley and Elizabeth Waterston, eds. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Vol.11. 1889-1910. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1985. -"Untangling the Web: L.M. Montgomery's Later Journals and Fiction, 1929-1939." The Intimate Life of L.M. Montgomery. Ed. Irene Gammel. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2005. --Writing A Life: A Biography of the Author of Anne of Green Gables. Toronto: ECW P, 1995. Seelye, John D. Jane Eyre's American Daughters: From The Wide, Wide World to Anne of Green Gables: A Study of Marginalized Maidens and What They Mean. Newark: University of Delaware P, 2005. Shields, Carol. "Loving Lucy." Globe and Mail 3 October 1998: D18. Steffler, Margaret. '"This has been a day in hell': Montgomery, Popular Literature, Life Writing." Making Avonlea: L.M. Montgomery and Popular Culture. Ed. Irene Gammel. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002. Thomas, Gillian. "The Decline of Anne: Matron vs. Child." L.M. Montgomery: An Assessment. Ed. John Robert Sorfleet. Guelph: Canadian Children's P, 1976. Tremblay, Michel. Albertine in Five Times. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1986. Whitaker, Muriel A. '"Queer Children': L.M. Montgomery's Heroines." L.M. Montgomery: An Assessment. Ed. John Robert Sorfleet. Guelph: Canadian Children's P, 1976. Young, David. Glenn. Toronto: Coach House Books, 1992. CURRICULUM VITAE

Kari Trogen

MA, English, University of New Brunswick, 2008 BA (Hons), English, University of Alberta, 2006