I’ve been rereading L.M. Montgomery’s Pat of Silver Bush and its sequel, Mistress Pat, for probably the hundred-and-third time. I don’t know why I keep rereading them -- in a lot of ways, they’re some of LMM’s worst-written books.
Now, I enjoy reading fantasy and SF; I am very good at willing suspension of disbelief. So I am prepared to believe in a main character who loves her home so much that she never wants to leave it, hates any slight change, and enjoys housework ("making Silver Bush beautiful"), despite the fact that the book is set in around 1920, when housework on a farm was still back-breaking daily labor.
Later note: Just saw Evilena’s comment about Pat’s "pathological attachment to that house".
And I have no problem with the idea of Pat wanting to be a home-maker instead of having a career, or with the little speech her mother gives her just in case, before having a dangerous operation: "I want you to be a happy wife and joyous mother of children, as I’ve been ... I’ve loved to wake in the night, and to know my husband and children were near and sleeping safely. Life has no greater joy for a woman than that." In fact, she may well be right -- I would only argue that that particular joy isn’t, or shouldn’t be, limited to women only.
There are three things that do bother me. The biggest one is that so many of the characters aren’t real. Only Pat and Judy, and, to a lesser degree, Jingle in the first and Rae and Tillytuck in the second book, are fully realized. Pat’s rival May Binnie is also real, despite making only offstage appearances in the first book. But there are so many others -- Mother, Bets, Winnie, Cuddles as a little girl -- about whom we are told, but who are never really shown. What makes Pat love her mother so? Damned if I can tell -- all I see is who never shows emotion, and who spends her time taking care of the baby, and leaving all the other children to Judy.
The next thing I don’t understand is why so many major life events are kept from Pat and her sibs, but broadcast to the neighborhood. Over and over again, Pat learns upsetting news (Mother’s operation, the possible move out West, the possible adoption of Winnie) from the obnoxious May Binnie. What were her parents thinking? And the trait is passed to the next generation -- the family learns of both Joe’s and Sid’s engagements from the neighborhood gossip, not from the boys themselves. A decent privacy is one thing, but this is ridiculous.
Finally, there’s Pat’s own obtuseness. It takes her until age 31, after all manner of other love affairs, to realize she loves Jingle, her best friend since the age of 7, and that he is more important than even Silver Bush. Perhaps, like Jo March’s Professor Bhaer, this is a bit of wish fulfillment for the author, who herself was not married until age 32, and who was not deeply in love with her husband.
Compared to the Anne books or to my favorite, The Blue Castle, the Pat books aren’t some of LMM’s finer efforts. I have no idea why I keep rereading them.
Posted by dichroic at March 22, 2001 10:31 AM