Journal Article

Pigsties and Sunsets: L. M. Montgomery, A Tangled Web, and a Modernism of Her Own

Lefebvre, Benjamin

2005

Overview

\"Fragmentation, angst, and disillusionment were the vogue, and Montgomery's novels, set in pre-war Prince Edward Island, appeared to be works of nostalgia and sentimentalism to the Modernist critical eye,\" they write. [...]her books \"were about domestic women at a time when the heroes of 'serious fiction' were mostly male, and suffering males at that, carrying the mysterious wounds of a generalized psychic disturbance\" (xxiii). [...]in most of her novels in which wedding bells appear to be the \"natural\" resolution for her title heroines-Anne of the Island, Rilla of Ingleside (1921), Emily's Quest (1927), and Mistress Pat (1935)-Montgomery avoids the romantic tension altogether for most of the narrative and delays the \"inevitable\" dénouement as long as possible, making her \"happy\" endings appear unconvincing and contrived. Montgomery had addressed the \"romantic\" aspect of war in Rilla of Ingleside a decade earlier, but Donna is an example of the limits imposed on women in the war's aftermath. Because she neither is a \"failed\" spinster (like Margaret Penhallow) nor has the social sanction of a married woman, her status as war widow now involves playing a public role that has long since spiraled into stagnation. In light of her self-assured comment that her slipping sales were caused in part by the continued popularity of her earlier books, Montgomery may have felt she had little to lose financially if she took a bit of a chance late in 1928. Because of the absence of a more substantial record of the writing process of this book, it is completely conjectural whether the stock market crash of October 1929, which badly damaged that financial security and which interrupted the drafting of Ë Tangled Web, made her reconsider whether or not this was the best moment for such a creative move. 6 Although Montgomery only occasionally offered detailed discussions of her own writing in her journals and letters, the absence of any substantial mention of the writing process of A Tangled Web is indicative of Montgomery's silencing of \"her immersion into an imagined life,\" as Rubio and Waterston note (Introduction xx).

• Publisher: Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English,ESC: English Studies in Canada
• Subject: Literary criticism / Montgomery, Lucy Maud (1874-1942) / Novels / Woolf, Virginia (1882-1941) / Writers