"suppression of all individuality"

Macneill Homesite Cavendish, PEI

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 1910

Cavendish, PEI

"...I certainly ought to keep a servant.  To do the housework I do in connection with my increasing literary work is too much for me.  But grandmother would never hear of  such a thing and would think me crazy if I suggested it.

   Sometimes I feel as if I could not bear for one day longer this ceaseless tyranny in petty things to which she subjects me....My success, instead of making it easier, has made it twice as hard by doubling the worries and mortifications which attend my circumstances here.  I am well off and tolerably famous--but the conditions of my life are not even physically comfortable and I am beset with difficulties on every side---and all mainly because I must live in subjection to a woman who, always inclined to be domineering and narrow-minded, has had those qualities intensified by age until life with her means the utter suppression of all individuality in those who live with her.

    Well--well--well!  I went for a walk in Lover's Lane tonight and forgot all these worries for a time in its ideal beauty.  It is always lovely but tonight seemed more beautiful than I had ever known it.  The soft, warm rain of the afternoon had extracted all the woodland odors until the air was dripping with fragrance--dying fir, frosted ferns, wet leaves.  That walk this evening gave me such exquisite pleasure as is impossible to express in clumsy words and furnished me with a little strength to go on with life and work."

The Selected Journals of LM Montgomery, Vol I., pp. 17-18, Rubio & Waterston

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The mother of a friend of mine passed away this week.  Within 3 days of that event, my friend's relationship status on Facebook changed from "complicated" to "married."  Of course, the notice of this easy transition made me think of Maud and her relationship with her grandmother.   Without trying to pass judgement on anyone or their reasons for what they do, I can't seem to turn off my study of human nature and wonder if Maud and Ewan were simply waiting for Grandmother to get out of the way so that they could marry?

The liability that I see in Maud's translations of her duty towards her Grandmother is the dishonesty of heart that is involved in it.

Dishonesty of heart, in my stream of consciousness analysis, eventually leads me to the subject of marriage to Ewan.  What immediately comes to mind are  words I once heard being pronounced as a portion of liturgy from a Hindu wedding ceremony I saw on TV--- "Beware--Beware!" 

Photo taken at Maud's birthplace at Clifton, PEI

Newspaper article that is showcased from the time after Maud became famous

Happy wild flowers, Lover's Lane, Cavendish, PEI