feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2015-07-18 05:38 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2015-07-18 05:38 pm
REVIEW: Jane of Lantern Hill
Jane of Lantern Hill: L.M. Montgomery. Virago Modern Classics 2014
What a treat it was to read a new-to-me L.M. Montgomery book (and one that doesn’t disappoint as ‘Mistress Pat’ did). Of course, most of the Anne books are old, old friends and this has the touch of a fairy story, so you know there’ll be a happy ending, all of which led to a certain familiarity. However, I forgot quite how Montgomery’s phrasings transmit the characters’ rapture, and how can you not love words like ‘morningish’ and ‘foretokens’?
Victoria Jane Stuart is eleven and despite living at 60 Gay Street, Toronto, she is miserable. The more we learn of her life, the more we see why. She lives with her adored mother, but their lives are ruled by Jane’s grandmother, who was named Victoria and who calls Jane Victoria. She is in charge of the all-female household. Robin, Jane’s mother, is very beautiful, always dressed to the nines and often out, for the family has money, and perhaps because she was the only child of Grandmother Kennedy’s second marriage, she loves her possessively, jealously. Jane is barely tolerated, always seen as a disappointment and has ‘everything’ but not a chance to run a little wild.
Then one day, a girl at school shatters one of the foundations of Jane’s life. She never thought about it much, but assumed her unmentioned father was dead. He is not. Her mother left him when Jane was three, and having learned this Jane doesn’t know what to think, but she feels horrible. Believing that she was the cause of the marital breakdown and that her father didn’t want her, it is easy to hate a man her mother can’t bear to talk about.
But then, that man, one Andrew Stuart, writes a letter asking for Jane to come to stay with him on Prince Edward Island for the summer. Jane, in agreement with her grandmother on this, doesn’t want to go, but is made to. There, she finds out that her father is not what she thought he was, that P.E. Island is beautiful and when they find Lantern Hill and make it a home together, among a community that welcomes Jane, life is transformed for her. She finds things she is good at and a previously unimaginable number of people she likes and loves. She thrives.
Now this book was published in 1937 and based on internal evidence, could have been set in the early 1930s. The fact that Jane is a child with separated parents is shocking in that context. But that is to forget some of what Montgomery tackled. Caught up in Anne’s more comic adventures at Green Gables, her imagination and love of beauty and nature, as expanded upon in a whole series, it’s easy to forget that, like Emily Byrd Starr, she was an orphan. Matthew and Marilla wanted a boy to help work the fields and could have sent Anne back to the orphanage and a fate of grind and no love – a fate like Jody, Jane’s neighbour and first real friend in Toronto, faces.
But as I said, this has fairy tale elements – it becomes obvious to the reader as Jane’s perspective expands, that Robin Kennedy and Andrew Stuart, one a spoiled girl-woman, the other a whimsical author fresh from the horrors of the Great War, despite their love, had a lot of opposition ranged against their union. Jane knows about her grandmother, who thought Stuart low, but would probably have resented any man who took Robin from her, but on the other side was Irene, Andrew’s big sister, who is also venomous, but in a different way. She is trying to get him to get a divorce in America.
Jane too comes to understand her father and see her mother from a different perspective. As Jane grows into herself and the more she learns of the past, the more she sees how it came about – and how miserable the family has been because of it. It is a romance that, despite the comic, rooted homeliness of Jane’s neighbours at Lantern Hill, is not always realistic, quite, for of course she gets to live the fantasy of most children of separated parents.
A few criticisms come to mind. First, I’d contend that the title gives too much away. Although Lantern Hill, Jane’s first real home, is important to her and the title follows the pattern of other Montgomery books, as it doesn’t appear until chapter 16, it should perhaps not have been in the title. Perhaps there could have been a reference to the moon, which means so much to Jane in Toronto, although it becomes overtaken in importance by the stars and by Lantern Hill in her mindscape.
Perhaps to assuage how grim Jane’s life is – her grandmother is a bully and Jane’s mother, who should stand up for her, is cowed, so she is continually put down and restricted, criticised when she tries something new and fails and is not allowed to do what she longs to, Montgomery lets a couple too many ‘but soon, her life would be transformed’ sentences slip. Jane, who has not been trained to be a lady, finds an innate love of cooking, housekeeping and gardening wake up in her over that first summer with her father. Would an eleven year old really be so capable, even with the help of neighbours, though?
As a whole, the book is a little too disjointed, and the romance of the separated family has to carry the beats of a romance without quite being able to hit them. There are similarities to ‘The Blue Castle’, which is more successful. More stringent editing could have pulled out a slightly more cohesive draft.
And yet, Jane’s story is a joy to read. After the repression and cruelty of her life in Toronto, in Lantern Hill, she finds a home full of ‘magic’, close to nature. Apart from enjoying the many fruits of working for oneself, there is unchecked companionship of the mind with family, of shared interests with friends and neighbours and even with cats and dogs. So, her grandmother loses her power over her. The book ends a little after Jane’s childhood is over, but she has gained her happy ending – her family is reunited and will set up home together.
What a treat it was to read a new-to-me L.M. Montgomery book (and one that doesn’t disappoint as ‘Mistress Pat’ did). Of course, most of the Anne books are old, old friends and this has the touch of a fairy story, so you know there’ll be a happy ending, all of which led to a certain familiarity. However, I forgot quite how Montgomery’s phrasings transmit the characters’ rapture, and how can you not love words like ‘morningish’ and ‘foretokens’?
Victoria Jane Stuart is eleven and despite living at 60 Gay Street, Toronto, she is miserable. The more we learn of her life, the more we see why. She lives with her adored mother, but their lives are ruled by Jane’s grandmother, who was named Victoria and who calls Jane Victoria. She is in charge of the all-female household. Robin, Jane’s mother, is very beautiful, always dressed to the nines and often out, for the family has money, and perhaps because she was the only child of Grandmother Kennedy’s second marriage, she loves her possessively, jealously. Jane is barely tolerated, always seen as a disappointment and has ‘everything’ but not a chance to run a little wild.
Then one day, a girl at school shatters one of the foundations of Jane’s life. She never thought about it much, but assumed her unmentioned father was dead. He is not. Her mother left him when Jane was three, and having learned this Jane doesn’t know what to think, but she feels horrible. Believing that she was the cause of the marital breakdown and that her father didn’t want her, it is easy to hate a man her mother can’t bear to talk about.
But then, that man, one Andrew Stuart, writes a letter asking for Jane to come to stay with him on Prince Edward Island for the summer. Jane, in agreement with her grandmother on this, doesn’t want to go, but is made to. There, she finds out that her father is not what she thought he was, that P.E. Island is beautiful and when they find Lantern Hill and make it a home together, among a community that welcomes Jane, life is transformed for her. She finds things she is good at and a previously unimaginable number of people she likes and loves. She thrives.
Now this book was published in 1937 and based on internal evidence, could have been set in the early 1930s. The fact that Jane is a child with separated parents is shocking in that context. But that is to forget some of what Montgomery tackled. Caught up in Anne’s more comic adventures at Green Gables, her imagination and love of beauty and nature, as expanded upon in a whole series, it’s easy to forget that, like Emily Byrd Starr, she was an orphan. Matthew and Marilla wanted a boy to help work the fields and could have sent Anne back to the orphanage and a fate of grind and no love – a fate like Jody, Jane’s neighbour and first real friend in Toronto, faces.
But as I said, this has fairy tale elements – it becomes obvious to the reader as Jane’s perspective expands, that Robin Kennedy and Andrew Stuart, one a spoiled girl-woman, the other a whimsical author fresh from the horrors of the Great War, despite their love, had a lot of opposition ranged against their union. Jane knows about her grandmother, who thought Stuart low, but would probably have resented any man who took Robin from her, but on the other side was Irene, Andrew’s big sister, who is also venomous, but in a different way. She is trying to get him to get a divorce in America.
Jane too comes to understand her father and see her mother from a different perspective. As Jane grows into herself and the more she learns of the past, the more she sees how it came about – and how miserable the family has been because of it. It is a romance that, despite the comic, rooted homeliness of Jane’s neighbours at Lantern Hill, is not always realistic, quite, for of course she gets to live the fantasy of most children of separated parents.
A few criticisms come to mind. First, I’d contend that the title gives too much away. Although Lantern Hill, Jane’s first real home, is important to her and the title follows the pattern of other Montgomery books, as it doesn’t appear until chapter 16, it should perhaps not have been in the title. Perhaps there could have been a reference to the moon, which means so much to Jane in Toronto, although it becomes overtaken in importance by the stars and by Lantern Hill in her mindscape.
Perhaps to assuage how grim Jane’s life is – her grandmother is a bully and Jane’s mother, who should stand up for her, is cowed, so she is continually put down and restricted, criticised when she tries something new and fails and is not allowed to do what she longs to, Montgomery lets a couple too many ‘but soon, her life would be transformed’ sentences slip. Jane, who has not been trained to be a lady, finds an innate love of cooking, housekeeping and gardening wake up in her over that first summer with her father. Would an eleven year old really be so capable, even with the help of neighbours, though?
As a whole, the book is a little too disjointed, and the romance of the separated family has to carry the beats of a romance without quite being able to hit them. There are similarities to ‘The Blue Castle’, which is more successful. More stringent editing could have pulled out a slightly more cohesive draft.
And yet, Jane’s story is a joy to read. After the repression and cruelty of her life in Toronto, in Lantern Hill, she finds a home full of ‘magic’, close to nature. Apart from enjoying the many fruits of working for oneself, there is unchecked companionship of the mind with family, of shared interests with friends and neighbours and even with cats and dogs. So, her grandmother loses her power over her. The book ends a little after Jane’s childhood is over, but she has gained her happy ending – her family is reunited and will set up home together.