A New Perspective

When I was about 10, I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time. Anne was precocious and a little dramatic, but she essentially wanted all the things that I wanted at the time; to have a best friend, to be the best in school, but to be thought of as pretty too, not just smart. This book was always a story about growing up, and learning lessons from the things we have to go through in life. However, while doing research on this book, I found a syllabus from an English 180 class by Professor Paul Martin. This book was on the syllabus for a class about Women authors and their views on feminism. For the first time, I realized that this book could be much more than a coming of age story. 

Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908, right in the heart of the Edwardian Era. This time period was known as the beginning of the women's suffrage movement. Suffragettes all over the world were trying to win equality for women, and were breaking norms in order to prove that they could be as influential as any man. With Anne of Green Gables placed into this point of view, it takes on a whole new meaning. Having been born in 1990, I have always taken equality for women for granted. Anne going to college and having a career, as well as being a wife and mother didn't seem too out of the norm. However, when taking into consideration that this was a time period where women didn't even have the right to vote, Anne's accomplishments in the book are actually quite a feat. When thinking about Anne's example as someone who could break free of the restrictions placed on her as a women, it makes me ponder about the ways we will break free of the norms we have now. Maybe we are in the process of cutting loose our own constraints that we have previously had in the literary world by expanding the way we think and learn with the help of the new digital culture.