l.m. montgomery, anne of windy poplars

She went to sleep for keeps, thinking how lovely it was to wake up in the night and hear the first snowstorm of the winter, with the wind blowing and making her cozy room seem even cozier, and then to snuggle down in her blankets and drift into dreamland again.

L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)

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— Anne of Windy Poplars, Lucy Maud Montgomery

“Today has been a day dropped out of June into April. The snow is all gone and the fawn meadows and golden hills just sing of spring. I know I heard Pan piping in the little green hollow in my maple bush and my Storm King was bannered with the airiest of purple hazes. We've had a great deal of rain lately and I've loved sitting in my tower in the still, wet hours of the spring twilights. But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night...even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.

“Suppose, Gilbert, we were walking hand in hand down one of the long roads in Avonlea tonight!

“Gilbert, I'm afraid I'm scandalously in love with you. You don't think it's irreverent, do you? But then, you're not a minister.”

- Anne of Windy Poplars

Castles in the Air

I'm extremely excited to announce that the game I've been working on for the past 4 years is coming to Kickstarter! Castles in the Air (CitA) is a tabletop RPG inspired by the novels of Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery. Players start as children with boundless dreams who will change over the years based on the relationships they form and choices they make. I think it's a really special game, and I'm looking forward to being able to share it with everyone.

For more information or to sign up to be notified when the Kickstarter launches on May 14th, please check out the game's page on the Storybrewers Roleplaying website. If that name sounds familiar, Storybrewers is the company that created Good Society: A Jane Austen RPG. I feel very honored that they reached out to me about publishing Castles in the Air. While Castles in the Air is a standalone game, its mechanics are inspired by Good Society, and if you like Good Society, I think you'll like CitA too as it allows you to tell similarly compelling stories.

I will be creating some blog posts talking about the literary inspirations for different parts of the game in the weeks leading up to the Kickstarter and during its run. I will be using this as a master post to keep track of all of them, so make sure to check back here or follow my blog if you are interested.

Blog Posts

Meg March: The Nurturer

"Have you ever noticed how many different silences there are, Gilbert? The silence of the woods...of the shore...of the meadows...of the night...of the summer afternoon."

-Anne of Windy Poplars, LM Montgomery

"The public and the publisher won't allow me to write of a girl how she really is... you have to depict this sweet, inspired young thing – really a child grown older – to whom the basic realities of life and reactions to them are quite unknown. LOVE must scarcely be hinted at – yet – girls often have some very livid love affairs."

— Lucy Maud Montgomery, the Selected Journals of, year 1924

Posted because inevitably and invariably anytime I search the ‘Windy Poplars’ tag here (or on other media; I’m making direct eye contact with you, GoodReads), there’s a little misconception floating around that Maud wanted or chose to censor Anne and Gilbert’s letters. But! It’s actually rather the opposite. She wanted that romance illustrated, she felt it was appropriate and natural. It was her publishers that insisted that the novels remain as benign as possible… despite the obvious; that Anne and Gilbert endured a long separated engagement and then went on to have seven whole children.

L.M Montgomery single handled defining the friends-to-lovers trope, “Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeking prose, until some sudden shady of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and music; perhaps… perhaps.. love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath” sets Anne and Gilbert apart from everyone else.

“Have you ever noticed how many silences there are Gilbert? The silence of the woods....of the shore....of the meadows....of the night....of the summer afternoon. All different because the undertones that thread them are different.”

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

In seeing the posts for Chaps 20 + 21 and also thinking of how LMM wanted Blue Castle to be a more grown-up novel, I realize how incredibly sheltered most of her heroines are. A scholar once pointed out the privilege that exists throughout LMM's work, and that does feel evident when comparing Valancy with Cissy, or Anne with someone like Leslie Moore or Katherine Brooke--not only in economic security but also in how the darker and more...cynical sides of life are shielded from them. Cissy knows about and has partaken of the world of Chidley Corners, where sexuality and violence muddles a fairytale idea of romance. Leslie's history suggests Anne's orphaned state is better than having a mother that would practically sell you for her own happiness.

Partially this is LMM staying in her own milieu--she writes about the society of Blair Water and Priest Pond vs "Stovepipe Town," for example. But from the way she sneaks in these allusions to rougher and grittier lives, I don't think she was entirely sugarcoating everything. It seems to me more like a certain escapism, plus a pressure to present "Sunday-School" appropriate stories for her audience. The longer she writes, the more I sense an urge in her to break away from that angle (I think she comments in her diaries of wishing she could explore more psychological and "adult" themes in her romances). The Emily books and Blue Castle were written in the same 5-year period and deal frankly with sexual "scandals" in Cissy's illegitimate baby and Ilse's mother purportedly running away with another man. LMM never (in the narrative) condemns Dean's amoral history or attitude to Emily. She also relishes making Barney a "bad boy" and attractive for that very reason.

So despite the naiveté that runs through her heroines, I don't think LMM wanted to pretend that everyone's experiences were like that and left room in secondary characters and alluded storylines for those different aspects of life to be discussed, through the lens of nasty gossip (which shows the tenor of public opinion of the time) but also in deeply sympathetic ways (Emily's anguish over and eventual truth-finding about Ilse's mother, Valancy taking care of Cissy, Anne's eventual friendships with Leslie and Katharine).

“I’m a creature caught in a trap. I can never get out…and it seems to me that somebody is always poking sticks at me through the holes. And you…you have more happiness than you know what to do with…friends everywhere, a lover! Not that I want a lover…I hate men…but if I died tonight, not one living soul would miss me.”

-Katherine Brookes, Anne of Windy Poplars being way too real for a quick sec

"But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them."

- Lucy Maud Montgomery

I walked on and on until twilight had deepened into a moonlit autumn night. I was alone but not lonely.

—Anne Shirley, Anne of Windy Poplars by L. M. Montgomery

I think that Emily Starr would have LOVED listening to Miss Minerva's stories about the Tomgallons' curse, had she been in Anne's place. She might have even written a novel about it.

"Won't you sit down to remove your rubbers, my dear? This is a very comfortable chair. My sister died in it from a stroke."

Anne of Windy Poplars

slowly growing obsessed with Katherine Brooke...more and more obsessed, I tell you...like this quote?? THIS QUOTE??

 "As for me, I've forgotten how to live...no, I never knew how. I'm...I'm like a creature caught in a trap. I can never get out...and it seems to me that somebody is always poking sticks at me through the bars. And you...you have more happiness than you know what to do with...friends everywhere, a lover! Not that I want a lover...I hate men...but if I died tonight, not one living soul would miss me. How would you like to be absolutely friendless in the world?"