Anne of Green Gables: A Feminist vs Psychoanalytic Reading

Literary criticism opens a whole new world to readers who wish to understand their favorite novel characters through multiple different lenses. Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables has been evaluated by many literary critics because of her dynamic, powerful, and relatable character. Her story has been loved and remember through countless generations of readers. What makes Anne of Green Gables such a timeless and rewarding story? The depth of Anne’s character can be analyzing through different theoretical approaches; a feminist and psychoanalytic reading of Anne of Green Gables illuminates the incredible complexity of Anne’s world.

Julie McQuillan and Julie Pfeiffer, authors for An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, offer readers a gender perspective with feminist overtones on Anne of Green Gables. They discuss Anne’s struggle to “do femininity” and conform to the gender roles of Avonlea. Anne’s bold, energetic, and colorful personality challenges the normative conceptions of femininity and masculinity within her society. Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, who adopt Anne from the orphanage, initially do not want her because of her gender. They think that only a boy can complete the hard work they need on the farm, defining Anne by what she is not, and therefore reinforcing “an old stereotype - the female is the other, the lack, the absence” (22). They compare Anne’s value as a girl to the value of a boy, concluding that Anne lacks the strengths in a man and is therefore useless to them, reinforcing strict gender stereotypes.

However, upon growing fond of Anne, they decide that Anne is young enough to be “trained up proper,” revealing a sex-role socialization outlook in which Anne must be taught how to fill her role as a woman (23). Anne wishes to fulfill these sex-role expectations, such as the domestic skills of cooking, entertaining, and cleaning. However, McQuillan and Pfeiffer assert that although Anne tries to be the morally “good girl” Marilla and Matthew want her to be, she questions the wisdom of the project (28). In chapter thirty, Anne wonders why she cannot be a minister and why “you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won't pay you anything” (Montgomery). Anne consistently questions the gender roles of her patriarchal society and struggles to fulfill her domestic tasks. Anne “learns to be a girl” (22) throughout the novel, and her humorous attempts at fulfilling her feminine role, such as baking a cake and entertaining guests, reveals that she is different. She does not fit into the mold of “feminine” or “masculine” even when she tries, which “opens up the possibility of social change” (31) when people discuss the issue. Even though Anne Shirley can be interpreted as a feminist character, McQuillan and Pfeiffer conclude that “both Anne and the novel challenge and reinforce prevailing gender structures” (31).

A psychoanalytic approach allows readers to see Anne of Green Gables with a fresh perspective; Katharine Slater, author of “The Other Was Whole”: Anne of Green Gables, Trauma and Mirroring”, evaluates Anne Shirley according to Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic orders. Slater looks to Lacan’s mirror stage theory, in which children from six to eighteen months must look into the mirror for the first time, discovering a sense of self and image apart from their environment. This discovery of selfhood inaugurates a break from the Imaginary order, in which a child believes he is one with his mother, and entrance into the Symbolic. However, Anne suffers the traumatic loss of her mother at only three months old, disrupting and compromising the natural onset of the mirror stage. Slater states, “As a result, her parental loss at this immature age has particularly violent consequences. For infant Anne, unable to comprehend the difference between self and mother, this loss is, in reality, an utter loss of self” (169). Anne cannot comprehend that her mother has passed away, and this traumatic separation leads her to completely loose her sense of self altogether. Anne attempts to evade the acknowledged Symbolic Order (169), severely dissociating and refusing to accept her mirrored image as herself. Anne states, “When I lived with Mrs. Thomas she had a bookcase . . . with glass doors. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Thomas smashed it one night when he was intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in it” (Montgomery). Anne recounts one of the homes she lived in as a child where she suffered abuse; She would pretend that her reflection was a little girl named Katie Maurice, who was her dearest friend. Slater believes this passage is significant, revealing, “Anne’s choice of phrase here is particularly interesting: the glass door in which she finds Katie is the “other” which is “whole.” Anne, of course, is not whole; it is Katie, rather than the door, who is the “whole [O]ther,’” (171). Because of Anne’s continued neglect and abuse, she must find refuge in Katie Maurice and other imagined characters who are whole, unlike her own shattered sense of self. Slate concludes that Anne remains trapped in the “ricochet of the mirror” (171), unwilling to enter Lacan’s law of social relations within the Symbolic Order.

While McQuillan and Pfeiffer see Marilla and Matthew’s influence on Anne as controlling and limiting her growth into selfhood independent from gender roles, Slater views their influence as much more positive, describing their presence as a healing property in her life. Anne can finally begin to heal her psychological wounds from childhood upon arriving in the safe, stable environment of Avonlea. She gains many new mother-figures, such as Marilla, Miss Stacy, and Mrs. Lynde, who become a “tremendous compensation for that devastating loss” (173) of her mother in childhood. Not only that, but Anne successfully enters the Symbolic Order, leaving behind “the doublings and illusions of her early childhood” (176). This stage of healing can be seen when the novel states, “She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her. “You’re only Anne of Green Gables,” she said earnestly, “and I see you, just as you are looking now. . . . It’s a million times nicer to be Anne of Green Gables than Anne of nowhere in particular, isn’t it?” (Montgomery). She acknowledges and accepts her reflection within the mirror, gaining confidence in her newfound identity as “Anne of Green Gables.” While both literary theories acknowledge Anne’s struggle to fit into her world and gain a sense of self, they attribute this struggle to different external factors that played into her development from child to adult; while Slater concludes that Anne has reached a full sense of selfhood, McQuillan and Pfeiffer attest that Anne has obtained a misguided identity within the confines of gender that limits her from reaching her true identity.

The feminist and psychoanalytic reading of Anne of Green Gables illuminates the incredible complexity and beauty of Anne’s character. McQuillan and Pfeiffer understand her as a victim of her patriarchal society, limited by the confines of gender. Anne has challenged and questioned the gender roles of her society, opening the conversation for change. Slater understands her as a child severely wounded by the loss of her mother, resulting in dissociation and a non-normative Symbolic Order. Both theories illuminate Anne’s character in a new, profound light, allowing readers to appreciate the Anne of Green Gables novel for its dimension and insight into what it means to be human.

Works Cited

McQuillan, Julia, and Julie Pfeiffer. “Why Anne Makes Us Dizzy: Reading ‘Anne of Green Gables’ from a Gender Perspective.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 34, no. 2, University of Manitoba, 2001, pp. 17–32, www.jstor.org/stable/44029443.

Montgomery, Lucy. Anne of Green Gables. The Project Gutenberg eBook, 1992, www.gutenberg.org/files/45/45-h/45-h.htm.

Slater, Katharine. “’The Other was Whole’: Anne of Green Gables, Trauma and Mirroring.” The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 34, no. 2, 2010, pp. 167-187. ProQuest, ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fother-was-whole-anne-green-gables trauma%2Fdocview%2F609338277%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D12085.