carlmeredith

[carlmeredith]

part two! :D

I excluded Anne because it seems a little ridiculous to ask whether anne shirley, one of the most beloved literary characters of all time, would be a fan favorite

[carlmeredith]

Following Walter, I’m asking the tumblr scholars (I dropped this in gogandmagog’s inbox too), do you think Anne was queer?

Lol, I shall defer to our resident anne expert gogandmagog for her anne-swer, but my instinct is immediately no. While we do have that hilarious passage from AOGG about Anne desperately hating Diana's husband, the fact is that from age eleven, Anne quite clearly likes a boy even if she won't admit it to herself. That doesn't preclude her being queer, but there's not the same tension to Anne's experience of the world's expectations of her that Walter has.

Also, there are certain fictional characters who I simply cannot fathom dating anyone else than whom they end up with canonically, because the relationship is so intrinsically tied to their character arc and traits. I think I hit this with Anne - I simply can't imagine her being seriously attracted to anyone other than Gilbert. There's a really fun fic waiting in the shadows here of an Anne who never met Gilbert and who is properly dating [insert male character here, maybe Roy], only to meet Gilbert and be like oh dear (if she's even willing to admit it to herself). Anyway, I struggle with picturing Anne in any other relationship, regardless of gender.

If I were to pick another character besides Walter in the Anne series, I think Di, Anne's daughter, could very very easily be interpreted as queer. She's someone I kind of wish LMM had delved deeper into, because she kind of disappears in Rilla. Alas!

[carlmeredith]

Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery, feat: photo of Evelyn Nesbit, of whom the author said: “I wonder if she ever read of Anne, never dreaming that, physically, she was the original!”

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x

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"I cannot bear it," she said. And then came the awful thought that perhaps she could bear it and that there might be years of this hideous suffering before her.

-Rilla of Ingleside, LM Montgomery

[carlmeredith]

#rilla #tbh i think she'd SWEEP in every category during award season too #although i fear if it was to be done e-zackly to my particular taste or liking i'd be v tempted to spare walter and offer up jem instead #so maaaybe this genie better double it and give it to the next person Imao

@gogandmagog tags

I voted for TBC but I would like your version of ROI 😝

i'm 3000% certain this poll has been done before but I need to know:

[carlmeredith]

Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery

This is a very ugly topic, but what do you guys reckon Dick Moore did to/with this girl down at the fishing cove? 😟

Maud pretty much gives us this very purposefully vague and grey statement, which leaves each House of Dreams reader to supply/insert their own guess – but I’m super curious what that explanation is, for other readers here?

Did Dick drunkenly promise to marry this girl, in order to contrive a sexual relationship, only to change his mind when he sobered up the next morning? Did he break a real and proper engagement, preferring Leslie? Did he father a child with this girl, and refuse both her and to admit to paternity?

I’ve kind of seen before some suggestion that whatever happened between these two was non-consensual, but personally I’m not entirely sure. The incident, whatever it was, was apparently well known enough to become something of a ‘story’ to the community at large, but in the 1880s sexual assault was a highly punishable crime, especially in a clannish village like Four Winds. I find it further doubtful, based on the notion that it was Captain Jim, who ‘fairly scorched’ some fishermen for just talking badly about women*, who went looking to retrieve Dick from his lost Four Sisters voyage. I can’t think he’d have done so, if Dick was capable of sexual abuse or violence. 🧐 There’s also the bewildering matter of Leslie saying she didn’t regret marrying Dick, since it made her mum happy. But again, Dick is a jerk of such enormity that I could still probably be otherwise convinced. 🤷🏻‍♀️

*"You wouldn't find it so hard if you had seen him the other day down at the fishing village. One of the men of Peter Gautier's boat made a nasty remark about some girl along the shore. Captain Jim fairly scorched the wretched fellow with the lightning of his eyes. He seemed a man transformed. He didn't say much—but the way he said it! You'd have thought it would strip the flesh from the fellow's bones. I understand that Captain Jim will never allow a word against any woman to be said in his presence." (Anne’s House of Dreams, Chapter 9)

[carlmeredith]

DANCING IN THIS WORLD ALONE literally my current obsession pleeeeeeeeeeease

hellooooo, thank you!! <3 absolutely, here u go:

"I think Susan would be just as upset that you didn't think her up to the task of baking you a cake," Carl says. "Una, too, for that matter. And a ration cake would still be miles better than trench food — I'd eat it up. Jerry and Jem and Shirley probably would, too." "Jem and Shirley would eat anything," Rilla mutters, and Carl laughs. He's so laughy still, not like Jem or Shirley — not that Shirley was ever very laughy, anyway. Does Ken laugh as much as he used to, as well?

[carlmeredith]

Coleoptera. Dr. Sulzers Abgekürtze Geschichte der Insecten. 1776.

Internet Archive

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This is the robin. Basic Studies in Science: How Do We Know. 1940. 

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Nature neighbors, embracing birds, plants, animals, minerals, in natural colors by color photography. 1914.

[carlmeredith]

[Frogs, iris and waterlilies.] Charles-Louis Houdard. 1898.

Gallica