“Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?”
*
“Will you swear to be my friend for ever and ever?”
*
“We must join hands, so. It ought to be over running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you say it and put my name in.”
*
“My heart is broken. You’ll feel remorse of conscience some day, I expect, for breaking it, but I forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you.”
*
“Wilt thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting to treasure forevermore?”
*
“And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand–so.”
*
“She wanted to be the fairy queen. That would have been ridiculous, for who ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Josie? Fairy queens must be slender.”
*
“I’ve always imagined that my name was Cordelia–at least, I always have of late years. When I was young I used to imagine it was Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me Anne please call me Anne spelled with an e.”
*
“Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever.”
*
“Do you know what I think Mayflowers are? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this is their heaven.”
*
“Oh, look, what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come out after we go away and take it for a scarf?”
*
“Oh, here we are at the bridge. I’m going to shut my eyes tight. I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can’t help imagining that perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they’ll crumple up like a jackknife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we’re getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge did crumple up I’d want to see it crumple.”
*
“I was thinking of the loveliest story about you and me. I thought you were desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I took the smallpox and died and I was buried under those poplar trees in the graveyard and you planted a rosebush by my grave and watered it with your tears; and you never, never forgot the friend of your youth who sacrificed her life for you.”
*
Tags: anne of green gables, books, buzzfeed, lm montgomery, oh this is fun, rip matthew
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BIG DEAL: Introducing the My Life in Middlemarch Book Club
NICOLE CLIFFE, THAT TAG WAS UNCALLED FOR.
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Huh, what ta- OH JESUS CHRIST, NICOLE
WHAT WHAT WHAT?
Anne Hathaway is kind of the Anne of Green Gables of our time.
Let it be known that I am a fan of both, but also understand the “girl, please” reaction each elicits.
In fairness to Anne (the GG one, not Hathaway), outrageous whimsy is pretty much a hallmark of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s writing style, including in the narration. I love rereading LMM, but I have to do it in small doses because I hit my Dryad-Simile Quota pretty fast.
And yet, she’s still a kindred spirit in spite of it all!
In sprite of it all!
I…. I… I’m sorry.
No plum puffs for you.
No puffed sleeves, either!
RIP MATTHEW
good post, not enough gifs
Yes… and it’s been so long since I’ve seen the miniseries that I might not love it as much when I watch it again, but I have convinced my husband to give it a try, and five of us are going to have an Anne of Green Gables/Avonlea watching party.
My friends had a small AoGG watching party and we had some spiked rasberry cordial and it was GREAT. The whole experience. A+++ would recommend.
I hosted a party when the third movie was first available in the U.S. (DON’T DO THIS! Oh god, the pain! But at least I was surrounded by friends who understood this pain?) Anyway, I wrote an AofGG trivia contest for the party and I kept beating myself up beforehand that the questions were too easy. But when my friends read the questions, they were genuinely angry how hard the questions were and no one got all of them right. #AofGGnerdcred
I didn’t even know there was a third movie! I’m disappointed that it has nothing to do with the books, but I kind of want to watch it anyway….
No. Nonono. NO.
Disagree about the third movie, based solely on the visual of Gilbert Blythe in an WWI army uniform, which I will carry to my grave.
Fine. Watch the first 15 minutes. Then take it out and BURN IT.
And we will not even speak of the fourth movie. We will not give it power by acknowledging its existence.
I just rewatched it about a month ago and I SOBBED when Matthew died. I don’t remember being nearly so torn up as a kid (RIP Matthew).
I reread the book on a very long flight, and thank God all the other people in my row were asleep when I got to that chapter, because TEARS.
I love AoGG with all the fevered intensity of the next Canadian girl who grew up reading the books and longed for red hair, but damn, taken out of context most of these quotes sound straight up ridiculous.
Yeah I kind of just had an epiphany. I might be Josie Pye.
josie pye/nellie oleson/cordelia chase three-way crossover next femslash friday y/n
yesplease.
Oh goodness.
Oh, come on, she’s 11 years old for most of these.
I read the whole book again while doing this post, and sobbed hysterically when Matthew died.
Always.
Matthew was definitely my first crush. But, I’m gay now, so I’m not sure what that says about me/him/these books.
It says wonderful things about you. Bonus points if you’re a femme into puffed sleeves.
A soft, deep brown gloria dress with puffed sleeves.
So, I just started rereading Middlemarch for the book club, and I am 100% ready to start gathering gifs for an entirely reaction-gif-based book club thread, if you ladies are.
I’m so in.
PLEASE YES
YES. I have never read it before and I need all of the gifs.
You = hero for the modern age
I’m also in. YES GOOD.
I think my parents had this weird goal of sheltering me from pop culture to create the Most Innocent Child, and this involved a lot of Anne of Green Gables, zero cable television, and a lot of historical fiction. Spoiler alert: It made me The Most Awkward Child.
Somehow this resulted in my strong identification with Diana Barry as an adult. I would like some cordial and sure, you can take a lock of my jet black tresses, but girl please, let’s not recite Tennyson in a rusted out canoe.
And then the boat sinks and God knows, Anne doesn’t know how to SWIM, but luckily she floats past a pile of rubble and then her true love fishes her out.
Those puffed sleeves aren’t swim floaties, Anne. Get yourself to the Y for some lessons on how to stay afloat.
My parents had a similar plan, but relied heavily on PBS and children’s fantasy.
I am never doing it if I have kids. My parents got lazy by the time my brother came along and he’s a well-adjusted gorgeous blonde athlete double majoring in statistics and economics. He was raised on cartoons and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
My deep affection for these books (all of them. Even the ones at Ingleside with Rilla and the Merediths) is always at war with how incredibly dated and precious they really are. I was listening to an audiobook recording of Anne’s House of Dreams last week and was struck anew with how terrible parts of that book actually are. Anne’s baby’s death and everyone’s reaction! Unspoken rape and abuse of Leslie! Women are never capable of great writing, according to Captain Jim and pretty well everyone else! But mostly Leslie. You guys need to reread it too and be aghast.
LESLIE, oh, man, I can talk about that situation all day.
I would read anything you had to say on this subject. LESLIE WHY. LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY WHY. Floor length golden hair and a perfect figure are necessary to romantic tragedy and a mother guilting a teenage girl into marriage with a rapey sailor is also a romantic tragedy. Really? Really?!
I’m reading the books past Green Gables for the first time and just finished House of Dreams and LORD.
I’m kinda scared to read these books again for this reason.
Rilla of Ingleside is so great! It’s the only Canadian WWI-era book written by a woman!
Don’t get me wrong, I liked it and all, but lordy mcgordy the HUNS HUNS FLANDERS FIELDS RAPIST HUNS stuff was deffo of it’s time propaganda.
Also, Waaaaaalter!
Walter….oh. And Dog Monday! I am tearing up a bit thinking about Dog Monday.
Bahahahaha, this totally made my Monday morning. So good.
I think I’m just going to come back and look at this randomly all day. 😀
Anne of Green Gables was one of the few fiction books I was allowed to read growing up (mother thought most ’80s YA lit was full of bad moral lessons) so naturally I thought Anne was the ideal whimsical imaginative schoolgirl to model myself after. I’d make up fantasy stories about sidewalk squares and trees in the playground and magic storm drains.
Yeah, that goes over really well towards being accepted by other suburban Florida 4th-grade girls.
We should be friends and compare notes. I am still recovering from my whimsical awkward youth.
I was also raised on PBS!
I wonder if Anne counts as a sort of flipshifted version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She doesn’t exist for boys, for sure, but all the other usual traits seem to be present. Maybe she’s Diana’s MPDG.
Femmeslash Friday: Anne as the MPDG.
Oh god. OH GOD IT WOOOOOORKS. Floaty red hair, dreamy skinny jeans tucked into hunter boots and cable knit sweaters from Ireland but somehow not cheesy because she also borrows her brother’s harley and makes coffee and majored in Protest Art at Parson’s or somewhere equally high flying and you want to hate her but she is always doing self-embarassing things and then being charming about it.
I’ll just leave this right here, fellow window-friend http://www.theonion.com/articles/cool-dad-raising…
That is an excellent Onion piece. My father did this to me somewhat by accident, I think, mostly in that the music that had been in our household growing up somehow made me think it was perfectly normal that my first album was a collection of Scott Joplin ragtime. (Don’t worry, by middle school I had moved onto contemporary Christian music instead. Listening to Avalon and Point of Grace is completely normal and will totally make you fit in with the popular kids.)
Lemme tell you sometime about the extremely comprehensive knowledge of classical music I had as a 10-year-old. Lemme tell you about trying out for a school talent show with a piano concerto.
Anne Shirley was basically the PEI Luna Lovegood, y/y?
Yet somehow she gets insufferable when you are older, yet Luna is still charmingly weird.
Bwahahaha!!!
The thing is, I was totally on Anne’s level at 11. Scaring myself with my own stories, saying shit about fairies out loud. Thank God I had my neopets friends (as well as the Anne books) to channel this into. And then by the time I was 13, as Anne is at the end of AoGG I believe, I had adopted the same method Anne had by then – just keep those thoughts inside so people don’t laugh at them.
Agreed. Reading all of these quotes again, I realize that, really, what I got out of the Anne books was that it’s ok to have the weirdest thoughts.
I was just having a conversation about how, aside from her precious twee-ness, Anne is kind of a Liz Lemon. She accidentally gets drunk and dies her hair green! Liz so would.
Also, my boyfriend’s dad was in a bunch of episodes of Road to Avonlea as a sort-of main character and it weirds me out to this day.
Who was he?? I must know!! That would be so weird/amazing!
Haha I feel weird about saying it but I guess The Toast is a safe space? The farmer dude who was really nervous and stuttered a lot and then married one of Sarah Polley’s aunts in the later seasons.
Jasper? I have a poor memory, I’m sorry, I had to make use of the Wikipedia
OH MY GOD HE IS A CELEBRITY
(to, you know, Canadians)
I KNOW IT’S REALLY WEIRD
I HAVE BEEN SLEEPING WITH HIS SON ON A FAIRLY REGULAR BASIS SINCE 2010
You’re dating Jasper Dale Junior?!? This is amazing. Pretty sure I had a crush on Jasper Dale. (I’ve always gone for the shy, awkward dudes.)
The green hair thing is totally equivalent to Liz Lemon’s terrible haircut during the “Dealbreakers Talkshow.”
Ain’t that the pistol.
Those GIF’s accompanying each quote were absolute perfection. A toast to The Toast (raises coffee mug to dog, dog gives enquiring side eye and ear twitch in return).
Slightly related side note: I jogged behind when Nicole & Mallory left The Hairpin and this site never fails in giving me some form of daily inspiration.
Sorry for gushing, carry on!
Agreed. This posts encapsulates everything I love about The Toast.
2013 was a great year because, inter alia, I re-read the entire AoGG series. RILLA. WALTER. Oh god.
Oh god I can’t even think about Walter. TOO MUCH
I think Walter was too perfect and secretly gay to be allowed to live. You KNOW his heart wasn’t in that relationship with what’s-her-face, the man was a poet and a scholar.
There’s a lot of neat stuff in recent Montgomery scholarship about how much Montgomery shuddered, looking back on the propaganda of Rilla of Ingleside, and how rah-rah it was.
I am sure I have told you this a billion times, but you have GOT to, GOT to read Mary Henley Rubio’s brilliant biography: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385667604/ref=a…
Well I just bought myself an early xmas present.
WHY is it not available in Canada on Kindle. I protest. LM is Canadian.
UNA MEREDITH
Una Man, that’s what Walter wanted. Hey-o!
More Robert Graves and less Michael Collins?
Also he could totally have been one of the characters in Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, except he wasn’t from N. Ireland. But otherwise.
I just said this above, but Dog Monday! Walter! And feisty Faith Meredith, who just sails off to the UK to bandage wounds nearer the action.
My grandma is named Geraldine (goes by Jerry or Grandma Jerry–she is a sassy lady!) and I always thought of it as the height of old person names, so I was absolutely floored when I read this as a preteen and Anne loved it.
Anyone think Geraldine is up for a renaissance?
I want it to become the next big hipster baby name along with Mildred.
This is perfect, more please!
“If you knew the Greek Classics Majors from TSH IRL…”
IF YOU KNEW IGNATIUS J REILLY IRL!!!
Yes, please!
Good God, the Oprah gif and accompanying quote basically summarize my fervent preteen feelings to melt into the Anne books and never come back. I wish Anne was my gentleman.
I wanted to be Anne SO BADLY when I was about 12 years old. To the point where I wore long skirts and sat carefully and poetically in the grass gracefully* reading books in the summertime waiting for a kindred spirit to walk by and become my charming friend. Spoilers: never happened.
*actually means awkwardly
I wish my 12 year old self had met you then! We absolutely would have been bosom friends.
I was also the kid who drew signs encouraging drivers to “Honk if you care about the environment!”…without ever thinking it through beyond that. Like… ok, you care and then… so what? Add to the noise pollution? I was a dreadfully awkward kid.
Anne of Green Gables is in the same class as Little Women for me, aka my bible when I was younger. And then I grew up and realized Marmee would be really, really ashamed to have me as her daughter. Jo might like me, though. Anne I’d punch in the face while secretly agreeing with.
Reaction gifs are definitely one of my favorite things about the internet/life in the year 2013
Oh man, now I have to explain why I’m laugh-snorting at Horrible Histories gifs at work…
Nice post.![]()
Oh my god, is Anne of Green Gables the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl?
I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time recently, and I’d like to very strongly advocate a revisionist reading of them where she’s a totally self-aware, manipulative little cunt who knows she can get away with fucking with people because she’s a cute orphan.
Sure, you ‘accidentally’ got Diana drunk on cordial. Suuure.
Ok, a few years ago I went to PEI and did a news story about Japanese Anne of Green Gables fans who basically make pilgrimages to PEI and Green Gables. She is like a national icon in Japan. Well, to Japanese women at least. They dream about going to PEI. Some of them save for it like it’s a once-in-a-lifetime trip. It was pretty amazing.
I feel like Marilla might have had a similar reaction to that Top Chef link. And maybe others. At least in the beginning.
She’s such a weirdo, but I will never not cry over that broken heart quote.
I feel like before the Toast is gone, I need to come here and say I always sympathized with Marilla growing up and felt like we would have enjoyed teas where we could lovingly snark about Anne and her latest scrapes.
I feel like before the Toast is gone, I need to come here and say I always sympathized with Marilla growing up and felt like we would have enjoyed teas where we could lovingly snark about Anne and her latest scrapes.