Lucy Maud Montgomery Part 2: An Ecofeminist Writer

Lucy Maud Montgomery is credited for putting Prince Edward Island on the map and driving many visitors to the island to this day, over one hundred years later. Yet this oft-cited piece of trivia simplifies an important part of Montgomery and her writing: the reason why. Why do Montgomery’s novels inspire so many readers to go to Prince Edward Island?

Montgomery had an intimate relationship with the places where most of her novels are set. In her writing, the places themselves become characters. The human characters are immersed and embedded in the places they live; their experiences are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the ecosystem. Today Montgomery and her writing would be called “local to place” and she would be praised for being a conservationist. Her writing would be categorized as “nature,” “ecological,” or “Ecofeminist” writing.

From Anne of Green Gables (1908):

“She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow—that wonderful deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was a log bridge over the brook.

That brook led Anne’s dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate “June bells,” those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial starflowers, like the spirits of last year’s blossoms. Gossamers glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and tassels seemed to utter friendly speech”(76).

In Montgomery’s books and stories, the female characters see themselves in and identify themselves with the land. They sustain relationships with the trees, mountains, and waterways. These well-tended  relationships inform and enrich their experience of the world and their own personal journeys. That well-cultivated relationship to the land or place allows them to be caretakers or stewards of the land. They make sure things are kept in balance in their community, which includes the natural world and the wild, to the best of their ability.

In Anne of Avonlea (1909), when Anne is caught “hugging a tree” by her close friend Diana, she responds:

“I’m a dryad living in an old pine or a little brown wood-elf hiding under a crinkled leaf. That white birch you caught me kissing is a sister of mine. The only difference is, she’s a tree and I’m a girl, but that’s no real difference”(loc 1008).

One cannot separate Anne from Avonlea. She is of that place. It represents her and she represents it. This way of living, this understanding oneself as belonging to a place rather than a place belonging to you, is a core tenet of ecological thought. The characters are an outgrowth of the experiential identity of the author. Montgomery belonged to Prince Edward Island, and her characters belonged to the fictionalized version. They live their lives in relationship to the natural cycles and rhythms. They know the foods that are raised and grow there, how and where they grow. They know how to gather and harvest in the wild, preserve and conserve. They notice micro-changes in the climate. They honor the “place” as a being.

Anne says:

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer”(62).

People are drawn to Prince Edward Island after reading the books because Montgomery has communicated this alive relationship with place to the reader. The reader longs to go there and have an interaction with this nurturing, alive place. They long for the similar experience of belonging to a place.

It was early for such writing to emerge from a woman living in Canada. And I suspect for Montgomery, in the Green Gables series, it was done without the self-consciousness that is found in later nature or ecological writers. For her, it was organic to who she was and how she was raised.

Later in The Blue Castle (1926), Montgomery and the theme become more complex. This book does not take place in the fictionalized version of her childhood upbringing: Avonlea. Rather, The Blue Castle is set in a fictionalized version of Ontario where Montgomery herself lived for many years in her adult life. In this book, the village or small town is associated with society, domestication and repression, and the wild is equated with freedom.

The hidden secret of The Blue Castle

In the previous post about Montgomery, Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942): Canada’s most popular novelist, I wrote:

“In Montgomery’s novels there are worlds within worlds. These “interior” or “secret” worlds allow the characters to create or imagine alternatives to the patriarchal paradigm. These worlds, whether hidden, secret places or alive only inside their own minds, once integrated with the everyday world, offer the women a larger realm of possibility.”

In The Blue Castle, the main character, Valancy sneaks off alone to her room to read the books of naturalist philosopher John Foster. These books are wildly popular but looked down upon by many of the people in Valancy’s life, including her mother and the local librarian. Valancy is considered to be wasting her time by reading them and also perhaps being influenced in ways unseemly for a young, unmarried society woman of the time. Valancy experiences moments of euphoria while reading Foster’s books and quotes them to people when she can. The following is from his book Thistle Harvest.

“The woods are so human,” wrote John Foster, “that to know them one must live with them. An occasional saunter through them, keeping to the well-trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy. If we wish to be friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent, reverent visits at all hours; by morning, by noon, and by night; and at all seasons, in spring, in summer, in autumn, in winter. Otherwise we can never really know them and any presence we may make to the contrary will never impose on them. . . . If they know we come to them because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such treasures of beauty and delight as are not bought or sold in any market-place”(301).

It is revealed at the end of the book that John Foster, the nature writer, is also the character of Barney Snaith. In The Blue Castle, Montgomery takes the theme of hidden inner worlds a step further, creating a character who hides his identity as nature writer John Foster. Snaith’s world within a world is a writing shed with a locked door, hidden away on an isolated island, on Lake Mistawis. This island is the wild paradise he eventually shares with Valancy, where, free from societal constraints, she is able to bring to life fantasies of her “Blue Castle” and experience firsthand the euphoria she feels while reading Foster.

Snaith, rather than reveal his true identity, allows himself to be the object of ridicule and scorn for living outside of society in the wild and answering to no one. The descriptions of life on the island are breathtaking and could only have been written by someone like Montgomery who had such a deep respect for wild places.

However, the even more complex iteration of worlds within worlds and hidden inner lives Montgomery explores in this book is that of the writer. The nature writer John Foster, who is hiding his own identity as author of popular nature books, is quoting from nature writing that Montgomery herself wrote and published earlier in her life.

In his post “A Note on John Foster’s Thistle Harvest,” on the L.M. Montgomery Online website, Benjamin Lefebvre informs us that the bulk of the writing that Montgomery attributes to Foster in The Blue Castle is taken from four nature essays she published in 1911: “Spring in the Woods,” “The Woods in Summer,” “The Woods in Autumn,” “The Woods in Winter.”

He compares a passage from “Spring in the Woods” to the Foster quote included above, revealing how they are almost identical:

“The woods are so human that to know them we must live with them. An occasional saunter through them, keeping, it may be, to the well trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy. If we wish to be near friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent reverent visits at all hours, by morning, by noon, and by night, and at all seasons, in spring and in summer, in autumn and in winter. Otherwise, we can never really know them, and any pretence we can make to the contrary will never impose on them. They have their own effective way of keeping aliens at a distance and shutting their heart to mere casual sight-seers.

Believe me, it is of no use to seek the woods from any motive except sheer love of them; they will find us out at once and hide all their sweet, world-old secrets from us. But if they know we come to them because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such treasure of beauty and delight as is not bought or sold in market nor even can be paid for in coin of earthly minting; for the woods when they give at all give unstintedly and hold nothing back from their true worshippers. We must go to them lovingly, humbly, patiently, watchfully, and we shall learn what poignant loveliness lurks in the wild places and silent intervals, lying under starshine and sunset, what cadences of unearthly music are harped on aged pine boughs or crooned in copses of fir, what delicate savours exhale from mosses and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands, what dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them, what unsuspected tintings glimmer in their dark demesnes and glow in their alluring by-ways; for it is the by-ways that lead to the heart of the woods, and we must not fail to follow them if we would know the forests and be known of them” (“[Seasons in the Woods],” 74–75). (https://lmmonline.org/texts-and-contexts/a-note-on-john-fosters-thistle-harvest/)

In the hidden identity of John Foster is Lucy Maud Montgomery. Here, the inner, inner life of the author, Montgomery, is integrated into the story of the hidden nature writer in the novel, The Blue Castle. She allows herself to expose herself while at the same time, keeping it all a secret.

Montgomery’s secret world and rich inner life root firmly in the natural world — the wild. In her books, the secret worlds are nature-based, spiritual connections. In her writing, nature is exalted. In and through the wild, her female characters are perpetually revealed, redeemed and renewed. The wild is their spiritual touchstone. For this reason, I posit that L.M. Montgomery was a very early Ecofeminist writer.

At the end of The Blue Castle, when Barney Snaith asks Valancy to come back to him and their life together, and she hesitates, he comments:

“My life is in Mistawis—and all the wild places of the world. I’m not going to ask you to live the life of a society woman”(loc 3602).

Is this Montgomery revealing  a hidden fantasy of her own? Would she have preferred a life with “all the wild places of the world,” rather than that of a society woman? I suspect so.

Lucy Maud Montgomery is a Nasty Woman Writer.

©Theresa C. Dintino 2026

Works Cited:

Lefebvre, Benjamin. “A Note on John Foster’s Thistle Harvest,” L.M. Montgomery Online.(https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/Writers-and-Artists/Garratt/Lucy-Maud-Montgomery-Nature-Writer)

Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Avonlea. Cascais Classic Editions. First published in 1909

Montgomery, L.M. Anne of Green Gables. Amazon Classics. First published in 1908.

Montgomery, L.M. The Blue Castle. Grapevine India, 2022. First published in 1926.

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