Fun Facts About MAUD: Maud and Her Times

It is hard to imagine but in MAUD’s Book Birthday is in 14 DAYS!

The reviews have started  from Publisher’s Weekly, The Quill and Quire and Atlantic Book Today, as well as being featured as a Goodreads Best Books of the Month for April 2017, and  Indigo’s Spring YA Preview. There have also been some lovely tweets from early readers, and Reading Lark put an teaser on their blog this week. I’ve added a few other early interview’s here. I’m very grateful for all of the attention the book is getting.

Queen Victoria

In anticipation for the launch, I’m going to be posting some “Fun Facts About MAUD”. This could be something about L.M. Montgomery, or it might be about writing the novel. If you want some general details about Maud, check out the MAUD’S WORLD section.

Today it is about Maud’s times, between 1889 and 1892, late 19th century Victorian Canada. This period is named after the reigning queen of Great Britain, Queen Victoria. Like many Canadians, Maud was a devoted to the monarchy and when the queen died on 22 January, 1901, Maud wrote in her journal the following day:

Maud at 14. copyright: L.M. Montgomery Collection at the University of Guelph Archives

“…the first I saw, blazoned in great black letters across the page, was ‘The Queen died today.’ The news was expected for she had been very ill and little hope was held of her recovery. Still, it was a very decided shock. One felt as if the foundations of all existing things were crumbling and every trustworthy landmark sweep away. Who ever though that Queen Victoria could die? ‘The queen’ seemed a fact as enduring and unchangeable as the everlasting hills. The sense of loss seems almost personal.” (CJ2: The PEI Years, 4).

Consider for a moment that Maud was 12 years old when Queen Victoria celebrated her Golden Jubilee in 1887 and it was Queen Victoria who proclaimed Confederation of the first four provinces of Canada. This queen had a powerful presence in Maud’s life.

One would think that with a queen in power that maybe this would carry over to create a better status of women in Canada and Great Britain.  At first Queen Victoria was resistant to giving up her power:

But after she married Albert, said to be one of the greatest love affairs, she eventually turned her attention to their nine children. She wrote in her journal: “Really when one is so happy and blessed in one’s home life as I am, Politics (provided my Country is safe) must take only a 2nd. place,” (Anderson & Zinsser, A History of Their Own, 165).

After Albert died in 1861, Victoria became a symbol, the “Widow of Windsor,” embodying the highest ideal of “motherhood.” In many ways, the fashions of the days represented the conservative views, with high lace collars and tight corsets.

If a woman wanted to do something other than what was traditionally expected of her, she would come up against much opposition. A woman couldn’t own property, she couldn’t vote. There were only a handful of careers that were seen appropriate for women, such as teaching or going into service, and if you were of a particular class (like Maud, service was not an option). As well, one couldn’t even consider a career once she was married.  This is a little earlier, but it gives you a sense of how teachers needed to be careful to keep their status.

And while women had started attending college, it was still frowned upon.

But, Maud had ambition. She once told her pen pal, G.B. MacMillan, that her “one ambition was to write” (21). The constraints of her day coupled with her ambition, meant that she had to navigate around her society. As a teen she was just beginning to do this.

Perhaps it was also why she chose to write about women and community. She wrote about the strong women she grew up with,  such as  her grandmother, Aunt Annie and Great-Aunt Mary, who would  organize events, such as literaries and church socials. In all of Maud’s novels, starting with her most famous one, Anne of Green Gables, she writes about this network of women, providing a perspective into how women found agency within a patriarchy system that kept them in the domestic sphere.

MAUD explores this network of women and community, and the important decision Maud had to make, to choose the road that was expected of her, or the one that she wanted.

“A Western Eden” by L.M. Montgomery Retrieved from: http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/newspapers/PAT/1891/06/17/4/Ar00403.html