L.M. Montgomery Honoured for International Women’s Day!

Copyright Historica Canada

Today is International Women’s Day and I always take a moment to reflect upon the work that women are doing around the world to fight for equal access to education, pay equity, and even the right to vote.

I also reflect upon where we’ve been and the women who have come before me, who have done the hard work so that I had the opportunity to have an education and to work in my field. And, yes, to write!

In honour of L.M. Montgomery’s contribution to Canadian culture, her fight to be accepted as a women writer at a time where it was considered inappropriate, and her struggles with mental illness, Historica Canada created a Heritage Minute on Montgomery for International Women’s Day. The video was done in consultation with Montgomery scholars, Dr. Elizabeth Epperly, Dr. Mary Rubio and Dr. Laura Robinson.

And it is beautiful!

It is hard for us in Canada to imagine in 2018 that during the time Montgomery was growing up, women didn’t have the right to vote or own property. The idea of a woman being educated was considered radical, and being a women writer–unheard of! Montgomery’s ambition conflicted with the social and political norms of late Victorian Canada. To be published at 16, to convince her grandfather that she was worthy of being educated and going to college, to eventually get to Dalhousie and work as a reporter for the Daily Echo–and, yes, to publish 21 novels, hundreds of short stories and to become a bestselling author in the early twentieth century is monumental. When I go on my author talks, I always say she was like the Margaret Atwood of the early twentieth century. She was that popular.

When I wrote MAUD, I wanted to tell the story of a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, reflecting all that Montgomery had to achieve because of her gender. As a teenager she had to make a decision between what was expected of her–marry an appropriate suitor and have a family–and her ambition to write and go to school. She made her brave choice. 

My novel also references how Montgomery used writing to channel her anxiety and emotional turmoil. Writing was a calling, a career, but it was also essential to her emotional well-being.

As we commemorate Montgomery and the many women around the world who fought for women’s rights, let us remember there is much work to do. The #METOO movement is bringing awareness to sexual harassment in the workplace, young women are fighting for the right to be safe at home and in their schools, and we continue to strive to find balance between what we want and what is expected of us.

May we stand on the shoulders of these women who fought for our right to vote, to own property, to be persons under the law–to  become who we want to be. For that is how we raise our voices up, become part of an international community of strong women,  bringing us one step closer to equality.