Gwynn is the type of girl that I would be attracted to but she doesen't seem strong and strong women are high on my list. Alred shelltered Gwynn too much in her short life.

Ha ha you remembered the "bosom friend". That sounds so funny today. Especially with Verity doing dances of bosom rightness at the drop of a hat.

I think that one of Gwynn's problems is that she never has had a bosom friend. She doesn't get along so well with her sister. She has tried to be friends with "big girls" like Cat and Flann, but that didn't work out too well when they started having "big girl" problems. And she likes having Raegan around, but I think what she likes there is being a "big girl" getting worshipped by a little girl, in a role reversal of what she was when she was worshipping Cat.

Gwynn really needs a girl of her own age, who is romantic enough to love and understand her, but who has enough of a level head to keep Gwynn from engaging in the dangerous excesses of romanticism, such as the Lady of Shallott chapter of Anne of Green Gables. (Though that had a lovely ending. ) Or... eloping with a handsome, violet-eyed knight, say.

I am thinking Connie might fit the bill, but they're just getting to know each other at this point. And we're just getting to know Connie, for that matter. Plus Connie is grieving for Eithne.

Of course, it may be that Connie needs a "bosom friend" herself, now that Eithne is gone.

Ooo...I LOVED the Anne of Green Gables series as a kid. I have all the books! Hm...lots of foreshadowing there. Maybe Gwynn is going to meet her violet-eyed knight and decide to reject him for the boy next door (fingers crossed for Cedric). It's funny because Anne always wished that her eyes were violet. Maybe when I have the time, I'll go and reread the series.

I still sometimes reread my Anne of Green Gables books; the last one, Rilla of Ingleside, was my favorite. Rilla got into scrapes just like Anne (her mother).

Anne and Gilbert were just darling together. I must point out that Gilbert started making fun of Anne to try to get her attention much like Finn did with Gwynn...though Gilbert spent years trying to get her to like him afterwards which I don't really see Finn doing just yet.

It is true that Gwyn is not Anne in some ways... lacking the red-headed temper after all. But Gwynn would totally be the type to dye her hair green or get stuck under a bridge playing Lady of Shallott... or call herself Cordelia and write "Averil's Atonement".

However, fortunately for Gwynn, she is quite exquisitely pretty, is already a Duke's daughter, and her mother's and grandmother's lives were romantic enough that it has become her birthright.

Unfortunately she doesn't have Anne's spice to balance Anne's sweet, nor Anne's pepper to defend herself. Stay tuned.

As for Finn, he is perhaps more like Gil than you know. Who knows how abominable Gil would have been if Anne hadn't cracked her slate over his head that day? That is certainly what the boy needs. Maybe Connie will be the girl to do it, or to teach Gwynn to do it instead.

Karen, Rilla is one of my favorites! I always liked the books when Anne was in her late teens best of all, and we had that again with Rilla.

My only complaint about that book was that LMM had to magically advance the timeline ten years or so to get it to line up with the war. You see *cough* I am so Anne-obsessed that I once read all the books in order and, starting from a date I had read somewhere about what year the Anne of Green Gables book started in (1879 was it?), marked every single chapter with the month and year it took place in. There is usually enough info about holidays and dates in the chapters to make it possible, but with Rilla there's a large leap. Rilla should have been in her late twenties by 1914, I think. Of course maybe my starting date was wrong... but I think I did check out Canadian politics of the time and satisfied myself that the elections lined up. All these Tories and Whigs seemed so quaint to me at the time.

Have you read the Story Girl books? The ones the TV series "Avonlea" was based on. (I think it has a different name in Canada and abroad though "The Road to Avonlea" or something) I loved those as much as Anne, though for different reasons. LMM got a lot more descriptive in those books and evoked the landscape so much better.

I really have no time to drop into the forum this morning, but oh my God somebody dropped in a quarter and pressed the "Avonlea" button. I'm hopeless. Sometimes I still log into realty Websites and check out real estate on PEI and daydream... Perhaps Vancouver Island is some kind of second-best fantasy fulfillment for me after all.

I envy you your family's vacation spot! I've never been.

Gwynn's lack of temper is what makes me think she needs a man (at least a father) who will defend her and protect her. If she's left defending herself, she'll be shattered, poor girl. She's no Matilda in that respect.

It looks like I'm not the only person to have had this idea. But on that page the Other Person says:

In the manuscript for Anne of the Island, L. M. Montgomery wrote that Anne belonged to the class of 1899, then the class of 1889, and finally decided not to use a date at all. Many inconsistencies also exist in the dates and ages of the characters. This shows that the author was likely not trying to a write historically accurate novel, she was writing a story that took place in the general time-setting she herself lived in.

and :

The descriptions of society, fashions and artifacts in the Anne of Green Gables match the trends of the early 20th century more than it matches the 1870s. Anne of Green Gables was probably written to take place in a generic time period rather than a specific decade.

So I guess that answers your question about the puffed sleeves. LMM must not have been as date-obsessed as I, though we both have problems with historical accuracy in fashion.

I have read, I believe, every novel and story collection she wrote, and I too squealed over every passing mention of a character from the Anne books. (My date-collecting included adding dates to some of the chronicle chapters that mentioned Anne or other characters directly. ) Perhaps because she was a Canadian author, my university here in BC had all her books, to my great delight.

You really should read The Story Girl and The Golden Road, if you haven't yet. They are beautiful, and in some ways more moving than the Anne books, since they are written from the POV of an adult man about the couple of years he spent on PEI as a child. So they are sometimes tinged with melancholy and a golden glow, which if you are old enough to begin to be nostalgic about your childhood, you will understand.

As for Gwynn, I did hint at Lady of Shallott adventures, though without the almost-tragic outcomes. In "Lady Gwynn drinks up romance to the dregs" I wrote:

She and Margaret and Emma and Britamund had often talked about the elves, and many times they had played in Queen Maud’s old overgrown garden and pretended that they were elf maidens.  Even more fun had been the times when they had pretended they were young ladies in distress, and elves had come to rescue them, just as they had rescued Iylaine from her captivity.

That whole chapter is rather Anne-like if you read Gwynn's thoughts. Anne at 11 anyway.

I had sometimes considered doing something along the Lady of Shallott lines with Gwynn, but I think that at 13 she finds herself too grown-up for such games of pretend now. Any heartbreak, tragedy, or romance in Gwynn's life will likely be the real thing.