Lucy Maud Montgomery as a Writer and Author

Lucy Maud Montgomery is one of Canada’s most well-known and enduring writers. She began writing and keeping a journal at a young age and continued the habit throughout her life. As noted by her biographer, Maria Rubio, these journals were a rich source of inspiration for her novels and were their own form of literary output. She often edited and reworked passages before copying them into her diaries and they functioned as both a mirror and a canvas.

Her early childhood was steeped in the Scottish oral storytelling tradition of her family, and its influence can be seen in all of her works, as can the thread of inspiration found in Romantic writers such as Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Williams Wordsworth, Lord Byron, the Bronte sisters, and Lord Tennyson.  Although best known for her fiction, she was first published as a poet at sixteen in Charlottetown’s Daily Patriot. Her output once she began writing professionally was prodigious, and her most famous works are often a reflection of the author herself – creative, intelligent, romantic, and occasionally brooding. She took publishing seriously from early in her career and wrote in her memoir of her frustrations. 

“After leaving Prince of  Wales College I taught school for a year in Bideford, Prince Edward Island. I wrote a good deal and learned a good deal, but still my stuff came back, except from two periodicals the editors of which evidently thought that literature was its own reward, and quite independent of monetary considerations. I often wonder that I did not give up in utter discouragement. At first I used to feel dreadfully hurt when a story or poem over which I had laboured and agonized came back, with one of those icy little rejection slips. Tears of disappointment would come in spite of myself, as I crept away to hide the poor, crimpled manuscript in the depths of my trunk. But after a while I got hardened to it and did not mind. I only set my teeth and said “I will succeed.” I believed in myself and I struggled on alone, in secrecy and silence. I never told my ambitions and efforts and failures to any one. Down, deep down, under all discouragement and rebuff, I knew I would “arrive” some day”.

 ~ L.M. Montgomery, The Alpine Path, 1917 ~

She was an active participant in the early days of the Canadian Authors Association (CAA) Toronto executive before she was nudged out by members with a modernist bent who lamented the number of women’s writers within the CAA. As noted by Jane Urquhart in her short book in the Extraordinary Canadians series, “Most damning of all was the notion that she wrote only for an audience of young girls. This was, and is, of course, not true.” This perception impacted the critical attention paid to her work until the 1960s, when renewed interest by select academics reignited serious consideration of her work within its cultural context.

“Today I finished Emily of New Moon, after six months writing. It is the best book I have ever written – and I have had more intense pleasure in writing it than any of the others – not even excepting Green Gables. I have lived it, and I hated to pen the last line and write finis. Of course I’ll have to write several sequels but they will be more or less hackwork I fear. They cannot be to me what this book has been.”

~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, February 15, 1922 ~

Over the course of her career, Lucy Maud Montgomery published more than 20 books and more than 500 poems and short stories in various periodicals and books. After death, her journals, a collection of short stories, and a collection of her poetry were published. Her work has remained influential for many other writers and is beloved by readers worldwide.

Lucy Maud Montgomery as a Homemaker

Maud’s responsibilities as a “homemaker” began at an early age because, as a young woman, she was expected to help with domestic tasks. When she visited her estranged father in Saskatchewan when she was sixteen, she was treated as a maid and caregiver for her step-siblings, spending much of her visit helping around the house. 

In 1898, after a successful teaching career and gaining confidence as a writer, her grandmother needed her back at home, and she needed to put her career on pause to serve as the mistress of the house for the next thirteen years. In 1911, her grandmother passed away, and she married Ewan Macdonald a few months later. This was an exciting transition, but it brought much of the same domestic duties to her life. Her husband was a local minister, which meant she was expected to
attend numerous church events and behave as a “proper” wife. 

“There is nothing harder to do than nothing, is there? My day starts at seven in the morning, and it lasts until twelve at night. There is breakfast to get, and my younger boy’s lunch to pack, routine work to see to… and then at nine o’clock I am at my desk and there I stay until twelve… I think every woman should have an earnest interest outside or rather independent of her home interests, but one which does not take her away from the supervision of her home and the care of her children.”

While writing was her passion, she put her role as a wife and mother first and, as a result, limited her time writing. The Macdonald family could afford assistants to help with the housekeeping more than most families at the time, but Maud saw these domestic tasks as a way to show her love. 

“While I do admit that well-trained help could do most of these things as well if not better than the wife and mother can, there is still something about the fact that a man’s wife, his son’s mother, doing for her family that makes the little acts mean more than if they were twice as efficiently done by someone else.”

Being a homemaker was quite restrictive and demanding, but she found joy in her domestic tasks of motherhood. Her responsibilities in this role went beyond the children as Maud worked to support her husband, who struggled with his mental health for many years. She served as his caretaker and worked to keep his condition secret, which took a toll on her own mental health as well.  Understanding the seemingly mundane aspects of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life as a homemaker is essential to understanding her as a person and how her femininity restricted and empowered her.