But what I come back to is that this is a story of a bunch of country girls going to COLLEGE in the 1880s. Not twenty years before we had the March girls in "Little Women" who never seemed to seriously consider college as a womens' venue. Yet here we have an actively coed college a few hundred miles north of Concord in Nova Scotia. Montgomery alludes to the presence of at least one professor who disapproved of coeds, but they were clearly an accepted part of the community.
And it's funny to see both how much and how little college life has changed. Colleges don't have a coed's dressing room any more, and you rarely see ball gowns, or balls for that matter. But there are still lots of students like Anne attending on a shoestring from one year to the next, relying on a summer teaching job this year, a scholarship the next, and a surprise inheritance after that. Coeds (a long forgotten word) still juggle schoolwork and and social schedules, and have surprise visitors drop in when they're least prepared. When Anne announces she's made money selling an article, her roomie replies, "Let's go get drunk!" I suppose that's the most subversive line I've seen in a Montgomery work, but it also shows how little campus life has changed. And it also leaves me wondering what Anne might have been like after a few glasses of wine.
This may also be the most quotable Montgomery book. I cited the "I can't keep secrets -- it's no use to try" in a recent publication of my own, and that's a pretty pale example. Real gems include "Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I jest sits," or the immortal "Facts are stubborn things, but not half so stubborn as fallacies."
This would make a terrific film. You don't need a Megan Follows for this, you need someone else. For all her good work in other episodes, she was never quite tall enough nor whimsical enough in style to play this sort of Anne.
Amazing in Montgomery's writing is the discovery of how much and how little college years of L.M.Montgomery's time compare with those of our modern day. Though times are surely more old fashioned-where gentleman callers visit during certain hours, and no dorms are co-ed, some things never seem to change. When Anne achieves a certain accomplishment, her friend calls out.."Let's go get drunk!" Anne of the Island takes an entertaining look at Anne leaving her childhood years behind and enjoying those life changing 4 years that college brings. You'll meet her new college friends and the charming house she lives in, Patty's Place, and see Anne through as she begins life in her twenties.