Anne of Green Gables and Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn

A random set of thoughts: when I was walking today I was thinking of Anne of Green Gables as I often do. It was probably the most influential of the books I read as a child and being a total book worm, I read a LOT of books. I read adult literary classics right alongside girlhood favorites like Nancy Drew, and Cherry Ames-Student Nurse. But the one that touched my heart and influenced my life was Anne of Green Gables. Her profound response to the natural world matched my own. Her attempts to do the right thing even though they sometimes went awry matched my own. I realized with Anne of Green Gables that I wasn't odd or singular and that there were others in the world with a similar set of aspirations and sensitivities. Anne of Green Gables has walked through my long life with me. I am so glad I visited Nova Scotia twice although both times I was with a male companion who was captaining the expedition and so despite my desire, we didn't visit Prince Edwar Island. Nonetheless, I got the feel of the air and sky and sea from my visits.

Of course, being a girl in the last half of the twentieth century, I read the boyhood books as well as the girl books. So I read Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and in fact, most if not all Mark Twain's novels, although some of them were completely incomprehensible to me like A Connecticut Yankee i King Arthur's Court. But those boys, Huck and Tom, never reached my heart in any meaningful way and I never think of them now even though I have watched the film versions of the books as well.

It seems to me in some profound way, these two novels of youth represent the female and male worlds even through the vast stretch of time and change from when they were written to now - something more on the psychological level. And if I were in a literary program, I think I might want to explore this relationship. Anne of Green Gables still has spin-offs appearing on streaming tv services and has perhaps had more film inte rpretations that Tom Sawyer or Hickleberry Finn. Maybe women cling more to the literature of their childhood than men do. In fact, I knew very few boys who read for pleasure, neither of my brothers, for instance and non of the boys I knew in the neighborhood or in school. It wasn't until college and the literature program that I was in that I met young men who loved books and wanted to talk about them. That was a revelation and a joy!

Anyhow since this literary pondering wasinsisting on being put down somewhere, here it is.

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