‘Tragical’ back story of Aunt Marilla of Green Gables
Sarah McCoy’s book imagines the life of a young woman growing up in 1830s P.E.I. who sacrifices love for family and commitment
There’s a charming scene in the first 10 minutes of the CBC/Netflix series Anne
with an E, where Lucy Maude Montgomery’s plucky red-haired heroine Anne Shirley is on a train journey to meet her new guardians, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. Anne, who inhabits a fantasy world all her own, is bouncing up and down in her seat, giddily speculating about the unmarried siblings’ romantic pasts.
The moment is amusing in part because Anne’s straitlaced Aunt Marilla, with her grey-streaked hair twisted into a tight knot, is far from one of Montgomery’s most romantic characters. Nor is she an obvious Green Gables spinoff. But her mysterious past sparked the imagination of bestselling American author Sarah McCoy, whose new book, Marilla of Green Gables, builds the story of a young woman living in 1830s PEI who sacrifices love for family. It’s delightfully “tragical,” as Anne Shirley loved to say.
McCoy is a lifelong Montgomery super-fan: even her dog is named Gilbert, after Anne’s beloved Gilbert Blythe. As a child, McCoy, who was born in Kentucky and grew up in a travelling military family, related to Anne’s whimsical dreaminess and her occasionally wicked temper. Her Puerto Rican mother — a career teacher who became a principal — was an authoritative figure like Marilla, disciplining with strict rules and consequences. McCoy remembers her mom first reading Anne of Green Gables to her when she was 4 while the family was living abroad in Germany. She also recalls how one passage in the book stuck with McCoy all through her childhood and teenage readings. It’s a brief scene as Marilla explains to Anne how she used to be close to Gilbert’s handsome father, John Blythe, until they got into an unexplained quarrel. “People called him my beau,” says Marilla.
“I remember this helped me think that Marilla had been young and once in love, and my mom must’ve been, too,” says McCoy. “What did that picture look like? Was she a different person back then?”
That brief passage not only helped a young McCoy better understand her own mother, but it also sparked the idea for Marilla of Green Gables. McCoy believes that Montgomery had a back story for Marilla in mind when she wrote her character. “You don’t just drop that into a story unless you dreamt about it already, and you know that love story,” McCoy says.
McCoy knew early on she wanted approval from Montgomery’s heirs, who are fiercely protective of the Green Gables name. Believing that an in-person meeting would better demonstrate her good intentions and loyalty, McCoy travelled from her home in North Carolina to Silver Bush Campbell Farm House in PEI. Built in1872 for Montgomery’s Uncle John and Aunt Annie, the Gothic revival building now serves as the Anne of Green Gables Museum.
McCoy sat in the old kitchen with Montgomery descendants, Pamela Campbell and George Campbell, who run the museum and help oversee Green Gables licensing and copyright matters. She told them, “I know I’m probably not worthy, but I want to be worthy. My goal is to bring honour and respect and joy and more Green Gables to our contemporary conversation because I think the world right now wants it. I was very open and I didn’t just come to say, ‘this is what I’m doing.’ I really listened and let them talk.”
In researching the book, McCoy pored over Montgomery’s texts as if she was investigating a real person, highlighting everything that was said about Marilla’s character: physical descriptions, what she liked to eat and cook, every opinion and religious belief that would help form her basic narrative portrait.
One could read Marilla of Green Gables like a prequel, but it also stands alone as a historical novel. Fans will delight in a young Rachel Lynde, raspberry cordial and Marilla’s prized amethyst brooch. But McCoy expanded Avonlea’s scope, interweaving the political turmoil of the Upper and Lower Canadian Rebellions with Marilla’s involvement with the Underground Railroad and the Emancipation movement.
McCoy finished writing the book on a month-long working trip in Cavendish, where she wrote the last chapter and prologue. Her mother came to join her for a week. “I loved having her there because she was really my first Marilla,” says McCoy, who took frequent breaks to visit Montgomery’s grave.
The day before she was about to leave, McCoy made one last visit to the grave, seeking Montgomery’s otherworldly approval.
“I know that bones can’t give me that,” McCoy says. “But I happen to believe in kindred spirits, and so I wanted her spirit to be part of this.” Sue Carter is the editor of Quill and Quire.
“My goal is to bring ... more Green Gables to our contemporary conversation because I think the world right now wants it.” SARAH MCCOY AUTHOR, MARILLA OF GREEN GABLES