Reviews

TW: Exactly one statement of the n-word, but not as a direct insult

I have not been as disgruntled by an Anne book since Anne of Avonlea. And this one blows that one out of the water. At least Anne of Avonlea was still following Anne. Rainbow Valley is the culmination of every complaint I’ve ever had about this series.

If you read or read my review of Anne of Ingleside you'll see that I really enjoyed the shift in direction. I like Anne’s kids and I liked the change to centering them with Anne being more of a supporting character. I also feel that Montgomery’s writing style was able to shine tremendously under the new format.

This took that to the extreme by adding a whole new brood in addition to Anne’s five and demoting Anne to a minor - if that - character. That old adage ‘be careful what you wish for’ comes to mind.

There isn’t any reason, technically speaking, this couldn’t have worked. But, the reason it doesn’t is the combination of an uptick in priggishness plus an unlikeable foundation on which the story is built upon.

The Anne books are no stranger to righteousness. Montgomery was staunch in her beliefs and while some parts are more modern it is overall traditionalist given the distance from our current time period. There is a measure of religiosity, ocial structure, and conservatism you just have to learn to accept as part of the whole. Unless something is particularly bad - like back in Anne's House of Dreams when Gilbert advocated for a course of action that could have forced a woman back under the thumb of her abuser by playing on the misogynistic cultural norm that a woman must serve her husband at the cost of her own happiness - I mostly let it wash over me. It's simply not worth pointing out in detail every book when it’s not going to change.

In this book we are introduced to the Meredith kids - the perfect little vehicles to wax poetic about virtuosity. 12 year old Jerry, 11 year old Faith, 10 year old Una and 9 year old Carl are the rambunctious children of the new minister, widower John Meredith. Most of the book is about these kids getting up to all sorts of mischief because their father is so scatterbrained he can only care about theology. Through them we can see how important it is to uphold the rules of propriety. (In case you couldn’t tell, yes, I am being sarcastic)

On its face it sounds extremely similar to what Montgomery has done before, the biggest difference being that the focus is on a slew of people only tangentially related to Anne whereas before you had to be directly in her sphere to matter. While the Blythe kids do factor in it’s clear who the real protagonists are.

What makes everything so insufferable is that the one standout awful vignette that has to be in every Anne book - There’s typically a minimum of one. I don’t mean this to mean there is only one - takes center stage, poisoning all it touches.

The Meredith kids partake in normal kids shenanigans for the most part. It’s just that being in a small, insular town means being held to certain standards of behavior especially as children of a prominent town official. The fact that they don’t have a mother is cause for great sympathy as well as a source of repeated disapproval. When I talk about the conflict between modern sensibilities and previous rigid social constraints the Manse children, as they are often referred to, are the literal embodiment of this divide.

While people were worried about the kids to a point, it mostly stemmed from the idea that they were disgracing their father by acting out and thereby lowering the reputation of the town. Here in 2021 it is easy to see these kids are being abused and most people would be reacting with a lot more alarm at their situation.

Abuse is not just physical or emotional. Even in those two categories there is a lot of overlap. Neglect is also a form of abuse. And these kids probably fit the definition to a tee. If you looked it up in a dictionary you’d see their picture; that’s how bad it is.

Their clothes are barely better than rags. They only get an actually viable, healthy dinner one day a week. The rest is basically scraps thrown together by their great aunt Martha, who is too old to do much of anything which means the house is a wreck too. Heck, when the book first starts a runaway orphan girl moves in for a bit and John Meredith doesn’t even realize there’s a whole child he had no hand in making staying in the house.

The kids are susceptible to all manner of gossip about their situation meaning they constantly feel undeserved guilt for fairly mundane conduct as it reflects on their fathers’ station. Their attempts to punish themselves run awry, of course, creating a vicious cycle of misery.

And the entire time these kids are being ignored and side-eyed and starved out it’s framed as if John Meredith is meant to be pitied because he is doing the best he can under the present circumstances i.e. lacking in a wife to mother the whole family. The deadbeat makes it abundantly clear several times throughout that he recognizes his failings yet he does nothing to change it. He inevitably forgets and becomes immersed in his sermons once more or wallows in self-pity before succumbing once more to his sermons. Either way the sermons are given precedent over his own children.

He doesn’t think he’s going to marry again because he was devastated losing his first wife. So his plan is to wait for his ELEVEN YEAR OLD daughter to get old enough to run the household instead. Ignoring the fact that she doesn’t even have anyone to teach her the skills she would need for a moment, how messed up is it that he is looking forward to the day he can let his child take on the immense burden of essentially parenting her siblings?

I know, I know. It was a different time. I really don’t care, it sank my enjoyment. It would be one thing if this was merely one of the ongoing stories in the book. But, almost all the stories are interwoven through this one. It’s the backbone of all of Rainbow Valley. It’s inescapable.

There’s also this hateful plot about Rosemary West being barred from marriage for purely selfish reasons.

Allow me to go on tangent for a minute: What is with all the overbearing, egotistical women in this series who leverage their relationship as a means of keeping a close relative from marrying? It’s so prevalent it might as well be a theme.

The last book had a mother who sabotaged any relationship her son had by using Bible quotes to justify why he shouldn't court a potential partner. Windy Poplars had a mother who emotionally abused her daughter to the point Anne had to devise a trick to let the poor woman wear a nice dress and attend her cousin's wedding. There was also that one relationship where the mother made her son promise he would never get married as long as she was alive and he strung his beloved along for like 20 years, unable to tell her why all because she said so. Why does this keep happening? Was Montgomery witness to such occurrences often in her day to day life? I know other people could have an undue amount of control over your marriage prospects, but was it really this common to sabotage their chances?

The conclusion to the Rosemary West plot highlights how far removed Anne is from this series now. In a previous book this would have been right up her alley to try to rectify.

Bizarrely, there is an instance where Mary Vance - the aforementioned runaway orphan girl - casually drops the n-word. It was surreal to have such a charged slur enter the game SIX books in. It probably is added to reflect on Mary Vance’s upbringing in some way, but I can’t know for certain. Either way it is obviously racist and caught me totally off guard.

Another weak entry to the canon. But, if you’ve made it this far you can’t possibly quit now.

Previous Review: Anne of Ingleside

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