As a Canadian, I started reading the Anne books at about 10 years old. I know I wept when I got to the last in the series.
The first book is quite radical in its ideas about adoption and found family; trauma and a will to overcome.
There is so much in there that can resonate with current readers.
For a book written with the objective of providing entertainment for children rather than an improving tract wrapped up as fiction, Anne of Green Gables takes on social and relationship issues nevertheless.
I’ve always felt that Europeans need to read it to understand the history of adoption in North America and why adoption continues to be a very accepted way to form families here while still raising questions of motives in other countries.
The backdrop is that in a society of immigrant settlers, orphaned children had no extended family to take them on. Epidemics, especially among refugees of the Irish famine and the Spanish flu, led to widespread adoption into existing communities. In Quebec this led to Catholic Irish and Scots orphans being adopted into Francophone families. In Ontario, there are oral histories of their being adopted into Indigenous communities such as Six Nations.
There definitely seems to be less history with non-kin adoption in Europe than in North America.
Anne’s story reflects a widespread experience of adoption in North America in the 19th century. Demographic data from that period shows that the majority of families were blended, due to death and abandonment rather than divorce. The mid 20th century ideal of a couple marrying for both their lives and raising their own birth children was by far the exception.
The only things that are unusual in the Anne books in the context of its time are that the adopting couple are siblings themselves, not a married couple and that they were seeking to adopt a boy rather than a girl. (There is evidence back to the early 19th century that more girls were requested than boys.)
I believe that I’ve amplified Canadian Heritage Minutes here before.
Here’s one in adoptions in Quebec after the Irish Famine.
https://youtu.be/H48gaLbJfxc?si=XdJmW1-y4yl8Vc86
Elena. (she/ her)
AlsoPaisleyCat 🇨🇦