In her excellent literary blog, fellow Janeite and JASNA member Sarah
Emsley wrote the following post today:
“The
Secret Diary of L.M. Montgomery and Nora Lefurgey”
In relevant part, Sarah wrote: “Inspired
by what Emily [Midorikawa] and Emma Claire [Sweeney] wrote about the secret
joint diary, Sue [Lange] sent me an excerpt from the book she’s working on,
called Hooked on Montgomery: The Hooked
and Braided Rugs in the Life of L.M. Montgomery, and with her permission,
I’m pleased to share it with all of you here.. This month…I’ve been rereading Anne
of Windy Poplars and thinking about Montgomery’s novels again….Next Friday I’ll post about Anne of Windy Poplars (and the reason I
don’t like it very much…)” END QUOTE
After
reading the excerpt Sarah quoted from Sue Lange’s book-in-progress, I have the
following comments regarding what I believe is a major overlooked implication of
Montgomery’s striking focus on rug hooking. I first recommend an excellent
article written a decade ago: “Bosom Friends: Lesbian Desire in LM
Montgomery’s Anne Books” by Laura Robinson, in Canadian Literature, Spring 2004, # 180, ppg. 12-28. In particular Robinson’s
introductory paragraph speaks volumes--she begins with a quotation of
Montgomery protesting too much to herself, so to speak:
“ “I am not a Lesbian,"
fifty-eight-year-old L.M. Montgomery wrote in her journal in response to an
increasingly problematic relationship with Isobel,1 a female schoolteacher in
her late twenties (Selected Journals 8 Feb 1932). One might think that
Montgomery protests too much, especially since she also, intriguingly, claims
to understand the "horrible craving" of the lesbian "much better
than [Isobel] understands it herself" (SJ 24 June 1932). Yet Montgomery
convincingly represents Isobel's relentless pursuit as pathological. The
younger woman threatened suicide and professed undying love for the novelist:
"I'll die without you. You've always shone like a golden star in my life .
. ." (SJ 8 Feb 1932). Montgomery was disturbed yet fascinated by Isobel's
interest in her, labelling Isobel an "unconscious" lesbian (10 June
1932). In Anne of Windy Poplars
(1936), a novel published four years after these entries, Montgomery depicts a
relationship that seems to draw on her own experience with Isobel. As I will
discuss in detail later, Anne pursues a friendship with an unhappy spinster
schoolteacher, Katherine Brooke. Katherine voices feelings for Anne that echo
Isobel's for Montgomery…”
The
rest of Robinson’s article makes equally compelling reading. For today, I want
to tie Robinson’s basic thesis to Montgomery’s curious obsession with rug
hooking, and I give full credit to Jane Austen for sensitizing me to see this
point. I.e, what immediately came to my mind as I read Sue Lange’s account was the
section of my recent presentation (at both the JASNA AGM in Montreal last
October, and also my re-presentation of same to the Portland, Oregon JASNA Chapter),
in which I presented a parade of sexual puns and slang hidden in plain sight in
Mansfield Park, as follows:
“For
those of you who haven’t believed a word of it about Mary’s pun
on “rears” as human bottoms being subjected to human “vices”, there is one
other place in Mansfield Park where “rear” appears within a single word, and
thirteen others where the word
appears in the same disguised form of “r ear” as it does in Shakespeare’s
bottom joke hidden in plain sight in Antony’s appeal to “your REARS”. I
hope that a 1-minute tour through those 14 usages, with sexual puns in bold
italics, will give you pause, because each one just happens to appear in a
sexualized context”
In
that quick tour of Austenian sexual quotes, I included the 16-year old Jane
Austen’s History of England Sharade
on James the First and his male pet Carr (“car-pet”) as being echoed in the
passage about Tom and Yates’s “friendship, if friendship it might be called”,
and I also referred to the usually passive Lady Bertram’s remarkably strong reaction
to her handsome husband returning home after a LONG absence:
“By
not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken, UNALLOYED
ENJOYMENT as by his wife, who was really extremely happy to see him, and whose
feelings were so WARMED by his sudden arrival as to place her nearer AGITATION
than she had been for the last twenty years. She had been almost
fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so sensibly animated as to put
away her work, move Pug from her side, and give all her attention and all the
rest of her sofa to her husband. She had no anxieties for anybody to cloud HER
PLEASURE: her own time had been irreproachably spent during his absence: she
had done a great deal of carpet-work, and made many yards of fringe; and she
would have answered as freely for the good conduct and useful pursuits of all
the young people as for her own. It was so agreeable to her to see him again,
and hear him talk, to have heR EAR AMUSED and HER wHOLE comprehension FILLED by
his narratives, that she began particularly to feel how dreadfully she must
have missed him, and how impossible it would have been for her TO BEAR a
LENGTHENED absence.”
The
capitalized words reveal most of the numerous sexual puns hidden in plain sight
(Lady B having her rear amused and her hole filled are my favorites), which
suggest that Lady Bertram is very VERY happy to see her husband again, after
those many months of separation. But the part that connects directly to the
rug-hooking obsession of LM Montgomery is the following:
“…She
had no anxieties for anybody to cloud HER PLEASURE: her own time had
been irreproachably spent during his absence: SHE HAD DONE A GREAT DEAL OF
CARPET-WORK, and MADE MANY YARDS OF FRINGE….”
Hmmm…
Does this suggest that, like sailors at sea availing themselves of the sexual
partners at hand, Lady Bertram has made do with a female sexual partner (yes, I
am thinking of Fanny, eventually replaced by Susan!) during her husband’s
absence? I think so, and if I am right, then “carpet” refers to the female
sexual organ (which it resembles) in the Jane Austen Code, both in works
written by Jane Austen when she was 16, and again when she was 38, suggesting
it was far from a (forgive my pun) “fleeting” definition. And I assure you that
there are several other passages referring to rugs and carpets scattered in JA’s
other writings which are also interesting, sexual innuendo-wise.
My
point in all this being that it is then extremely plausible to speculate that
the hooking of rugs may well have carried a very similar hidden meaning in the
secret lexicon of LM Montgomery’s fiction. And that would make especially great
sense, given that Montgomery was convincingly shown to have been an avid Janeite
by another JASNA member, Miriam Rheingold Fuller, here:
“Jane of Green Gables: L. M.
Montgomery’s Reworking of Austen’s Legacy”
Just think about how perfectly (and
in accordance with Occam’s Razor, how simply) reading “rug-hooking” as code for
lesbian sex fits with the following briefly quoted comments from Lange’s book:
“L.M. Montgomery and her friend Nora Lefurgey
make a number of witty references to rug hooking in the collaborative
“burlesque” diary they kept from January to June 1903, in which they catalogued
their various larks and jokes…. Within a few months of arriving, Lefurgey moved…to
board…with Montgomery and her grandmother. Montgomery & Lefurgey would
share a lifelong friendship, despite losing contact at some points. The diary
primarily revolves around the alleged pursuit of potential male suitors. In the
midst of the teasing banter between the two women…are several humorous and
informative references to rug hooking….”
Sounds
to me just like Harriet Smith virtually moving in with Emma, and like Martha
Lloyd actually moving in at Chawton Cottage with the Austen women (and JA
referring to Mrs. Stent ejaculating about cocks and hens in her 1800 letter to
Martha). I’ve argued many times in the past that Jane Austen and Martha Lloyd
appear to have a long-term complicated lesbian love relationship.
But
back to Montgomery. Lange refers to gossip about rug-hooking: “If Mrs. “Will
Sandy” was hooking rugs for her son over the winter it certainly could have set
local tongues wagging with speculation that a wedding announcement was
imminent.” Or was it gossip about something else?
Re “the
connection between rug-making and suitors”, and Montgomery’s mock outrage “at
this slur”, I think Lange is missing the deeper, coded point when she explains “One
can understand why Lefurgey was somewhat dubious about Montgomery’s motives, as
most consider the task of cutting rags mundane and dreary. The exchange between
the two young friends illustrates that rug hooking at that time was a means to
gain favour with a beau and a legitimate way to spend time socially with a
suitor’s family.” Maybe it was a means to something else entirely!
A
lesbian interpretation adds a droll unintended ironic humor to Lange’s averring
“The secret diary shows how popular the practice of rug hooking was in P.E.I.
at the beginning of the 20th century. It was not only Montgomery’s older female
relatives, such as her aunt Annie Campbell, who participated, but also her
contemporaries, including Lefurgey and Lucy Macneill.” I would not be surprised
if it was indeed more popular a practice than has heretofore been recognized!
And perhaps
Montgomery’s grandmother’s intolerance “towards strangers who came to the house”
was about the sexual aspects of Montgomery’s social rug-hooking activities.
And finally this from Sarah’s postscript: “…I couldn’t resist continuing with Anne
of Windy Poplars …I came across this comment from Marilla about the braided rugs she
plans to give Anne for her new house. Trust Anne to want something
old-fashioned instead of the latest thing. “I’m giving Anne that half dozen braided rugs I
have in the garret. I never supposed she’d want them – they’re so
old-fashioned, and nobody seems to want anything but hooked mats now. But she
asked me for them – said she’d rather have them than anything else for her
floors. They are pretty. I made them of the nicest rags, and braided
them in stripes. It was such company these last few winters.”
Indeed,
Lady Bertram!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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