Why I Love Lucy Maud

Curiously, my partner John, who had never read any of Montgomery's fiction, was intrigued by the journals. Montgomery's journals recount that at the wedding dinner after the ceremony, she felt "a sudden horrible inrush of rebellion and despair. I wanted to be free .... At that moment, if I could have torn the wedding ring from my finger and so freed myself, I would have done it!". Things began to fall apart when Macdonald came down with a severe case of depression, and Montgomery learned to her horror that it wasn't for the first time. Nobody knows to what extent this persistent harassment and heartbreak over her son affected her own mental health and drug intake, but Montgomery was so upset in the last three years of her life that she stopped writing in her beloved journals. Montgomery's life may have been tragic, but it's also inspiring, as the readers of her journals know. While Rubio's subsequent research found that Montgomery shaped and pruned her journals to create her own narrative of her life, nobody who reads either the journals or the biography, The Gift of Wings, can come away unimpressed. While Montgomery was sometimes imperious, and admitted to enjoying being "Lionized," she comes across in her journals as someone you would very much enjoy having a coffee with.