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'Journey's End' for Montgomery

Broadcast Date: Nov. 1, 1996

By the 1930s Lucy Maud Montgomery's life is growing increasingly complicated. As her personal life continues its downward spiral, her reputation is being overshadowed by the likes of Ernest Hemingway.
Frustrated by the shifting literary landscape and troubled by her husband's mental deterioration, Montgomery moves to a new home she calls "Journey's End."


This clip from CBC's Life & Times clip documents Montgomery's final decade as she struggles with both her husband's and her own ill health, and tries to salvage a career that is quickly slipping out of fashion.

'Journey's End' for Montgomery

• 1935 marked a pivotal year for Montgomery, both personally and professionally.
• She was made a Companion of the Order of the British Empire (at the time a rare honour for a woman) and a member of the Literary and Artistic Institute of France.
• This followed her induction, in 1923, to The Royal Society of the Arts in Britain. She was the first Canadian woman to become a member of the organization, which includes William Hogarth, Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens and Karl Marx.

• Montgomery had written 17 books since the debut of Anne, including three Emily of New Moon novels, but was increasingly being viewed as old-fashioned.
• Her works, which she once boasted were read by men and women both young and old, were seen by critics and cultural tastemakers as little more than genre literature.

• Mary Rubio, a University of Guelph professor who is writing (2005) Montgomery's official biography, told the CBC Archives that a "sea change" in literary tastes in the 1920's was largely to blame for Montgomery's decline.
• "A different style of writing gained favour," Rubio explains. "Writing that stressed the angst people felt after the war and that favoured a pared-down writing style (like Hemingway's).

• "Montgomery's books — being popular, being about women and children, and being humorous — were seen as 'old-fashioned' and like 'fairy tales' because of their humorous tone and happy endings."
• Combined with her reduced output and poor health, Montgomery quickly faded from the public eye. According to Rubio "she was being written out of the canon of important Canadian writers by male professors and male journalists."

• This point was borne out by a review of her obituaries in 1942.
• The Globe and Mail ran a brief obituary on Page 5 while the Toronto Star placed theirs on Page 28 below a column on "Women's Activities."
• In her final journals Montgomery recalled her troubles, which included a stay in a mental institution for her husband, and hoped that the new home would help them start fresh.

• "The scars will always be there," she wrote. "But the old ache will disappear."
• In the coming years her sons would move out of the house; Chester would become a lawyer and Stuart a doctor.
• Left alone at Journey's End with her mentally ill husband, Montgomery herself began to deteriorate physically and mentally. A nervous breakdown in 1938 was followed by several accidental injuries in 1940. She began taking barbiturates and other pills for her pain.

• Her experiences in the last few years of her life are best reflected in her journal entries, which are found in The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery: Volume Five. The only entry in 1941 was on July 8th and read "Oh God, such an end to life. Such suffering and wretchedness."

• The next entry came on April 23, 1942: "Since then, my life has been hell, hell, hell. My mind is gone — everything in the world I lived for has gone — the world has gone mad. I shall be driven to end my life. Oh God forgive me. Nobody dreams what my awful position is."
• Lucy Maud Montgomery died the next day of congestive heart failure.

• Her body was taken back to P.E.I. where it lay in state at the Green Gables historic site. She was then buried in a cemetery in Cavendish, her hometown.
• Her husband died the following year and is buried in the same plot as his wife.
• After her death the National Sites and Historic Board of Canada declared Montgomery a person of national historic significance, but it was more than 40 years before the author's works would regain their cultural standing.

'Journey's End' for Montgomery

Medium: Television

Program: Life & Times

Broadcast Date: Nov. 1, 1996

Guest(s): Elizabeth Epperly, Megan Follows, Don Hanna, Elizabeth Waterston

Narrator: Jackie Burroughs , Mike Jones

Duration: 6:54

Last updated:
June 30, 2009