Searching for Home: The Lives of Lucy Maud Montgomery
October 24, 2008 to January 18, 2009
Co-curated by Mary Rubio (matriarch of Montgomery scholarship) and Sandra Lucs Vilnis Cultural Design Works), Searching for Home: The Lives of Lucy Maud Montgomery was an exposé of the life and work of Canada’s most successful author. The exhibition was organized by the University of Guelph and hosted by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre.
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Lucy Maud Montgomery’s lifelong search for a home grew out of her circumstances as a motherless child and a woman at the turn of the last century. For most of her life, Montgomery lived in homes owned by others, including those of her maternal grandparents and the church-owned manses in Ontario. In 1935, after 25 years in temporary quarters, she finally bought her first permanent home, located above the Humber River in West Toronto’s Swansea. Montgomery called it “Journey’s
End” in recognition that her long search for a home that was fully her own was now complete.
The entrance into the exhibition depicted Green Gables, the home of her best-known fictional character, Anne Shirley. From that familiar setting the story of Montgomery’s life was revealed. Moving from “story girl” to celebrity author, the exhibition chronicled her success as a self-supporting author, her international influence through her books — many of which remain in print and have been translated into more than 35 languages — and films. Clips and stills of rare early
twentieth century films demonstrated the prominent place that this author has in North American popular culture and her ability to shape the world’s view of it.
Other long hidden secrets of Montgomery’s life and work were revealed in the exhibition. It is a little known fact that she was an avid amateur photographer and carried images of her cherished Prince Edward Island with her throughout her life. An early photo depicted the author in a sensual diaphanous gown in a romantic seaside location — not unlike those alluded to in the nineteenth-century literature in which she immersed herself. The juxtaposition of such images with those
taken of Montgomery in later life as the wife of a rural church minister intrigued the observer and created tension between the imagined and the real, a theme that is never far from the surface of the exhibition.
The artifacts were gleaned from the University of Guelph’s extensive archival collection of Montgomery memorabilia. Her journals, written from the age of 15 until her death, record her thoughts and daily activities. Among these we can see the realities and events that influenced her writing and her characters. The Rilla of Ingleside manuscript shows her mastery of the
writer’s craft and gives insight into her artistic process. Many pages were written in their final form, with no more than a comma or a phrase added when Montgomery readied the text for publishing.
Montgomery (and many of the heroines whom she depicted) had an almost consuming desire to create an ideal home for her family and herself. Based on artifacts and ephemera, the curators pieced together a portrayal of her perfect home: a place to care for her minister husband and two sons, her extensive library of books, a place to write, and, of course, her cats — after all, “a home is not a home without a cat.”
Some might ask how and why the Montgomery archives came to be at the University of Guelph. From 1926 to1934 Montgomery lived in nearby Norval and often visited the Guelph region for practical reasons including banking, shopping, visiting, and fulfilling speaking engagements at the Ontario Agricultural College. But there were other reasons revealed in the exhibition: little known secrets that make the author a tragic hero, and perhaps are at the root of the success of Canada’s most compelling story-teller.
Opening Reception: Friday, October 24 at 7 pm
Images:
Left: Lucy Maud Montgomery with a fan.
Right: Lucy Maud Montgomery in the kitchen.