I've been reading Anne of Green Gables and now Anne of Avonlea. While I thoroughly enjoy the reading, particularly delighted with how much humor is in them, I have also found myself as interested in the writer and her life. The ever present bit of info that constantly recurred regarding her husband was vexing me. I kept finding the same line over and over that when he was referenced would say something vague about his mental health. The closest I found to a diagnosis was Melancholia. That wouldn't lead to chronic use of bromides, chloroform, and electroshock "...to ease his mental health issues." That last line left me wondering, what in the hell is Melancholia? Upon investigation of that, I found that it was the Victorians way of saying Manic-Depression, with a higher concentration of suicidal thoughts than in the Manic-Depressive population only. Knowing all of this helps me to understand Maud much better as an author and how she came to choose the worlds she created. I suppose it certainly left me quite sorry for her, knowing how hard it must've been for her to try to raise her two boys, continue her writing career, run her home as the wife of the minister, and to look after a terrible ill husband. It is no wonder at all that the combination of events in post WWI that she had a near-breakdown herself. She managed to find a positive spin on why she was no longer being published as before following the war but coupled with all the rest left her with her own depression to deal with. This brought on some physical pain for which she began taking pain pills.
While I know that even from the beginning Maud didn't experience the happiest life, she was still able to see the eminent beauty in all that was around and even create laughter with her characters. That is my kind of author.
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