Anne of Green Gables – Feminism and Religion

The Creative Divine: L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon by Elanur Williams

Montgomery, L. M. *Anne of Green Gables*. Bantam Books, 1982 edition.

Long before I lived in Montréal, the lands known to the Kanienʼkehá:ka Nation as Tiohtià:ke, Canada lived in my heart. When I moved there as a young adult, the reality beautifully exceeded my imagination; yet in the years before experiencing those landscapes firsthand, they existed for me purely through books. I was an avid reader and an aspiring writer, searching for characters who felt the same strong and sometimes overwhelming pull toward self-expression that I did. I found that mirror in the windswept shores of Prince Edward Island, through L.M. Montgomery’s fiercely imaginative protagonists, Anne Shirley and Emily Byrd Starr. In her Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon books, Montgomery dismantles the rigid, punitive theology of her upbringing and offers a sharp, proto-feminist interrogation of late 19th-century Canadian Presbyterianism. In doing so, she constructs a deeply personal, feminist spirituality that equates creativity and autonomy with the divine.

Entering the World of Young Adult Literature by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette Young Adult Fantasy provides a new realm for exploring feminism and religion. It provides an avenue to which female characters can achieve and influence change. What is Young Adult Fantasy within literature? YA fantasy is a sub-genre of Young Adult Fiction, which is a category of literature whose audience can range from 12-18 years. Recently studies and publishing houses believe that now, YA can consist of an audience from 12-45. The majority of YA readers are female. Interestingly enough, females also are the majority of authors. It is a booming enterprise. Continue reading “Entering the World of Young Adult Literature by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

You Are What You Read by Martha Cecilia Ovadia

When it comes to my family, I’ve always felt different. One of my earliest memories from when I was really young was being told that I felt things too passionately—that I felt too much. What was never said but was implied was that I felt dissent too much, too often, too vocally. It made people uncomfortable. It made my family uncomfortable. When it came to understanding my faith/religious path, my family and I started diverging early on, never really meeting again—at least not for now.

When I was about five, I remember asking why women could not be priests. My mother brushed it aside and said we could be nuns. She was blind to the inherent misogyny behind the same Church that so many of her female family members had built (we come from a long line of nuns and Jesuits). I thought maybe someday I could be a woman priest. I would change it all. I would be Pope Joan.

When I was thirteen, I started noticing the wealth involved in the Roman Catholic Church, the opulence of the lived Catholic life. When I asked my parents why the Church did not lead in example and live in poverty using its wealth to actively live the gospel, I was told, “ This wealth is a gift to humanity. It is there for all of us, a patrimony to those who open their hearts.” I wasn’t talking about art, I was talking about the RCC’s gold assets—valued in the billions —but it didn’t matter. I’ve seen my family donate to Church building funds my entire life—buildings that were then sold off to pay for the Church’s offenses later on. Still, I thought if I became more involved, with the “right kind of Catholics”, I would be able to change the Church from within. Continue reading “You Are What You Read by Martha Cecilia Ovadia”

Exhaustion and Inspiration by Ivy Helman

Wading in the waters of Prince Edward Island.

Change takes time. If society takes years to change, religious institutions seem to take decades, maybe centuries. That ubiquitous intersection of religion and feminism seems neck high in mud and muck. Some religious institutions claim divine inspiration for keeping their chins down, jaws clenched and footings strongly moored in damaging sexist ideologies. This is wrong. But I’m tired. I feel as if the feminist movement is draining too much out of me for not enough change.

Perhaps an example will clarify. This Tuesday I taught the first session of a six-week long summer course entitled, “Theology through Women’s Eyes.” An odd title that could mean many things, right? It does not even imply a feminist approach to religion and the college’s course description did not either. I learned from my department’s chair that the last professor to have taught the class shied away from the course having any specific reference to feminism as she was a practicing Catholic theologian and she worried about the effects of that association for her professional career at Catholic universities.

Are you kidding? We are stuck there? Still? I personally know a great number of Catholics in academia and outside of it who wear their feminism proudly like Margaret Farley, Lisa Sowle Cahill, and Rosemary Radford Ruether to name just a few. Obviously, not everyone does. Yet, when religious institutions threaten to and actually excommunicate those who dissent from their teachings, I can see genuine issues with being an “out,” so to speak, feminist. At the same time, I’ve always thought that the minute someone censures me I’m finally doing something right. I’m being heard by my intended audience. Thank G-d, right? Those are the people who need to listen anyway. That is my measure of success. Continue reading “Exhaustion and Inspiration by Ivy Helman”