Hope is a girl called carrots

Anne Shirley, Charles Péguy, and practicing childlike Hope

“Faith is a loyal Wife./Charity is a Mother/…Hope is a little girl, nothing at all/…and yet it’s this little girl who will endure worlds./This little girl, nothing at all./She alone, carrying the others, who will cross worlds past.”

So wrote Charles Péguy, a French poet, philosopher, and Catholic convert who was killed fighting in World War I. I first encountered Peguy’s poem, Portal of the Mystery of Hope, in a theology course for my great books major (Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies). At the time, I was coming to terms with my OCD diagnosis. Péguy’s image of Hope as a little girl, vulnerable and overshadowed by her “older sisters” Faith and Charity, struck a chord. At that point, Hope was indeed a vulnerable virtue in my life. I was wrestling with serious questions about my vocation, and my ability to live a normal life, as a result of my mental illness. Moving forward required a childlike trust in God and his promises that was difficult to muster. Deep within me, little girl Hope was indeed being asked to “endure worlds.”

As a result, the image of little girl Hope is one that is indelibly branded in my heart and mind. This past year, I found that little girl Hope had acquired a name and a head of carrot-red hair when I read Anne of Green Gables for the first time. I don’t think I have ever loved a literary character as quickly as I came to love Anne Shirley. Several pages of my commonplace journal are filled with quotes from the first three books of L.M. Montgomery’s series, and I look forward to adding more as I continue the story of Anne’s life.

While part of me wishes I met Anne much earlier in my life, I think it is ultimately a gift that I’ve met her as an adult; an adult who can feel world weary in the face of loss, terrifying news headlines, and the wear and tear of daily life. Furthermore, as a mother of three, I need Anne Shirley’s childlike wisdom to save me from burdening my children with my world weariness. Anne’s hopefulness is displayed early on in Anne of Green Gables, when she is driving to Green Gables, her new home, with Matthew Cuthbert. Marveling at the beauty around her, and rejoicing in unanswered “why” questions, she says:

“Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel good to be alive-it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we all knew all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for the imagination then, would there?”

For Anne, as it should be for all children (and ideally for all people) the world is a place of wonder and magical possibilities. Anne looks forward to the future with hope; for she anticipates the joys to come with each day, joys associated with learning about what is good and “splendid” in this “interesting world” of ours.

It is easy to dismiss such optimism as childish ignorance and innocence. Once Anne “grows up,” she’ll realize that far from being an enchanted realm where she can exercise the “scope of her imagination,” the world is filled with misery, poverty, and abuse beyond the ability of mortal heart to bear. Such a dismissal would miss the truly heroic quality of Anne’s hope.

While L.M. Montgomery doesn’t dwell on it, it is clear that, young though Anne is, she has already encountered the darker side of life. Orphaned as an infant whom “nobody wanted even then,” Anne is first taken in by Mrs. Thomas, whose husband is a drunk. Anne is expected to help care for their four young children until the age of eight, when she is sent to live with Mrs. Hammond. Mrs. Hammond has eight children, and, like Mrs. Thomas, expects Anne to help take care of them. When Mrs. Hammond’s home, like Mrs. Thomas’s home, falls apart after the death of her husband, Anne has to go to an orphan asylum because, once again, “nobody would take [her].” In relating her tragic history to Marilla Cuthbert, who (with her brother Matthew) ends up adopting Anne, Anne avoids dwelling on the suffering she endured. But Marilla is “shrewd enough to read between the line’s of Anne’s history” and feels pity for the “starved, unloved life [Anne] had had--a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect.”

Such a life is hardly conducive to developing the virtue of Hope, whether hope in the goodness of humanity, the goodness of life itself, or the goodness of God’s providence. Furthermore, even after Anne is adopted and becomes rich in the love she always longed for, her life is hardly without pain. She loses Matthew, her adopted father figure, when she is sixteen in tragic circumstances: a heart attack brought on by the stress of learning that his savings were wiped out in a bank failure. A few years later, Anne’s childhood friend, Ruby, dies of consumption.

In short, Anne’s hope is born not out of ignorance of, but out of a deliberate and defiant choice to hope in spite of life’s harsh realities. Indeed, Anne refuses to accept that such “harsh realities” are representative of life’s totality. Anne, like G.K. Chesterton, recognizes that focusing on the world’s suffering and sinfulness, to the exclusion of its joyfulness and goodness, is, in fact, very “unrealistic” indeed. Chesterton noted that such a mindset is particularly evident in journalism, and in an age where we are in constant contact with a relentless twenty-four hour news cycle, we can easily succumb to the despair such a mindset engenders:

It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions. We announce on flaring posters that a man has fallen off a scaffolding. We do not announce on flaring posters that a man has not fallen off a scaffolding…That the man has not fallen off a scaffolding is really more sensational; and it is also some thousand times more common. But journalism cannot reasonably be expected thus to insist upon the permanent miracles…They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority.

All of us will, in one way or another, live through periods of intense suffering. Like Anne, we will be wounded by a lack or a loss of love in our lives. Poverty, illness, ignorance, and violence will touch our lives and the lives of those we love. Wounded as we are, it can be difficult to believe that such pains are the “exceptions” of our lives, that they are not the “complete picture,” that the “permanent miracles” of laughter, happiness, and survival are present all around us. Cynicism and pessimism then become the inevitable attitudes of the mature adult who takes an “honest” look at the world around him or her.

We see this attitude reflected in the works of modern authors like George R.R. Martin. Martin, in turn, has criticized the work of authors like Tolkien work for not being “realistic” enough, by which he means it lacks explicit sexual content, an assumption of moral subjectivity, and the grittiness that focuses on the darker impulses of the human heart as the most “real” ones. Tolkien’s works may do well for children, or for those naive individuals who believe in the ultimate goodness of the world and its human inhabitants, or in a loving God. However, both the children and the naive individuals must eventually “grow up” and read more “adult” works that, with their explicit sexual content, morally gray “heroes,” broken families, graphic violence, and nihilistic fervor, revel in the meanest parts of the human experience.

Refusing to accept such literature as representing “the complete picture of life,” and asserting that it is therefore “fallacious” and “unusual,” requires courage. To point out that plenty of men have not fallen off the scaffold, that many forks have not been stolen, that some marriages do endure is to invite ridicule and scorn. Overcoming such cynicism, by choosing to hope, is no easy feat. It is why we need to read stories with characters like Anne, who can incarnate that most childlike of virtues for us. Indeed, truly worthwhile “children’s” literature, like Anne of Green Gables, rather than blinding us to the “harsh realities” of the world around us, can restore clear vision with which to look upon these “harsh realities” without falling victim to despair. And with that clear vision restored, we can help others to discover little girl Hope living within themselves. And when they have trouble picturing her, we can tell them that she has carrot-red hair.

Speaking of hope, I want to thank Katie Marquette and Rachel Schoenberger for supporting my writing through my “Buy me a coffee” page. I have dreamed almost as long as I can remember of sharing my writing with others, and using it to support myself and my family. I may have teared up when this dream became a little more possible thanks to their generous donations and kind words of encouragement. All this to say, if you think my writing is worth the time and effort I have put into it, it would mean the world to me if you clicked the button below. Note: I hate coffee. Money will likely be spent on books, gardening supplies, or saving to eventually get our 200 plus year old fireplaces up and running.