『빨강머리 앤』에 재현된 아동기의 상상력

Childhood Imagination in Anne of Green Gables

This paper intends to study the pastoral world of childhood in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908). The work has a vivid childhood imagination that expresses the writer’s own experiences, such as a deficiency in childhood and wish-fulfillment, a satire of religious practice, and awareness of a national important issue regarding the preservation of rural Canada in a literary way. Anne, an 11-year-old orphan girl and main character, was a hopeless, skinny child who was initially exposed to all kinds of excesses. However, she slowly grows up in a loving home provided by Matthew and Marilla, taming passion and imagination, and learns to live up to Avonlea’s social and behavioral expectations. Anne not only brings Matthew and Marilla a much more fulfilling and happy life than ever before, but she also influences the Avonlea community. Anne never loses her childhood imagination, even though she grows up to be a great member of Avonlea. Anne’s childhood imagination lets her move forward, keeping her and the community’s desperate needs alive in search of a utopia.