SOURCE: Santelmann, Patricia Kelly. “Written as Women Write: Anne of Green Gables within the Female Literary Tradition.” In Harvesting Thistles: The Textual Garden of L. M. Montgomery. Essays on Her Novels and Journals, edited by Mary Henley Rubio, pp. 64-73. Guelph, Ontario: Canadian Children's Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Santelmann explores the details of women's lives that are portrayed in Anne of Green Gables and the ways in which the novel advances the female literary tradition.

In A Literature of Their Own, Elaine Showalter discusses the lack of a female literary tradition, and she begins by quoting a male critic—G. H. Lewes. In an 1852 essay entitled “The Lady Novelist” Lewes remarked, “hitherto … the literature of women … has been too much a literature of imitation. To write as men write is the aim and besetting sin of women; to write as women is the real task they have...