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Book Review: Mistress Pat
Jun. 2nd, 2024 02:37 pmI’ve read Pat of Silver Bush a number of times, but Mistress Pat only once before now, because the book is such a downer. This is perhaps the inevitable result of writing a sequel to a book about a girl whose traits are (a) love of her home Silver Bush and (b) hatred of change.
Pat’s a young adult now, that is a time of life riddled with change. The family is growing up; brothers and sisters are getting married. The parent generation is growing old, and the grandparent generation beginning to die, as are the childhood pets. Pat herself has a number of beaux, who want to marry her up and whisk her away from her beloved Silver Bush.
All of this is normal enough, of course, but it’s agony for Pat, who can never feel that the gains that change occasionally brings will make up for the inevitable losses. And the steady drumbeat of loss is painful for the reader, too, who can’t see a way out for Pat anymore than Pat can see a way out for herself.
Evidently L. M. Montgomery couldn’t see a way out either, because in the end she murders Silver Bush. The house burns down, and Pat is desolate, almost suicidal in her despair. She drew the meaning of her life from taking care of her beloved home, and now that this home is gone, what’s left for her but long blank years?
Conveniently, at this very moment Pat’s childhood friend Hilary shows up. He has loved her for years! He hopped on a train to Prince Edward Island the moment that he had heard that Silver Bush had burned to the ground! He asks her to marry him and kisses her mouth, and Pat, in one of the less convincing transformations in literature, is instantly transported from despair to delight. Why, of course she’s always loved Hilary. He’s built her a new house in Vancouver, and she will be happy to cross a continent to be with him!
Now, first of all, though I’m 95% sure that Montgomery doesn’t intend us to suspect Hilary of burning down Silver Bush (although he did end the previous book almost hating the house, “the only rival he feared”), the timing is so convenient. He’s just finished building a house for Pat (who has repeatedly turned him down!), and then his rival burns to cinders. I mean, come on. I can put two and two together.
But second, and more important, this ending cheats change-hating Pat of the realization that she wants a change. There are hints of it, but it never becomes fully conscious, and I think the book would have been the better for it if Pat at some point made the choice that, although she still loves Silver Bush, the love of a house is not enough for her anymore.
There’s a perfect place for it, too, just a few chapters before the end. Hilary comes to Silver Bush for a visit, and Pat, on an impulse she doesn’t examine, takes off her engagement ring before she goes to meet him. But what if she did examine the impulse? What if she admitted to herself that she only got engaged because her fiance lives so close to Silver Bush that she can move away without actually leaving, that she doesn’t love him really, that in fact she loves Hilary? Perhaps then Silver Bush needn’t have gone up in a conflagration.
Pat’s a young adult now, that is a time of life riddled with change. The family is growing up; brothers and sisters are getting married. The parent generation is growing old, and the grandparent generation beginning to die, as are the childhood pets. Pat herself has a number of beaux, who want to marry her up and whisk her away from her beloved Silver Bush.
All of this is normal enough, of course, but it’s agony for Pat, who can never feel that the gains that change occasionally brings will make up for the inevitable losses. And the steady drumbeat of loss is painful for the reader, too, who can’t see a way out for Pat anymore than Pat can see a way out for herself.
Evidently L. M. Montgomery couldn’t see a way out either, because in the end she murders Silver Bush. The house burns down, and Pat is desolate, almost suicidal in her despair. She drew the meaning of her life from taking care of her beloved home, and now that this home is gone, what’s left for her but long blank years?
Conveniently, at this very moment Pat’s childhood friend Hilary shows up. He has loved her for years! He hopped on a train to Prince Edward Island the moment that he had heard that Silver Bush had burned to the ground! He asks her to marry him and kisses her mouth, and Pat, in one of the less convincing transformations in literature, is instantly transported from despair to delight. Why, of course she’s always loved Hilary. He’s built her a new house in Vancouver, and she will be happy to cross a continent to be with him!
Now, first of all, though I’m 95% sure that Montgomery doesn’t intend us to suspect Hilary of burning down Silver Bush (although he did end the previous book almost hating the house, “the only rival he feared”), the timing is so convenient. He’s just finished building a house for Pat (who has repeatedly turned him down!), and then his rival burns to cinders. I mean, come on. I can put two and two together.
But second, and more important, this ending cheats change-hating Pat of the realization that she wants a change. There are hints of it, but it never becomes fully conscious, and I think the book would have been the better for it if Pat at some point made the choice that, although she still loves Silver Bush, the love of a house is not enough for her anymore.
There’s a perfect place for it, too, just a few chapters before the end. Hilary comes to Silver Bush for a visit, and Pat, on an impulse she doesn’t examine, takes off her engagement ring before she goes to meet him. But what if she did examine the impulse? What if she admitted to herself that she only got engaged because her fiance lives so close to Silver Bush that she can move away without actually leaving, that she doesn’t love him really, that in fact she loves Hilary? Perhaps then Silver Bush needn’t have gone up in a conflagration.
