Reading L.M. Montgomery’s Pat
Books Out of Order: Japanese
Readers, Loss, and the Possibility of
New Life
Published on
Mon, 08/16/2021 - 10:23

This essay examines the peculiar history and reception of L.M. Montgomery’s Pat
books in Japan, where the sequel was published first and the first volume was long
unavailable. Consequently, for nearly twenty years, Japanese readers could not fully
appreciate the theme of loss and new life in the Pat books.

Introduction“I gave Anne my imagination and Emily Starr my knack of scribbling; but the girl
who is more myself than any other is ‘Pat of Silver Bush’—my new story which is tobe out this fall. Not externally but spiritually, she is ‘I,’” wrote L.M. Montgomery in
her letter to Roberta Mary Sparks, a young fan in Saskatchewan, on 4 July 1933.1
Citing this passage in her biography of Montgomery, Mary Henley Rubio states that“Pat was her [Montgomery] at this point in her life”; that is, in the author’s late
fifties, when she lived in Norval and suffered from many domestic pressures.
Compared with Montgomery’s Anne books and the Emily trilogy, the Pat books—Patof Silver Bush (1933) and Mistress Pat (1935)—have received little attention in
Montgomery studies. In The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass, Elizabeth Rollins Epperlyclassifies the Pat books in Part III, “Other Heroines,” with Jane of Lantern Hill,2 and in
his book list of Montgomery’s novels, Benjamin Lefebvre groups them similarly,
under “Other Books.”3

Left: Book cover of Pat of Silver Bush. 1933. Ryrie-Campbell Collection,
KindredSpaces.ca, 548 PSB-MS-1ST. Right: Book cover of Mistress Pat.
1935. Ryrie-Campbell Collection, KindredSpaces.ca, 549 MP-MS-1ST.

However, the Pat books have special appeals: one of them is the connection to theirauthor’s life because, as Heidi MacDonald states, “Montgomery based much of the
Pat novels, unconsciously or not, on the very difficulties and frustrations she
experienced while writing them in the early 1930s.”4 Compared to the sunny Anne
series, the Pat books are much darker and explore the solemnity of loss from amature point of view. They are worth more attention in Montgomery scholarship to
unveil their peculiar relationships with the author’s agony of loss and her creativity
in her later life.
That Montgomery’s writing connects to her life should be no surprise to Montgomery
scholars. Researchers have documented how, in her later life, Montgomery foundwriting to have a therapeutic effect. As Rubio points out in her biography The Gift ofWings, “In the Norval years, the act of writing moved from being a source ofpleasure to therapeutic activity.”5 Melanie Fishbane’s article “Writing as Therapy in
Rilla of Ingleside and The Blythes Are Quoted” maintains that “Writing provided ameans to channel her [Montgomery’s] darker moods and doubts about self andsociety.”6 Further, Mary Beth Cavert reflects on writing as release in her article onMontgomery’s Leaskdale years and her experience of loss in the Great War, that
Montgomery’s “commemorative journaling about Frede is an enduring lament of herloss.”7 When Pat of Silver Bush was first published, Montgomery wrote in her journal(on 1 August 1933), “It seemed to me such an ‘escape’ while I was writing it,”suggesting that to her, writing Pat was an escape from the harsh reality of life.8
Thematically, the Pat books are generally regarded as depicting Patricia Gardiner’s
strong attachment to her home. The two novels, Pat of Silver Bush and Mistress Pat,
centre respectively on her growth from seven to eighteen and twenty to thirty-one.
Pat’s deep affection for her house, Silver Bush, increases after she starts losing thepeople important to her, so the eventual loss of her beloved house devastates her.
In my personal reading experience, which includes reading the Pat books in my lateteens, I consistently considered them to be novels of loss, in that Pat grows up toexperience loss again and again: the death of her best friend, Bets Wilcox; the longabsence of Hilary “Jingle” Gordon after he leaves Prince Edward Island to attend
university in Toronto; the separation from her brother and sisters who leave home
for work or marriage; the death of Judy Plum, the family’s Irish housekeeper andPat’s mother-substitute; and finally, the loss of her beloved home to fire. However,
because my reading of the books was disrupted by their peculiar translation history,
it was not until I was able to reread the books in their intended order that I fullycomprehended the meaning of loss to Pat. “Loss” in the Pat books and in this article
encompasses all four distinct meanings found in the Oxford English Dictionary.
“Loss,” that is, “[t]he fact of losing,” is (1) “being deprived of, or the failure to keep(a possession …); (2) “loss of life”; (3) “being deprived by death … of (a friend, … aperson regretted)”; or (4) “[f]ailure to gain or obtain.” “Loss” in the Pat books iscontrasted with “regeneration,” which is “the action of coming or bringing into
renewed existence,” and “resurrection,” which, besides “[t]he rising of Christ fromthe dead,” refers to “[r]evival or revitalization, especially of a person who … has
fallen into inactivity. …”9Although the Pat books are filled with many losses, they also constitute a story of“building up a new life,” to use Montgomery’s own phrase in Mistress Pat.10 That is,while the loss that thematically pervades the books has its roots in Montgomery’s
own life, in these novels she is able to recreate and sublimate her experience of loss
and produce hope for a new life at the end. While writing the Pat books, Montgomery
had several worries: asthma, insomnia, her husband’s severe depression, thepressure to earn a living, and her first son Chester’s secret marriage. Montgomery

seems to have expressed her hope for regeneration through fiction, wishing for abetter end of her life. In particular, the ending of Mistress Pat shows that only after
Pat loses everything can she escape her depression and start living again. Throughthe brief reversal at the end, this book suggests that even from loss and emptiness
we can gain something new and essential.
However, this important point was lost to Japanese readers of the Pat books due tothe out-of-order publication of the Japanese translation: many Japanese readers firstread the sequel, Mistress Pat, in 1960, then could only read an abridged version of
the first book, Pat of Silver Bush, in 1974; they could not access its complete
translation until 1981. Readers in Japan discovered Pat’s fate before they had theopportunity to read about her girlhood, and, therefore, they experienced the story’s
narrative arc in incomplete and unfulfilling ways. By examining the origins and theconsequences of Montgomery’s first Japanese translator’s decision to translate thesequel first, this paper explores not only the fractured reading experience thatprevented readers from fully understanding the powerful theme of loss and new lifein the Pat books but also illustrates how the experiences of the readers andtranslators echo those of Pat and Montgomery in their journeys from loss toregeneration.
On 15 January 1934, Montgomery wrote in her journal, “Today I began work on asequel to Silver Bush.”11 Because she had not decided on the title yet, she refers to
the sequel as Pat II in her journal,12 but it seems that Montgomery wrote this novel
assuming her readers had already read Pat I.13 While the chapter titling style of thetwo books is different, Mistress Pat is clearly a sequel to Pat I.14
Despite Montgomery’s intended sequence, in Japan a curious reversal in the
publication order occurred: the second volume, Mistress Pat (Pat II), was firsttranslated and published in Japanese in 1960,15 while an abridged version of thetranslation of the first volume only appeared fourteen years later, in 1974.16
Moreover, Japanese readers had to wait six additional years to read the complete
translation of Pat of Silver Bush (Pat I), which appeared in two volumes in
1980–1981.17 This meant that Japanese readers could not fully read Pat of Silver
Bush for nearly twenty years, despite having access to the sequel. I argue that thisunexpected order of publication greatly influenced the reading experience forMontgomery’s Japanese audience and still holds a certain impact on them. For
example, still in 2016, Anemu, an avid reader of Montgomery, wrote that one of her
biggest regrets in life is that she read the Pat books out of order.18 What happened?

Why were the novels published out of order in Japan?
Japan is a country where translation is very prevalent; Japanese readers tend to read
foreign books in translation. The structure of English is so different from Japanesethat without special training it is difficult for even Japanese who read English tocomprehend novels written in English due to literary expression and rich vocabulary.
This means that only a limited number of Japanese readers canappreciate Montgomery’s books in their original form. Thus, since publication, mostJapanese people have and do read Montgomery’s works in translation.

Left: Book cover of Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat]. 1960. Japanese translation
by Hanako Muraoka. Flower Books 7. 1960. Hobundo. Image courtesy of
Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin Archives.
Right: Book cover of Zoku Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat sequel]. 1960.
Japanese translation by Hanako Muraoka. Flower Books 8. Hobundo. Image
courtesy of Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin Archives.

Book cover of Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat]. 1965. Japanese translation by
Hanako Muraoka. Cover illustration by Yoshimasa Murakami. Image
courtesy of Shincho Bunko.

Mistress Pat’s translator, Hanako Muraoka, began translating Montgomery with Anneof Green Gables, which was first published in Japan in 1952, and so she became
established as Montgomery’s Japanese translator. The novel awarded Montgomery alarge following in the country and led to further books from the Anne series beingtranslated and published almost sequentially.19 Although Muraoka’s originaltranslations were sometimes truncated, as had been the custom for translation in
Japan since the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until about the 1950s,20 Muraoka
continued to produce high-quality, readable, lyrical translations. The quality of hertranslations is one of the reasons for Montgomery’s enduring popularity in Japan. In
response to the high expectations of her loyal readers, who were eagerly awaiting
Montgomery’s books, Muraoka published her translation of Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat] as a two-volume hardcover edition by Hobundo on 30 March 1960, eight years
after Anne of Green Gables was published in Japanese. In 1965, it was published in
Shincho Bunko paperback series and circulated widely.

Book cover of Shirakaba Yashiki no Shoujo [A Girl of Silver Birch House].
1974. Japanese translation by Tokiko Tanaka. Junior Best Novels 13. Coverillustration by Fuyuji Yamanaka. Image courtesy of Iwasaki Shoten.

In 1974, after Muraoka passed away, another translator, Tokiko Tanaka, Muraoka’s
student and former assistant, published an abridged translation of Pat of Silver Bushunder the different title Shirakaba Yashiki no Shoujo [The Girl of Silver Birch House].
As one part of a translation series aimed at students from ten to fifteen years of age,the book had a page limitation. Therefore, this translation follows the main plot but
omits ten out of thirty-nine chapters, including the scene where Pat dances in the
moonlight, along with Montgomery’s descriptions of nature and Judy’s conversations.
These omissions make it difficult for readers to experience Pat’s peculiarity as wellas the humour, atmosphere, and flavour of the original work.21 Moreover, Tanaka
writes in the last paragraph of her “Translator’s Afterword,” “This translation isincomplete, so I hope to upgrade it into a complete version in the future,” which
reinforces Muraoka’s avid readers’ frustration about this book.22 The Girl of Silver
Birch House was published by Iwasaki Shoten, a different publisher than the one
who published the translation of Mistress Pat. Since the name “Pat” was intentionally
excluded from the book’s title, and this book was published as one of a series oftranslations of twenty unfamous books, few readers could recognize this abridged

version as Pat of Silver Bush. In fact, I did not notice the publication of this book at
all until a younger Montgomery translator, Yumiko Taniguchi, mentioned it in her“Translator’s Afterword” in 2012.23 Tanaka made the translated text more readable
for children by extensively using Japan’s simple, phonetic hiragana alphabet, so both
its atmosphere and impression are very different from Muraoka’s translation of thesequel. In Tanaka’s “Translator’s Afterword,” she thanks one of the seriestranslators, Shigeru Shiraki, for helping her to finally get the book published, so we
can assume that she wanted to publish it in any format she could, even though it
was just an abridged version of the book and in a children’s book series.

“” . Licensed under
Left: Book cover of Gin no Mori no Pat (jo) [Pat of Silver Bush 1]. 1980.
Japanese translation by Tokiko Tanaka. Cover illustration by Sachiko
Yamanaka. Shinozaki Shorin.
Right: Book cover of Gin no Mori no Pat (ge) [Pat of Silver Bush 2]. 1981.
Japanese translation by Tokiko Tanaka. Cover illustration by Sachiko
Yamanaka. Shinozaki Shorin.

It was not until the publication of a complete translation of Pat of Silver Bush thatthe puzzle of why Mistress Pat was published first was solved. Tanaka carried out acomplete translation of Pat of Silver Bush in 1980–1981, and she finally disclosed theissue in her “Translator’s Afterword”:
Mrs. Muraoka had searched for a copy of Pat of Silver Bush through every means,
but because the book was out of print at the time, she could not obtain a copy. So,
she had to publish Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat] first.
However, soon after she passed away in 1968, a retired professor from myuniversity, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University—Miss Constance Chapel—foundbooks written by Montgomery, which were out of print then, at a second-handbookstore in Toronto, and kindly sent them to me. … Among them was this Pat ofSilver Bush.24
Thus, it appears that this generous gift from her professor allowed Tanaka, at last, totranslate and publish both the 1974 abridged version of Pat of Silver Bush and,
finally, the complete version published in a two-volume hardback edition in
1980–1981 and paperbacks in 1983 by Shinozaki Shorin. This publisher later wentout of business, so the complete version of Pat of Silver Bush was only available fora limited time and was missed by some Montgomery readers; even today it is noteasy to obtain this version due to its being out of print.25
In short, Japanese readership and translation heavily depended on access to theoriginal books, and the lack of accessibility is why the Pat books were published outof order. It must be borne in mind that it was extremely difficult for the Japanese toaccess books from Canada in the 1950s, during the aftermath of Japan’s defeat in
the Second World War.

The Effects of Reading the Pat Books Out of Order
What were the consequences of this disorder for the Japanese readership? In“Reading In and Out of Order: Living In and Around an Extended Fiction,” Margaret
Mackey asks: “How do such conditions of access affect our intimate responses tobooks?”26 She answers convincingly, based on her own reading experience; sheread the Pat books in order but read the Anne books and the Emily trilogy out oforder: Emily of New Moon (1923) first, Emily’s Quest (1927) second, and finally,many months later, Emily Climbs (1925). Thus, she knew the episodes and theending of the Emily trilogy before she read the second book. This happened
because, in her childhood, cheap paperbacks were not available, and children had toborrow expensive hardbacks from libraries or other owners; thus, she had no choice
but to read whatever she could access, regardless of series order. Mackey pointed
out that this still happens among contemporary readers.27
As a result of this situation, Mackey experienced two positive effects. First, she says:“My disjointed reading of the Montgomery books, satisfying and engulfing as they
were in most other respects, caused me never to lose sight of the fact that thisintriguing world was made by someone … as a composed work.”28 She statesfurther: “As a consequence of this erratic access, however, I acquired somecompensatory skills. I got better at creating some semblance of the larger narrative
arc through the process of extrapolation and guesswork.”29 This statement
endorses Wolfgang Iser’s assertion in The Implied Reader: “The need to decipher
gives us the chance to formulate our own deciphering capacity.”30 I concur with
Mackey’s idea that this random order of reading has these positive aspects, from my
own experiences of reading the Borrowers series by Mary Norton—I read the first
volume, and then jumped to the third volume because the second was unavailable.
This made me aware that this was a world completely controlled by the author. I had
to compensate for the loss of access to the middle book by guessing and making up
new episodes to fit into the story’s larger narrative arc.
Nevertheless, Mackey writes further about the negative aspects of out-of-orderreading that “[t]his higgledy-piggledy access introduces a whole new category ofgaps, large, random, and annoying.”31 Mackey elaborates on her own experience ofreading the Emily trilogy out of order, reading volume one, then three, then two:
I remember Emily’s Quest as a particularly aggravating read (ecstatic as I was tofind it on my grandmother’s bookshelf), because of its regular references to theunknown events of Emily Climbs. I have reread these three titles many times since,
and always in the correct order, but I have never erased the traces of my frustrationon that first read; to this day, I recognize elements that once I did not know but
needed to know, and I am invariably thrown out of the story by this recollection.32
Mackey’s reminiscence reflects the powerful effect of the reading experience onreaders and, particularly, the potent and indelible impact of the first reading. She
continues, “Yet there is no doubt that the gaps chafed.”33 I will focus on this“chafing” effect from here forward.
My initial experience of reading the Pat books out of order in the 1980s was very
similar to Mackey’s. I started Mistress Pat first, without realizing that there was aprequel because only Mistress Pat was translated in Muraoka’s paperback series,
which was widely circulated in Japan in those days. After I started reading, I noticed
that something was amiss. First, Pat is already a grown woman—twenty years oldwhen the novel begins—which is uncharacteristic of Montgomery’s books, which are
generally about a girl growing up. Second, I had to ponder, who is Hilary Gordon? At
the beginning of Mistress Pat, Hilary is already out of sight: “Hilary Gordon had left
him [his dog] with Pat nearly two years ago, when he went away to college inToronto.”34 Hilary appears mainly in his infrequent letters to Pat, who explains theircontent briefly to her family. The omniscient narrator supplements Pat’s brief reports
to the reader with statements like: “She didn’t want Hilary Gordon for anything but afriend but she did not exactly warm to the idea of that [Hilary’s] ‘lucky girl’ whoever
she was.”35 This description of Hilary is short and only implies that Pat likes Hilary,
but that she is neither conscious of a deeper feeling nor admits to it because shewants to remain his friend. Hilary never physically appears in the novel until after hehas been absent for ten years. His appearance occurs on page 420 of the 493 pages
translation, which makes the readers’ guesswork to fill in the gaps quite a frustrating
task.
As Mackey had read volume one of the Emily series first, at least she could
understand the characters, their relationships, and their background; she acquired asolid base for understanding and guessing adequately. In this sense, my experienceof reading the Pat books was more perplexing than hers reading Emily. Reading
volume two first, I had little information about the characters, their relationships, orthe background, which I should have obtained from volume one, and, therefore, I
had to speculate. Although Montgomery gives readers the minimum information,
guessing the missing parts was a kind of mental exercise that did not make for avery satisfying reading experience.
As I read onward, the number of perplexing parts of the novel started to mount,along with my general confusion. Already in the first chapter, which has 142 pages
in the translation, a series of conversations between Pat and Judy recollects oldmemories. The first example occurs when Pat asks, “Judy, do you remember thetime you sent us to her to witch McGinty back?”36 Without the context of the first
volume, Pat's question is perplexing; in fact, in Pat of Silver Bush, McGinty, Hilary’streasured dog, is kidnapped by a robber, and Judy advises Hilary and Pat go visit awitch, “her” in the quotation, to successfully find the dog. The second case is when
Pat asks, “Judy, don’t you remember that Hilary and I called the little hill by the
Haunted Spring Happiness? We used to have such lovely times there.”37 Pat
exploits the wording “used to” to indicate they shared happy times together in thepast before this book, since at its beginning Hilary has already gone to Toronto.
Finally, in section nine of the first chapter, the following exchange occurs between
Judy and Pat:
“I s’pose his mother doesn’t be thinking inny more about him than she iver did?”“I don’t know. He never mentions her name now. … And as for coming home …
well, you know, since his uncle died and his aunt went to town he really has no home
to come back to. Of course I’ve told him a dozen times he is to look upon Silver Bushas home. Do you remember how I used to set a light in this very window when I
wanted him to come over?”“And he niver failed to come, did he, Patsy?”38
This “light by the window as signal” instantly reminded me of Anne and Diana’s
relationship in Anne of Green Gables, which indicated to me there should be aprequel describing their close childhood friendship. The characters talk about oldmemories that clearly occurred before Mistress Pat, so when reading these
moments, I was very “chafed”—that is, irritated and impatient—to lack knowledge ofwhat had happened before this story. That is when I jumped to Muraoka’s“Translator’s Afterword” and learned there was a prequel: “Even though I am
publishing Pat Ojousan [MP] first before Gin no Mori no Pat [PSB], that is, publishingthem in reverse order, I think you can find enough of the lively activities of ‘Judy’and ‘Mistress Pat’ in this one book.”39 Though I had expected it, the existence of theprequel surprised me, and, understandably, I wondered why this reverse-orderpublication had happened because, so far, Muraoka had published her translationsof Montgomery’s Anne series and Emily trilogy sequentially, following the heroines’
growth.40 She deliberately numbered the Anne series in subtitles in her paperbacks
to ensure that her readers read the series according to protagonists’ growth, so it
seemed to me that this uncharacteristic reverse publishing of the Pat books must be
due to some special circumstances.41 However, as Muraoka did not reveal thesecircumstances, readers were left to deal with this unsolved mystery for a long time.

There is another notable point to discuss. In Muraoka’s “Afterword,” she writes thatthe readers will enjoy “the lively activities of ‘Judy’ and ‘Mistress Pat,’” but she nevermentions Hilary—a very important character, who appears at the end and rescues
Pat. In fact, Muraoka could not adequately discuss Hilary due to his absence in thesequel and the sequel’s insufficient information about him. It seems that Muraoka
herself could not illustrate the character of Hilary based on just this novel. While it issometimes said that the translator is the best reader of the work, since Muraoka did
not have access to descriptions of Hilary and could not, therefore, understand him, it
proves how essential the reading order is to fully grasp Hilary’s character andessential role in the Pat books.
For the near-orphan Hilary, Pat is like family; they have grown up together for ten
years. As he matures, Hilary wants Pat to be more than a chum, but Pat wants tostay his friend. If one does not learn this in Pat of Silver Bush, it is hard tounderstand the significance of his absence through most of the novel of Mistress Pat
and the magnitude of the reversal at the end of the novel, when Hilary comes for Pat
at her lowest point, and Pat begins to live a new life with him. Unfortunately, theprivilege of reading the books as intended was lost, chafing Japanese readers for along time through the noticeable loss of context for the story.
In the 1980s, after learning of the prequel, I did not want to continue reading
Mistress Pat. I thought, “Is that not like reading the ending of the mystery after
skipping the middle?” At that time, the first volume was already published by adifferent publisher, so I gave up reading Mistress Pat in the middle and dashed tothe bookstore to order the prequel. I wanted to read the Pat books from the
beginning to fully understand the characters and background.
The Importance of Reading Pat of Silver Bush
As expected, after reading Pat of Silver Bush, I understood the characters better:from the beginning, Judy calls Pat “a queer child” because she “loved too hard,”42
so she fears loss and change, especially of her home and family. Because of her
peculiarity, Pat has no close friends, and it is only after meeting Bets that she finds abosom friend for the first time in her life. Their friendship is so rare and perfect that
Bets’s sudden death from pneumonia brings Pat to complete despair: “When Bets
had been dead for a week it seemed to Pat she had been dead for years, so long is
pain. The days passed like ghosts. … Everything had ended. And everything had tobegin anew. That was the worst of it. How was one to begin anew when the hearthad gone out of life?”43 Pat suffers from the loss so intensely for such a long timethat she cannot create new bonds with others, so she falls back into the old, thefamiliar: her home. She ultimately redirects her love from a person to her house:“Silver Bush was all her comfort now. Her love for it seemed the only solid thing
under her feet. Insensibly she drew comfort and strength from its old, patient,familiar acres.”44 This is a pivotal moment. As Epperly points out, “the wrong
turning that Pat took after Bets’ death in Pat of Silver Bush means that, as the years
go by and everyone else changes and leaves, Pat holds on more and more
desperately to the place Silver Bush, as though it alone can keep her safe and holdthe beloved past close enough to touch.”45 The loss cannot be assuaged, even after
many years, and she continues feeling very lonely. To understand why Pat turns herlove from a person to attach herself so intensely to her home, it is essential to firstread Bets’s death scene near the end of Pat of Silver Bush. In place of that lostfriendship, in Mistress Pat, Pat even more devotes herself to her home, creating her
own cozy world there and trying to keep it unchanged, which is the main feature of
the work.46
Pat’s deep sense of loss echoes Montgomery’s own experience of losses, notably thedeath in January 1919 of her cousin and best friend, Frederica “Frede” Campbell
MacFarlane, from pneumonia due to the second wave of the 1918 influenza
pandemic (usually known in Montgomery’s time as the Spanish flu).47 Montgomery
stayed by her deathbed until the end. She was enormously “grieved and worn out byFrederica’s death,”48 calling Frede “half my life.”49 She felt the urge to die alongwith her, a desire she expressed even many years later.50 Nevertheless, when she
wrote about Frede’s death in her journal on 7 February 1919, thirteen days after her
passing, Montgomery wrote of her determination to live for her two sons and tosurvive as a writer: “She died. And I live to write it!”51 Thirteen years later, at last,she directly used the real-life setting of Frede’s sombre death and recreated it in
Bets’s beautiful and serene death scene in Pat of Silver Bush.
By reading Pat of Silver Bush first, readers can carefully comprehend another rare
relationship between Pat and Hilary and understand more about the theme of loss in
the Pat books. Pat and Hilary are depicted as perfect friends with a bond based on
mutual understanding and shared tastes in houses and nature. Growing up, Hilary
wants Pat as his girlfriend, but Pat refuses and wants to maintain their relationshipas friends. After Bets dies, Pat has no friend but Hilary. In particular, reading theending of Pat of Silver Bush clarifies how Hilary’s departure to Toronto means a hugeloss to Pat: after their sad parting, “Pat stumbled up the path and across the fieldblindly and brought up against the garden gate. Then denied tears came. She simply
couldn’t bear it. Everything gone! Who could bear it?”52 Here, “home” is irrevocablyaltered; her home is unrecognizable without Hilary. This might be intended toforeshadow that Hilary is more important than her home, but Pat does not notice itat the time. Instead, as the shock of his loss fades little by little, Pat gradually
recognizes the beauty and consolation her dearest house always gives her. This lossof Hilary added to the loss of Bets leads to Pat’s over-attachment to her home: “It
was such a loyal old house ... always faithful to those who loved it. You felt it was ourfriend as soon as you stepped into it. … Life could never be empty at Silver Bush.”53
Thus, it is only by reading the ending to the first volume that readers can clearly
understand Pat and Hilary’s deep bond and how losing Hilary, in addition to Bets’s
death, causes Pat to transfer her love to her home. Also, knowing how deeply Pat
and Hilary are united is vital to the reader’s understanding of and emotional
connection to Pat’s natural acceptance of Hilary’s proposal after his ten-year
absence. Without reading the ending of the first novel, readers fail to recognize thesevere losses Pat has borne prior to the sequel. These losses are the intended basis
for understanding Mistress Pat; they enhance the tragedy of losing her beloved
home and the joy of accepting Hilary’s marriage offer, making way for a new life anda new home.
There is another kind of painful loss of home for Pat in Mistress Pat. Pat’s rival, thevulgar May Binnie, starts to disturb the harmony and peace in the family when she
enters Pat’s family as a bride by secretly marrying Pat’s elder brother Sid (a plot
point which reflects Montgomery’s own experience with her son Chester’s secretmarriage). Because of this, “Mistress Pat,” in fact, starts to lose hold of the oldpeacefulness and cosiness of her home. May’s marriage to the heir of Silver Bushreveals that Pat’s position as “mistress” of the house is a practical one, not a social
one. The present social mistress is actually Pat’s mother, but, because she is nothealthy, Pat acts as a surrogate for her and, in effect, runs the house. Pat enjoys
being the main decision-maker regarding the home. May’s intrusion into the family
threatens Pat’s status, illustrating the serious problem of the precariousness of anunmarried woman’s position in the family, which Montgomery herself suffered frombefore she married concerning the inheritance of her house from her grandfather.
Although Pat’s father decides that May will become a mistress of a new house which
will be built on another farm, Pat’s fear of loss of role is painful, and she must endure
it and struggle to maintain her role for over five years; it is not (at leastimmediately) the physical loss of home, but the long, unsettling, unpleasant feelingof having one’s home usurped that is keenly felt by the readers who empathize with
Pat’s point of view. In the end, Pat physically loses her home in a fire caused by May;
it is only after losing this beloved place that Pat can transfer her affection for herhome to the real, living person, Hilary.
After Judy dies and before Silver Bush burns, Montgomery’s description of Pat indepression (exactly reflecting Montgomery’s melancholy mood) is authentic andpainfully invites the reader’s sympathy. On the night after Judy’s funeral, Pat cries
out to her mother, “I’ve nothing but you and Silver Bush left now.”54 Montgomery’s
superior description of Pat’s depression is genuine and touching; Pat now sometimes
has “an attack of nerves.” She comes to love the evening “lonely walks by herself
among the twilight shadows,” and she comes back from them looking “as if shewere of the band of grey shadows herself. …”55
Pat’s depression after the fire is also poignant and real. Montgomery describes how,for Pat, “Life had suddenly become for her like a landscape on the moon. She had
the odd feeling of not belonging to this or any world that has had felt once or twice
after a bad attack of flu. Only … this feeling would never pass.”56 Further,
She [Pat] felt horribly old. Her love for Silver Bush had kept her young … and now it
was gone. Nothing was left … there was only a dreadful, unbearable emptiness.
“Life has beaten me,” she told herself. She had had enough grief in her life toknow that in time even the bitterest fades out into a not unpleasing dearness andsweetness of recollection. But this heart-break could never fade. Everything had
fallen into ruins around her. She could never fit into the life at the Bay Shore. She
had a terrible feeling that she did not belong anywhere … or to anybody … in thisnew sad lonely world.57
By this time, Pat’s correspondence with Hilary has ceased, so there is no recollectionof Hilary in Pat’s mind, and she has no intention of relying on Hilary in any form.
Moreover, she never considers marrying anyone. To her, at this stage, marriage is
not included in her choices at all. Instead, she is thinking of working as a teacher,using an old licence, though the idea does not appeal to her.
The sudden appearance of Hilary at the end of Mistress Pat may seem abrupt, but
for those who have already read Pat of Silver Bush and understand the profoundbond between the characters, it is deeply satisfying to be convinced that the personthe readers have been waiting for has finally appeared, and that Pat and Hilary’s
story is settled.
The ending of Mistress Pat reveals how Pat and Hilary’s first encounter is importantto understanding their strong bond. The moment Pat meets Hilary again at theending of Mistress Pat, she recalls their first encounter:
Something seemed to have come with him … courage … hope … inspiration … thatsame dear sense of protection and understanding that had come to her that evening
long ago when he had found her lost in the dark on the Base Line road. She held out
both her hands but he caught her in his arms … his lips were seeking hers … atremor half fear, half delight, shook her. And then that old, old, unacknowledged
ache of loneliness she had tried to stifle with Silver Bush vanished forever. His lips
were on hers … and she knew. It was like a tide turning home.58
This is evocation: eventually, the sense of protection and understanding that Pat felt
when she first met Hilary, detailed in Pat of Silver Bush, returns to her after twentythree years.59 This old memory parallels this ending scene wherein Hilary suddenly
appears and holds her in his arms: his human touch restores the depressed, ghostlike Pat to a living person. Thus, the characters’ deep mutual understanding unites
these two books. Without reading Pat of Silver Bush first, readers cannot understand
how lonely Pat has been, or how essential Hilary has been to her.60 Hilary has built
a new ideal house for her and asked her to breathe life into it. By obtaining this newhouse that she can cherish and pour her heart into and realizing her goal in life, Pat
can start regenerating herself; she can share the dream of building up a new life
with Hilary. The contrast of loss and new life is sharp at the ending of Mistress Pat.
Even for those who read both novels, the ending of Mistress Pat is so brief that theessential role played by the reconciliation might be overlooked. Caroline Jones statesin her article “Montgomery’s Literary Explorations of Motherhood” that “Mistress Pat
is a novel of loss,”61 and I concur with her statement. She further observes that
“Jingle’s arrival and rescue of Pat are negligible and have only six pages in which toredeem six unhappy years.”62 Certainly, the section is short, but I do not think theevents are insignificant; they ignite a new life for Pat. At the end of Mistress Pat,
after Hilary suddenly reappears, being called back by Judy’s letter written on her
deathbed, and Pat is revitalized, by being in his arms and being kissed—in otherwords, through physical contact. It is her body that wakes up first, and recognizes
that the feeling she has long thought of as friendship is actually her true love forHilary. A renewed energy and power spring up inside her, she escapes thedepression caused by the loss of her beloved home and she starts to live again. “Patstood quivering with his arms about her. Life was not over after all … it was only
beginning.”63
Pat’s crucial moment of reunification can be compared to “resurrection,” as Pat
herself describes her reunion with Hilary after his ten-year absence: “She always
maintained [afterwards] she knew exactly what she would feel like on theresurrection morning.”64 Finally, at the end, when Hilary suddenly reappears andproposes to her, saying, “I’ve a home for you by another sea, Pat. And in it we’ll
build up a new life,”65 this is certainly “resurrection” to Pat. By following this path,
Pat will no longer have to see the ruins of her home, nor the new house that May willbuild on the site of Silver Bush. Liberated from her home and leaving the pastbehind, she will build a new life with Hilary by another sea.
Prior to the reunification, Pat has long been passive. Realizing that she loves Hilary
and finding a new life with him changes her into an active person who can love
spontaneously. After this transformation, her words become active, too: “I’ll go to
the end of the world and back with you, Hilary,”66 she says, and, “I’d live in an igloo
in Greenland if you were there.”67 As her words indicate, Pat is no longer dependent
on Silver Bush: she is now released from her over-attachment to her home, and she
gains the freedom and autonomy to go wherever she wants to go.
Montgomery depicts this moment of Pat’s transformation and regeneration vividly,
but not all readers are satisfied with Mistress Pat’s ending. Epperly complains that
Montgomery’s description is so brief that “The nightmare quality of Pat’s losses
cannot be dispelled in the last-minute rescue.”68 This remark seems to prove that
Epperly sympathized with Pat in the sequence of loss and saw the circumstancesfrom Pat’s point of view. The reader’s disappointment seems mainly caused byHilary’s “last-minute rescue” after his long absence from the sequel, which
disregards the expectation set by the first volume’s foreshadowing of the reunion.
Despite the brevity of Mistress Pat’s ending, the books do have a degree ofsymmetry: In Pat of Silver Bush, Pat consoles Hilary after his disillusionment at being
reunited with his unloving mother and helps him find his life’s goal (to become anarchitect who can build an ideal house, a home just for Pat in which she cannot be
usurped). Similarly, at the end of Mistress Pat, Hilary leads the despairing Pat tostart a new life with him in Vancouver, in that perfect house. As Epperly points out inher analysis of the first book: “At the end of the second book ... Hilary will be therefor her, as she is here for him, to transform disaster into hope.”69 Thus, Epperly
acknowledges the symmetry between the two novels through the reversal of loss
and hope, as she indicates that Hilary’s loss and regeneration with Pat in the firstbook foreshadows Pat’s loss and regeneration with Hilary at the ending of thesecond. Nevertheless, while Epperly indicates that the ending is too rushed to serveas an adequate denouncement, “resurrection” happens in a moment. Brevity
is natural. It seems to me that briefness and the brilliance of the story’s ending havethe effect of inviting the readers to reread and savour Pat’s striking and suddenchange and regeneration. In fact, after reading both books, I reread the ending again
and again to relish its impact and Pat’s “resurrection.” The powerful hoperegenerated from Pat’s ending enabled me to exorcise the depressive mood in the
midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although Pat’s house has burned down, her precious tradition and old affection
are instilled in her new home, creating a kind of continuity. In the last scene of
Mistress Pat, Hilary says to Pat, “we’ll build up a new life and the old will become
just a treasury of dear and sacred memories … of things time cannot destroy.”70 So,
the dear and beautiful memory of Silver Bush is shared together, unmarred byanyone. In their new life, only dear treasures such as the knocker of Silver Bush,Judy’s cream cow jug, Judy’s hooked rug, and Judy’s picture of white kittens
are maintained and keep the fine tradition of Silver Bush.71 In writing this,Montgomery gives them both the hope of overcoming loss and of living a new life:that is, regeneration for Pat and Hilary.
Despite the above, Pat is not entirely dependent on Hilary for hope. Even if Hilary
had not come to rescue Pat, she could have become a teacher. Besides, Pat has
extraordinary abilities of her own: the ability to love people and things
passionately and to make a comfortable home; she has strong household skills
based on precious tradition. These abilities should not be underestimated.
As a whole, it seems that the reading of the Pat books is completely different
depending on how much importance the reader finds in the ending and how muchthe reader accepts the author’s message of hope and regeneration. If, like Margaret
Doody, one focuses on the “darker side” of the novel, it is true that in these twonovels “Montgomery has incorporated some of her deepest and most dissonant
insights into the nature of need and the assertions of power. She lets in thedestructiveness that has played around the edges of all of her fiction.”72 Despite
such darkness, I think the fact that Montgomery placed hope in this ending isessential and cannot be discounted. Readers encounter Pat’s ending withboth surprise and relief. While it is possible for readers to dismiss the ending as
convenient and improbable, accepting it as a satisfying denouement makes thedifference in reading the Pat books.
Another reason not to discount the ending of Mistress Pat is its significance for its
author. When Montgomery wrote Mistress Pat, she was depressed, and in the bookshe herself writes in defence of the happy ending: Uncle Horace says to Pat, “I don’tcare a hoot for a book where they don’t get properly married … or hanged … at thelast. These modern novels that leave everything unfinished annoy me.”73 Elizabeth
Waterston states that this constitutes “a bit of self-congratulation for the real storyteller, who had been criticized for the too-sunny pictures of life in her fiction.”74
While I agree with Waterston’s opinion, we live and breathe reality every day, andthe act of reading a book is, at least for some people, to escape from real life for awhile, to experience a happier time, to be comforted and healed, and to be given theenergy and courage to face reality again. This is the reason I love to readMontgomery’s books, for their healing and energy, and I suspect most of her readers
do so for similar reasons. Those interested in a “real” story about Pat, for example,
living the rest of her life like a ghost, “drifting from one place to another ... rootless,”living in houses she hates, would not look to Montgomery.75 Their brightness is why
Montgomery’s books are still so popular with readers across time and place, because
her books give us the therapeutic comfort and energy we need to live throughpredicaments.
While Montgomery made Pat’s ending happy to meet the expectations of her
readers, this may not be the full reason for her literary choice: she herself seems tohave needed to craft a happy ending in her anguished life during the 1930s, when
she was on the verge of losing her beloved manse due to her husband Ewan’s
worsening depression, tied to the understanding of predestination in Calvinist
theory. Already on 5 November 1934, before she wrote the ending of Mistress Pat,
she worried about leaving the manse: “The thought of leaving Norval hurts me
horribly. I love it so … And go—where? To Toronto I suppose, to live in some dreary
cramped house on a street where scores of exactly similar houses stand cheek byjowl. The thought is intolerable.”76 This fear of the loss of her dearest manse closelyreflects Pat’s fear of loss and change: Pat’s sense of loss echoes Montgomery’s own
loss and her attachment to home. In this respect, they are one. Montgomery
acknowledges this overlap when she writes, “Not externally but spiritually, she is‘I.’”77
When she finished the last chapter of Mistress Pat on 30 November 1934,
Montgomery wrote, “I got the last chapter of Pat II done. Such a relief! I thought somany times this fall I should never get it done. I never wrote a book in such agony ofmind before …” She continues, “My loneliness was awful. I had a bad neurasthenic
spell at 8 but feel better now.”78 Indeed, when Ewan resigned his position as aminister on 13 February 1935, an action that meant they would have to leave themanse, she again wrote of how she loved the beauty of nature and the manse in
Norval and had had “sometimes dreamed of buying a certain very beautiful river lot
not far from the manse, building a nice home on it and spending the rest of our days
there, helping the church and the community.”79 This dream of hers strongly
reflects Pat’s revival at the end of Mistress Pat. After Montgomery started to search
for a new house, her dream of regeneration came true. She found what would
become her favourite house in Toronto, she sold her shareholdings to buy it so she
could bring her sons and enjoy the social life in the city with her family. She writes inher journal on 15 March 1935: “I do want a nice home to end my days in—‘Journey’s
End’ I am going to call it.”80 Montgomery moved from a manse by the Credit Riverto live in her new house by the Humber River, in the city of Swansea, in other words,“by another sea,” and build up a new life for herself with her own money, earned byher pen. Though Montgomery’s health was failing and her days were difficult in thelast years of her life, when she wrote Mistress Pat in Norval, it seems she was trying
to recover from her distressing situation and parallel Pat’s new life with her own wish
for recovery. The Pat books may echo her wish for her own regeneration.
Despite happy endings being intrinsic to her work, Montgomery does not make Pat’s
ending a simple fairy tale of “happily ever after.” This can be seen in the lastsentence of Mistress Pat: “The old graveyard heard the most charming sound in theworld … the low yielding laugh of a girl held prisoner by her lover.”81 She sneaks ina metaphor equating marriage with a graveyard—suggesting death—and with aprison at the very end. Montgomery implies that marriage is not a promise of perfecthappiness, but that to marry is in a sense to yield to a new chain, a bondage, aprison. Pat is liberated from the restraints of her home, but she also leaves thewarm, woman-centred world of Silver Bush and enters a new prison with her
husband. She may become yielding or submissive to her husband in their futurehome. Thus, despite the happy nature of the ending, Montgomery also includes
darker aspects of the realities of life.

I call the ending of Mistress Pat a “happy” ending not because Pat lands in theofficial, legal, and religious institution of “marriage,” but because Pat realizes hertrue love for Hilary and experiences the rapture of being loved by someone sheloves: that is happiness. “Building up a new life” with that person can be called a“happy” ending. In Pat’s story, Montgomery may have been expressing her wish forhappiness to come in the end.
Ultimately, looking back to the original problem, Pat’s insecure position andattachment to her house originate in the entailment that only sons can inherit
homes and land. Pat is well aware of this convention by the time she is eighteen
years old at the latest, and it is knowledge she demonstrates when she discloses her
stance to Hilary when he leaves for Toronto at the ending of Pat of Silver Bush:“you’re to build a house for me some day. I’ll live in it when Sid gets married andturns me out of Silver Bush. And you’ll come to see me in it … I’ll be a nice old lady
with silver hair… and I’ll give you a cup of tea out of Grandmother Selby’s pot … andwe’ll talk over our lives... .”82 At this point, Pat already recognizes the irrationality ofthe patriarchal order of succession, revealing that she does not live in a fantasy
world entirely, and this recognition, indicated at the end of this first volume, shouldbe the basis of understanding of Pat’s deepening fear of loss of her home in thesecond book. As Catriona Sandilands uncovers, Pat’s insecurity stems from“heteropatriarchy, in which men and not women are tied to the land and in whichmarriage and not lifelong attentiveness is the relation that ultimately counts interms of belonging.”83 This ideology emphasizes Pat’s unstable position. I agreewith Sandilands’s further statement: in the Pat novels, Montgomery consistently
complains about “the limited options available for women who might choose not tomarry or who might choose vocation or, in this case, location, over heterosexual
coupling.” Then she concludes, “Pat’s love of the place is only pathological, on thisreading, if one considers heteronormativity a ‘natural’ organization of space and life
and opposite-sex romance the only love that really matters.”84 While it seems
perfectly acceptable for girls like Jo and Beth in Little Women to stay unmarried intheir happy home, and to live for the family they love, it is also only natural that agirl like Pat, who has been blessed with a happy home since birth, would want herhappiness to last as long as she lives and that she would not want to change nor
leave her home. Pat’s affection for her home may be too strong, but it is not likely to
be pathological compulsion.

Certainly, readers who start with Mistress Pat might be surprised by Hilary’s abrupt
appearance and Pat’s sudden change leading to their happy ending. Although I do
not reject happenstance reading or deny its potential, in this case, without reading
the first book, and because of the brevity and scarce explanation at the ending of
the second book, readers have difficulty fully grasping the brilliant reversal and may
not understand why Hilary is the only person for Pat.
Reading Out of Order in Japan
In 2020, I conducted experiments focused on reading the Pat books out of order togather vicarious experiences from contemporary readers and learn how they felt
about the novels. I asked two acquaintances who had never read the Pat books
before to read Mistress Pat followed by Pat of Silver Bush in translation, and to share
their reflections.
The first reader, Eri,85 who had never read any of Montgomery’s books, told me that
she enjoyed the sequel alone but that she could understand neither what kind of
person Hilary was nor how deeply he loved Pat until the book’s end. Further,Eri could not understand the special nature of the characters’ relationship and its
history; they are described as “old friends,” but how old they were when they got toknow each other and how long they had been close friends remained unclear to her,as they were not detailed in the second book.86 Hence, Eri did not comprehend how
deeply Hilary had affected Pat’s character formation when Pat was a girl, and how
closely they were united. As a result, she was rather surprised to know how deeply
Hilary continues to love Pat during and after his ten-year absence. Another reader,
Misako, who loves the Anne series but had never read other Montgomery books, told
me that she enjoyed reading Mistress Pat, but she could not empathize with Pat
because, whereas Anne acquires everything from her orphanhood, Pat has
everything from birth. Misako could not understand why Pat attached herself so
intensely to her home.
For both readers, after reading Pat of Silver Bush, the frustration and dissatisfaction
they felt were to some degree addressed, and they understood the author’s
intentions. Notably, through reading the first novel, Eri discovered what a huge loss
Bets’s death is to Pat. By understanding the source of Pat’s deep loss, Eri could
better recognize how Pat’s reunion with Hilary signifies her regeneration. She related
that after finishing the second volume alone, she had not been completely
convinced of Pat and Hilary’s happy engagement. Eri had been plagued with thequestion of why they are happy, which made her yearn to know more about the firstbook. Consequently, she really enjoyed reading the first volume, which solved the
puzzle. Pat shares Hilary’s trauma and is deeply involved in the making of Hilary as aman. On reading Pat of Silver Bush, Eri finally understood that it is because of
their intense and cumulative eleven years together that they can get engaged
without feeling uncomfortable at the end, even though they have been apart for
thirteen years. Similarly, Misako said that by reading the first volume, she could
finally understand the deep relationship between Pat and Hilary. Misako related that
if she had read the second book alone, she would not have been able to empathizewith Pat’s feelings. Although she knew the ending of the second volume, for
Misako, reading the first book was a series of discoveries, of puzzles to be solved.
Considering their overall impressions of reading in reverse order, which is theultimate point of this work, the unsatisfactory nature of Eri and Misako’s
initial reading experience remained with them; their out-of-order reading leftthem dissatisfied and feeling a sense of loss for their failure to obtain thecomplete picture as the author intended. They were saddened by the lost
opportunity to grow up with the heroine.
Unlike today’s readers, those of previous generations could not control theirreading order. The translator who published the translations of Montgomery’s The
Blue Castle and A Tangled Web, Yumiko Taniguchi, is a reader from this older
generation. In an interview on 7 May 2018, she told me that although she enjoyed
Mistress Pat in its own way, she could not understand the book clearly; she could not
grasp what kind of person Hilary was, and she found it difficult to fathom therelationship between Hilary and Pat because of his absence through most of MistressPat. Although Taniguchi had read the abridged version of the prequel, The Girl ofSilver Birch House, this version is shortened for children and only traces the mainplot, so she was left feeling unsatisfied and could not fully enjoy the story. After
1981, she read the complete version, but, unfortunately, her discontent persisted
because of wording inconsistencies in these translations. This frustration motivatedTaniguchi to produce a new set of translations in the twenty-first century.

Left: Book cover of Gin no Mori no Pat [Pat of Silver Bush]. 2012. Japanesetranslation by Yumiko Taniguchi. Cover illustration by Tatsuro Kiuchi.
Image courtesy of Kadokawa Bunko.
Right: Book cover of Pat no Yume [Pat’s Dream (Taniguchi’s title of
Mistress Pat)]. Japanese translation by Yumiko Taniguchi. 2012. Coverillustration by Tatsuro Kiuchi. Image courtesy of Kadokawa Bunko.

In 2012, Taniguchi published new and complete translations of Pat of Silver Bushand Mistress Pat. In the works’ respective “Translator’s Afterwords,” she discloses
her frustration. In Pat of Silver Bush, she explains that “the second volume waspublished before the first volume, so the readers at that time felt a little
uncomfortable and confused. This is because the second volume was written on thepremise that the readers had already read the first and begins when Pat is alreadytwenty years old. So, I wholeheartedly recommend that you all read this book first,
and the second after this book to ‘feel satisfied.’”87 In the second volume, shewrites: “Thank you very much for waiting. Finally, this second volume is published. If
you have not read the first volume yet, please read Pat of Silver Bush first before
reading this book. You can immerse yourself into the story far more smoothly andcomfortably …”88 She further elaborates: “By publishing the Pat books out of order,
the storyline was reversed so that the readers in those days had difficulty
understanding the contents of the story. This is why I published the new translation,
to ensure that the readers can read the Pat books in order. ...”89 Taniguchi’s
uneasiness with the disordered reading resulted in her producing fresh, livelytranslations, giving new life to Japanese readers.

Why Order Matters
Due to the original being unavailable, Japanese readers could not read the complete
translation of Pat of Silver Bush until 1981, which is a great loss. This circumstanceof translation left at least one generation of Japanese readers encountering the Pat
books in reverse sequence, depriving them of the opportunity to read the books in
the intended order. For that generation, if one had read the sequel at twenty yearsof age, one would have been able to finally read the prequel only at the age of forty.
The lack of the prequel’s availability robbed the young reader of the chance to growup together with Pat. This failure also has long-lasting effects: Anemu, who
described her reverse reading experience as one of her biggest regrets in life, in2016 commented to another Montgomery reader that “I’m very jealous that you
can read along with the flow of time” by reading the Pat books in order.90
From my study, it becomes apparent that when reading the Pat books in reverse
order, one cannot fully understand the drama of Pat and Hilary’s loss and new life. It
also emerges that the Pat books encapsulate Montgomery’s own loss of her bestfriend and her wish for regeneration in her personally difficult times in the 1930s.
When they read the Pat books in order, book lovers get to enjoy the process of theheroine’s coming of age and to share experiences alongside her. The contrast
between Pat’s loss of her best friends in Pat of Silver Bush and her regeneration at
the end of Mistress Pat is so vivid that it leaves a strikingly emotional impact onreaders. Becoming acquainted with the Pat books in order enables readers toexperience the full effect of the works, to move with Pat through the carefully
choreographed events as intended, and to live with her through the shock and painof loss and the sweet surprise of gain.
Setting aside the limitations stemming from reading the Pat books out of order, I will
now consider the broader significance of reading Montgomery’s books. Almost all ofher novels allow her readers the pleasure of “growing up together” with the heroines
by absorbing themselves into the worlds she creates: they are Bildungsromane. A
happy ending is one of the characteristics of Montgomery’s work, becoming evenmore effective when great loss and emptiness precede it: for instance, the loss ofAnne’s first baby, Joy, enhances Anne’s happiness over the birth of Jem, and the lossof Walter increases the joy of Rilla’s reunion with Kenneth after war. For Montgomery
readers, merely knowing how each story ends is not enough: readers want tojourney through life events with the heroines, laughing, crying, and sharing with

them, and Montgomery enables her readers to relish to full effect the suspense andromance her characters experience. Not only does savouring Montgomery’s createdworlds allow escape from the difficulties of daily life, but the perseverance of her
characters and the way they work through the challenges life throws at themencourage the readers to face and live through life’s hard realities with renewed andfresh energy. Montgomery writes about the pain of loss in her novels, such as theloss of her best friend Frede, and she gains the strength to live on by writing out hergrief, transforming it into beautiful fiction, creating a new life out of loss, andfinishing it with a happy ending. Her novels provide the therapeutic energy
necessary to live through unpredictable times; this is true for her characters such as
Pat, for her readers, and for herself.
The Pat books are stories of loss as well as stories of “building up a new life,” selfrecognition, and the celebration of women’s power to make a home. The novels
reflect Montgomery’s own life experience from her mature perspective, making Pat avery different character from her other heroines. While she gave Anne imaginationand Emily talent, Montgomery gave Pat herself, who can love deeply. As much as alove story, it is about the possibility of Pat being able to make and love a home but
in a less grief-stricken way than she does with Silver Bush. By showing how theagony of loss is ultimately followed by the unexpected joy of a new beginning,
Montgomery provides encouragement and inspiration. The Pat books give us hopethat loss will give way to gain, and that emptiness will be followed by fulfilment. In
the end, although the reading order might not completely obscure Montgomery’s
intentions for Pat, as this work has shown, it undeniably affects the readers’
understanding of Pat and her long emotional journey through life.

About the Author: Kazuko Sakuma teaches English language and literature at
Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan, where she completed her M.A. and Ph.D. She haspresented and published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century women
writers including Willa Cather and L.M. Montgomery. Her primary research interests
are gender, war and peace, and translation. She has contributed a chapter on Anneof Green Gables in Japan to Reflections on Our Relationships with Anne of Green
Gables: Kindred Spirits (2021), and a chapter on the gendered representation of thewhite feather in L.M. Montgomery and Gender (in progress).

Banner image derived from (Left to Right): Book cover of Pat no Yume [Pat’s Dream(Taniguchi’s title of Mistress Pat)]. Japanese translation by Yumiko Taniguchi. 2012.
Cover illustration by Tatsuro Kiuchi. Image courtesy of Kadokawa Bunko. Book coverof Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat]. 1965. Japanese translation by Hanako Muraoka. Coverillustration by Yoshimasa Murakami. Image courtesy of Shincho Bunko. Book cover of
Mistress Pat. 1935. Ryrie-Campbell Collection, KindredSpaces.ca, 549 MP-MS1ST. Book cover of Pat of Silver Bush. 1933. Ryrie-Campbell Collection,
KindredSpaces.ca, 548 PSB-MS-1ST. Book cover of Gin no Mori no Pat (jo) [Pat ofSilver Bush 1]. 1980. Japanese translation by Tokiko Tanaka. Cover illustration by
Sachiko Yamanaka. Shinozaki Shorin. Book cover of Gin no Mori no Pat (ge) [Pat ofSilver Bush 2]. 1981. Japanese translation by Tokiko Tanaka. Cover illustration by
Sachiko Yamanaka. Shinozaki Shorin. Book cover of Gin no Mori no Pat [Pat of SilverBush]. 2012. Japanese translation by Yumiko Taniguchi. Cover illustration by Tatsuro
Kiuchi. Image courtesy of Kadokawa Bunko.
1 Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery 426. The original letter is housed at the
University of Guelph Library, The L.M. Montgomery Collection.
2 Epperly, Fragrance 211–27.
3 Lefebvre, Books 525–27.
4 MacDonald, “Reflections” 155.
5 Rubio 418.
6 Fishbane, “My Pen” 132.
7 Cavert, “To the Memory” 50.
8 Montgomery, SJ 4 (1 Aug. 1933): 227.
9 “Loss,” def. 2, a, b, c, e; “Regeneration,” def. 1.a; and “Resurrection,” def.
1.b, 3.
10 Montgomery, MP 272, 273.
11 Montgomery, SJ 4 (15 Jan. 1934): 252.
12 Montgomery, SJ 4 (21 May 1934): 265.
13 Taniguchi made the same observation as I do in her “Translator’s Afterword”
in Gin no Mori no Pat, 572.
14 Like Anne of Green Gables, Pat of Silver Bush has thirty-nine chapters with aname for each chapter, such as “Introducing Pat” for the first chapter, while
Mistress Pat has eleven chapters titled according to year, such as “The Second
Year” as Chapter 2. Further, the lengths of the chapters are not consistent. In
addition, the publishing companies for British editions are different: Pat of Silver

Bush was published by Hodder Stoughton, Montgomery’s British publishers
since Rilla of Ingleside (1921), but they refused to publish Mistress Pat, giving
no reason. Instead, Harrap’s, who handled a lot of the preprints ofMontgomery’s books, published Mistress Pat, and the book “appeared amongthe ‘best selling’ books in England” in December 1935. See Montgomery, SJ 4
(15 Mar. 1935): 360, 394; SJ 5 (16 May 1935): 13; SJ 5 (27 Dec. 1935): 51,
352–53, 354.
15 See Muraoka, Hanako. This translation of Mistress Pat was titled Pat Ojousan
in Japanese.
16 This abridged translation was titled Shirakaba Yashiki no Shoujo [A Girl ofWhite Birch House], translated by Tokiko Tanaka. See Tanaka, Tokiko,
Shirakaba, “Translator's Afterword.” It is notable that Tanaka purposefully
omitted “Pat” from her interpretation of the book’s title.
17 Tokiko Tanaka completed this translation as well. See Tanaka, Tokiko, Gin
no Mori no Pat (ge) [Pat of Silver Bush 2], “Translator’s Afterword.”
18 Anemu, “L.M. Montgomery” (my translation).
19 Hanako Muraoka translated the Anne books sequentially except Rainbow
Valley, which was published on 30 June 1958 after Anne’s House of Dream on
20 May 1958 and before Anne of Ingleside on 5 October 1958.
20 Tanaka, Mihoko, Aspects 96–99.
21 Tokiko Tanaka deleted Chapters 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 33, and 34
and shortened the remaining chapters.
22 Tanaka, Tokiko, Shirakaba, “Translator’s Afterword” 243 (my translation).
23 Taniguchi, Gin no Mori, “Translator’s Afterword” 572.
24 Tanaka, Tokiko, Gin no Mori (ge), “Translator’s Afterword” 242–43 (mytranslation).
25 Only recently, in 2014 when the biography of Hanako Muraoka was written
and published by her granddaughter Eri Muraoka as An no Yurikago: Muraoka
Hanako no Shougai [Anne’s Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka,
Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables] did most Japanese readers
discover that Muraoka had belatedly obtained her copy of Pat of Silver Bushand had begun translating it on 20 October 1968. Five days after she started
her translation, she suddenly passed away due to cerebral thrombosis. Her
manuscripts are housed in Toyo Eiwa Jogakuin Archives, The Muraoka Hanako
Collection.
26 Mackey, “Reading.”
27 Mackey.

28 Mackey.
29 Mackey. In her article “‘Anne Repeated’: Taking Anne Out of Order,” Laura
Robinson performs a reading of the Anne series out of order—in the order inwhich the books were written. She sees the three later novels as Gothic selfparodies, and finds out that they undermine the idealized picture of the happy
Blythe family of the previous books.
30 Iser, Implied Reader 294.
31 Mackey.
32 Mackey.
33 Mackey.
34 Montgomery, MP 3–4.
35 Montgomery, MP 10.
36 Montgomery, MP 10.
37 Montgomery, MP 14.
38 Montgomery, MP 57.
39 Muraoka, Hanako, “Translator’s Afterword” 496–97 (my translation).
40 Muraoka published her translations of Montgomery’s Anne series and the
Emily trilogy in order, based on the heroines’ growth, except Rainbow Valley,
which came out just about three months before Anne of Ingleside (both in thesame year, 1958).
41 For example, Hanako Muraoka numbered Rilla of Ingleside as Dai Juu Akage
no An [The Tenth Anne of Green Gables], following the protagonists’ growth.
42 Montgomery, PSB 2. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “queer,”adj. (1) has the definition of 1.a.: “Strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric.” It is the
Irish housemaid, Judy, who calls Pat “a queer child,” so I suppose the definitionof “queer fellow,” def. (a) “chiefly Irish English and Nautical, an odd or eccentric
person, a ‘character,’” is the closest we can approximate to the meaning of theword Montgomery used.
43 Montgomery, PSB 230.
44 Montgomery, PSB 231.
45 Epperly 218.
46 Margaret Doody discusses Montgomery’s darker side, reading Mistress Pat
as “a story dealing with obsession” (“L.M. Montgomery” 47).
47 Montgomery, SJ 2 (7 Feb. 1919): 287.
48 Rubio 208.
49 Montgomery, SJ 2 (7 Feb. 1919): 295.
50 Montgomery, SJ 4 (25 Jan. 1934): 253.

51 Montgomery, SJ 2 (7 Feb. 1919): 295.
52 Montgomery, PSB 277.
53 Montgomery, PSB 277–78.
54 Montgomery, MP 265.
55 Montgomery, MP 267–68.
56 Montgomery, MP 270; ellipses in original.
57 Montgomery, MP 271; ellipses in original.
58 Montgomery, MP 272–73; ellipses in original.
59 Montgomery, PSB 65–66.
60 For the importance of reading the first encounter of the main characters, see
Mackey.
61 Jones, “New Mother” 105.
62 Jones 105.
63 Montgomery, MP 273; ellipses in original.
64 Montgomery, MP 235.
65 Montgomery, MP 273.
66 Montgomery, MP 273.
67 Montgomery, MP 274.
68 Epperly 219–20.
69 Epperly 217.
70 Montgomery, MP 273; ellipses in original.
71 Note that there is no mention of Pat’s mother Mary Gardiner at the ending.
72 Doody 47.
73 Montgomery, MP 134; ellipses in original.
74 Waterston, Magic Island 182.
75 Montgomery, MP 272; ellipses in original.
76 Montgomery, SJ 4 (5 Nov. 1934): 315.
77 Rubio, Lucy Maud Montgomery 426.
78 Montgomery, SJ 4 (30 Nov. 1934): 327.
79 Montgomery, SJ 4 (13 Feb. 1935): 344.
80 Montgomery, SJ 4 (15 Mar. 1935): 360.
81 Montgomery, MP 277; ellipses in original.
82 Montgomery, PSB 276; ellipses in original.
83 Sandilands, “Fire, Fantasy, and Futurity” 40.
84 Sandilands 38.
85 Readers’ names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.

86 Pat was eight and Hilary was ten years old when they first met, and they
were close friends for ten years until he left PEI in Mistress Pat.
87 Taniguchi, Gin no Mori no Pat, “Translator’s Afterword” 572 (my translation).
88 Taniguchi, Pat no Yume, “Translator’s Afterword” 552 (my translation).
89 Taniguchi, Pat no Yume, “Translator’s Afterword” 557 (my translation).
90 Anemu (my translation).
Back to top

Article Info

Copyright: Kazuko Sakuma, 2021. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (Creative Commons BY 4.0), which allows the user to share, copy and redistribute thematerial in any medium or format and adapt, remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose,even commercially, PROVIDED the Licensor is given attribution in accordance with the terms and conditions of
the CC BY 4.0.

Peer reviewed
Yes
Works Cited
Anemu. “L.M. Montgomery, Gin no Mori no Pat, Pat Ojousan.” [L.M. Montgomery, Pat
of Silver Bush, Mistress Pat.] Yuugata Nikki [Evening Journal].
https://ameblo.jp/anem/entry-10709818274.html.
Bode, Rita, and Lesley D. Clement, editors. L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The
Ontario Years, 1911–1942. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2015.
Bode, Rita, and Jean Mitchell, editors. L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s).
McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018.
Cavert, Mary Beth. “‘To the Memory Of’: Leaskdale and Loss in the Great War.” Bodeand Clement, pp. 35–53.
Doody, Margaret. “L.M. Montgomery: The Darker Side.” Mitchell, pp. 25–49.
Epperly, Elizabeth Rollins. The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass: L.M. Montgomery’s
Heroines and the Pursuit of Romance. U of Toronto P, 1992.

Fishbane, Melanie J. “‘My Pen Shall Heal, Not Hurt’: Writing as Therapy in Rilla ofIngleside and The Blythes Are Quoted.” Bode and Clement, pp. 131–44.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from
Bunyan to Beckett. Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.
Jones, Caroline E. “The New Mother at Home: Montgomery’s Literary Explorations ofMotherhood.” Bode and Clement, pp. 91–109.
Lefebvre, Benjamin. Books by L.M. Montgomery. The Blythes Are Quoted by L.M.
Montgomery, Penguin Canada, 2009, pp. 525–27.
“Loss, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2021,
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/110406?rskey=1UB4HB&result=1&isAdvanced=….
Accessed 15 May 2021.
MacDonald, Heidi. “Reflections of the Great Depression in L.M. Montgomery’s Lifeand her Pat Books.” Mitchell, pp. 142–58.
Mackey, Margaret. “Reading In and Out of Order: Living In and Around an Extended
Fiction.” Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies.
https://journaloflmmontgomerystudies.ca/jlmms/2/1/reading-and-out-order-livingand-around-extended-fiction.
Mitchell, Jean, editor. Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict,Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
Montgomery, L.M. The Blythes Are Quoted. Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre, Penguin
Canada, 2009.
---. Mistress Pat. 1935. Seal Books (McClelland-Bantam), 1988.
---. Pat of Silver Bush. 1933. Seal Books (McClelland-Bantam), 1988.
---. Rilla of Ingleside. Edited by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie. 1921.
Penguin Canada, 2010.
---. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery. Edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth
Waterston, Oxford UP, 1985–2004. 5 vols.

Muraoka, Eri. An no Yurikago: Muraoka Hanako no Shougai [Anne’s Cradle: Life andWorks of Hanako Muraoka, Translator of Anne of Green Gables]. 2008. Shinchosha,
2011.
Muraoka, Hanako. “Translator’s Afterword.” Pat Ojousan [Mistress Pat], by L.M.
Montgomery, translated by Hanako Muraoka, Shinchosha, 1965, pp. 494–97.
“Queer, Adj. (1).” Oxford Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2021,
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156236?rskey=nbYr0o&result=2&isAdvanced=false#e
id.
“Regeneration.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2021,
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/161223?redirectedFrom=regeneration#eid.
“Resurrection, N.” Oxford Dictionary, Oxford UP, 2021,
https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/164104?rskey=3Uvrwk&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid.
Robinson, M. Laura. “‘Anne Repeated’: Taking Anne Out of Order.” Seriality andTexts for Young People: The Compulsion to Repeat, edited by Mavis Reimer, Nyala
Ali, Deanna England, and Melanie Dennis Unrau, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp.
57–73.
Rubio, Mary Henley. Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings. Anchor Canada,
2008.
Sandilands, Catriona. “Fire, Fantasy, and Futurity: Queer Ecology Visits Silver Bush.”
Bode and Mitchell, pp. 27–41.
Tanaka, Mihoko. Aspects of the Translation and Reception of British Children’s
Fantasy Literature in Postwar Japan: With Special Emphasis on The Borrowers andTom’s Midnight Garden. The Academic Society of Tokyo Woman’s Christian
University, 2009.
Tanaka, Tokiko. “Translator’s Afterword.” Gin no Mori no Pat (ge) [Pat of Silver Bushsequel], by L.M. Montgomery, translated by Tokiko Tanaka, Shinozaki Shorin,
1980–81, pp. 239–44.
---. “Translator’s Afterword.” Shirakaba Yashiki no Shoujo [A Girl of White Birch
House (Tanaka’s title of Pat of Silver Bush)], by L.M. Montgomery, translated by

Tokiko Tanaka, Junior Best Novels 13, Iwasaki Shoten, 1974, pp. 242–43.
Taniguchi, Yumiko. “Translator’s Afterword.” Gin no Mori no Pat [Pat of Silver Bush],
by L.M. Montgomery, translated by Taniguchi, KADOKAWA, 2012, pp. 569–73.
---. “Translator’s Afterword.” Pat no Yume [Pat’s Dream (Taniguchi’s title of MistressPat)], by L.M. Montgomery, translated by Taniguchi, KADOKAWA, 2012, pp. 552–57.
Waterston, Elizabeth. Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Montgomery. Oxford UP,
2008.