L.M. Montgomery's Myra Murray

If I could be a very minor character from literature, I think I could do much worse than Myra Murray. We don’t learn much about Myra in the Anne of Green Gables series—she has only one real scene in Anne of Ingleside and then her funeral is mentioned in Rainbow Valley. The scene she’s in isn’t even at all about her—I label her a “very minor character” for a reason. She obviously made an impression though, which is one of the things I love about L.M. Montgomery novels—they are chock-full of characters who make an impression in just a few short sentences. It’s her gift for dialogue really. Characters seem real from the moment they open their mouths.

"'I used to dance and sing…on the shore, where nobody heard me,' said Myra Murray.

'Ah, but you've grown wiser since then,' said Agatha.

'No-o-o, foolisher,' said Myra Murray slowly. 'Too foolish now to dance along the shore.'"

-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

Myra is just one of the many women from the Glen who’ve come to Ingleside for a Ladies’ Aid quilting. This is of course quite an occasion in the novel—Susan and Anne make elaborate preparations—and this particular chapter is just characters you’ve largely never heard of talking over stories from Glen St. Mary history. This should be boring, but if scenes like this were boring in L.M. Montgomery novels, then all L.M. Montgomery novels would be dead boring. And they are far from that. You might not realize right now that you’re going to find yourself absorbed in the story of what happened at Peter Kirk’s funeral, but you will be.

"'Pauline is pretty but she is full of silly notions as ever,' said Mrs. Milgrave.  'Sometimes I think she'll never learn any sense.'

'Oh, yes, she will,' said Myra Murray.  'Some day she will have children of her own and she will learn wisdom from them…as you and I did.'"

-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

Myra has only a few lines in Anne of Ingleside but in those few lines, Montgomery sketches a woman who is joyful and whimsical and smart enough to realize that both joy and whimsy are to be treasured the older we get because it’s so easy to forget them and “properly” grow up. I think what really draws me to her is that she seems like a vision of who Anne might be one day if time is kind to her. You don’t get to the sixth book of the Anne of Green Gables series without being intensely invested in who Anne grows into.

“’Bertha was in love with Fred Reese but he was notorious for flirting. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” Mrs. Morris told her.’

‘I've heard that proverb all my life,’ said Myra Murray, ‘and I wonder if it's true. Perhaps the birds in the bush could sing and the one in the hand couldn't.’”

-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

By the time Montgomery wrote Anne of Ingleside, which was published in 1939—the original six Anne of Green Gables novels were published between 1908 and 1921—fans of the series knew what was going to happen in Rilla of Ingleside. Namely that World War I will have terrible consequences for the Blythe family. Even if you’ve only read Rilla of Ingleside and never gotten around to The Blythes Are Quoted—a book probably only read by particularly ardent L.M. Montgomery fans—you know by the end of that novel that Anne Blythe is not going to be able to hold onto joy and whimsy the way she should have been allowed to.

“’How romantic!’ said Myra Murray.

‘Romantic! I call it barely respectable.’

‘But think of being born under the stars!’ said Myra dreamily. ‘Why, she ought to have been a child of the stars…sparkling…beautiful…brave…true…with a twinkle in her eyes.’”

-L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

To me, Myra Murray is a glimpse of what could and should have been. She’s a minor character who reflects a very attractive version of adulthood. You want to see the world the way she does because it’s obvious her world is the delectable world of Anne Blythe (née Shirley) in Anne of Ingleside. It’s the world L.M. Montgomery gives her readers glimpses of from the first time Matthew picks up eleven-year-old Anne in Anne of Green Gables. None of us can be Anne and we can’t be Myra Murray. But we can want to be them and we can enjoy their incredibly appealing perspective on life and what it really means to grow up.

#lmmontgomery