#i ctrl+F'd trying to find examples of shirley saying “mother susan”

[freyafrida]

haha, working a little bit backwards here -- but yes, totally, "she thinks he is her own" is another excellent passage! i agree with @brightriverstation, too, that it reads like anne having a sense of humor about it, or being a bit indulgent in the way she talks about susan. which sounds condescending, but i don't thiiink it is…more like, the blythes do generally treat susan like a goodhearted grandma or aunt; much like anne nods along affectionately when marilla and mrs. lynde are being old-fashioned and saying things anne doesn't really agree with, so she is with susan.

all the writing around susan portrays her as lovable and comic, and certainly all the info we can tease out from anne, gilbert, and shirley's (non-)reactions is that the blythes don't see her as overstepping or anything -- she's important to them and they're only ever grateful and happy that she loves shirley and the rest of the kids so much; i don't think anne would argue that there's any kind of competition over who loves her kids more, or that love is finite. within the story, the characters certainly don't take any issue with susan.

[lol i wrote a whole paragraph here then realized i was just repeating what you said that i think, even though anne doesn't see her that way, people do read susan as overstepping bc shirley's two traits of "weirdly missing from the text" and "raised primarily by susan" get intertwined in readers' heads as though the two things are related, that the latter caused the former. although i do think it's supported slightly by susan's POV being kind of possessive, devoid of any other context because...we get so little shirley context!]

Btw how much of Shirley putting this off do you reckon had to do with his boyish fear of “a scene”?

oh, SO much, and this is one of my fave shirley details lol. it feels very right for him, being sensible and quiet and matthew-cuthbert-esquely afraid of being the center of attention.

i do think shirley doesn't consider susan to be on the same level of…authority, perhaps, or filial respect as his parents. part of that is likely simple social mores -- it's mentioned in the books a few times that the blythes treat susan more familiarly than most people would with "the help", but well, shirley doesn't "owe" her respect the same way he's socially expected to respect his parents. but also, as mentioned, susan treats the blythe kids (shirley to a greater extent, but all of them) like an indulgent grandma -- see also, her defending rilla's vanity where anne wants rilla to grow out of it -- and i think shirley's enlistment reflects that treatment, in the opposite direction: he's willing to have hard conversations with his parents, but perhaps tries to protect susan (and avoid a "scene" lol) by not telling her. (i do also really like the thought that he wants anne and gilbert's blessing 🥹)

idk whether susan would be specifically hurt by shirley keeping her in the dark...there's the mentions, of course, that she thinks he can do no wrong and in that regard, she may not be able to consider/accept that an action of his can hurt her. susan does also say a few times that she 'knows her place' in the household; which suggests she doesn't really expect shirley to treat her the way he treats anne. at the same time -- as mentioned, we mostly see susan's POV re: shirley, and she can come off a bit...anxious over her place in his life -- e.g not wanting anne to tuck him in. i can see her being hurt at the evidence that shirley didn't 'need' her blessing, even if intellectually she knows he wouldn't have asked for it.

(also re: how long susan raised shirley -- truly! "most of his infancy" was just like...a guess, although i do also get the sense that regardless of how long anne was actually ill, susan just 'went on' being shirley's primary carer even after she recovered. which probably would've been a relief for anne, seeing as she still had four other kids to take care of. so maybe there's an argument susan actually raised shirley most of his childhood.)

Any thoughts on Shirley’s relationship with Susan compared to Anne and the way he starts calling Susan “Mother Susan”? I kinda feel like Susan stole one of Anne kids ☠️

Omg a million thoughts.

I think for Shirley, or any other more minor canon character that doesn’t get a huge amount of time in the spotlight, that it’s easy for readers to grab onto sparse canon fragments and expound on them tenfold because really – it’s all you have. For instance say X character is mentioned only twice in a novel, and each time they happened to be wearing pink sunglasses… now in fanon the jump is “X’s favourite colour is pink, and they only wear pink because they love it so much, and they always dreamed of having pink hair…” (this is a supremely stupid example, but you know what I mean?) and so on, and imo you can get really exaggerated versions of certain characters this way. And I do think this is sometimes the case with Shirley (even though it’s an impulse I understand, and one born out of necessity), and this is how we end up with some believing or thinking Shirley isn’t as much of a Blythe as the rest of his family, or that he prefers Susan to Anne, or that he isn’t very close to Anne, or even as you say, that he continued to call Susan “mother Susan” after the war. When really, we have no textual evidence to support that it did continue. It’s one of those things like yeah sure, it is possible… but it’s equally as possible that it didn’t. (And I personally doubt that it did. When I read that scene, I see a moment where Shirley is declaring for his girl, so to speak. He isn’t sure if he’ll come back from his service – after all, Walter already didn’t – and he wants Susan to know she’s been/is a Mother to him. There were many different types of ‘good-byes’ and ‘thank-yous’ to be said before boys went on to wear khaki for their country. It’s perfectly natural that Shirley would’ve done this for Susan, and it is very very sweet.)

It’s interesting though with Maud, because she does provide a lot of surrogate-type mothers in her books and short stories, and while she effortlessly proves the ferocity of the strength of these found-family bonds, she also can draw some pretty firm lines there. Like when Marilla won’t permit Anne call her “aunt Marilla,” because Marilla doesn’t believe in calling people by names or titles that don’t belong to them. For Shirley, there’s that line in Rainbow Valley narrative where Maud gives the ole air-quote to Susan’s “mothering” of Shirley – put there to pointedly differentiate from plain mothering.

Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery

My own preoccupation on this subject has always been like, welllll what about Shirley? What did he feel? And it’s again, very hard to resolutely say. We just know too little. We only know Susan’s feelings. Like at the end of Anne of Ingleside, when Anne and Gilbert leave for a second honeymoon, and Shirley goes with Susan to her sisters house instead of Avonlea with the rest of the bigger kids… the text doesn’t tell us that this was necessarily Shirley’s choice. It doesn’t say, “Shirley wanted…”, instead it says: “Susan took…” (btw I don’t mean this to reflect poorly on Susan, only highlighting that it doesn’t give us any insight into Shirley’s feelings lol). Meanwhile, we do have examples of Susan putting Shirley to bed each night and ‘allowing’ Anne to on special occasion, but even in those, we also emphatically hear that Shirley still wants Anne to be the one tucking him in, despite it all.

Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Then we’ll flip-flop and have something like Shirley going to Susan about his bumps and scrapes, and to avoid “well deserved” spankings… which all things considered, this is a less of a motherly trait, so much as an indulgent grandmotherly trait (keep in mind, Susan was described as ‘elderly’ back in HOD days).

🫠 So yeah lmao all this to say/for the TLDR, at least for me and what can be fairly deducted from the text, that Anne and Susan are basically equals in the matter of Bringing Up Shirley… and that we definitely can’t say it’s canon that Susan is an usurper (or baby stealer!) of Anne in this way.

[absolutelynotclassicusernam-blog]

#on that note#i ctrl+F'd trying to find examples of shirley saying “mother susan”#and it's just that one bit in rilla of ingleside??#did LMM just drop that in that book and everyone rolled with it#was it in RV or AoIngleside and search failed me....i feel like everything i know is a lie rn --@freyafrida

I'm quite new to the larger fandom, so my only guess of how it is in fanfics comes from what you just said, but yes. He only says it that once, and his saying it that once is a big deal to Susan because it's never happened before--so I guess everyone did roll with it.

Any thoughts on Shirley’s relationship with Susan compared to Anne and the way he starts calling Susan “Mother Susan”? I kinda feel like Susan stole one of Anne kids ☠️

Omg a million thoughts.

I think for Shirley, or any other more minor canon character that doesn’t get a huge amount of time in the spotlight, that it’s easy for readers to grab onto sparse canon fragments and expound on them tenfold because really – it’s all you have. For instance say X character is mentioned only twice in a novel, and each time they happened to be wearing pink sunglasses… now in fanon the jump is “X’s favourite colour is pink, and they only wear pink because they love it so much, and they always dreamed of having pink hair…” (this is a supremely stupid example, but you know what I mean?) and so on, and imo you can get really exaggerated versions of certain characters this way. And I do think this is sometimes the case with Shirley (even though it’s an impulse I understand, and one born out of necessity), and this is how we end up with some believing or thinking Shirley isn’t as much of a Blythe as the rest of his family, or that he prefers Susan to Anne, or that he isn’t very close to Anne, or even as you say, that he continued to call Susan “mother Susan” after the war. When really, we have no textual evidence to support that it did continue. It’s one of those things like yeah sure, it is possible… but it’s equally as possible that it didn’t. (And I personally doubt that it did. When I read that scene, I see a moment where Shirley is declaring for his girl, so to speak. He isn’t sure if he’ll come back from his service – after all, Walter already didn’t – and he wants Susan to know she’s been/is a Mother to him. There were many different types of ‘good-byes’ and ‘thank-yous’ to be said before boys went on to wear khaki for their country. It’s perfectly natural that Shirley would’ve done this for Susan, and it is very very sweet.)

It’s interesting though with Maud, because she does provide a lot of surrogate-type mothers in her books and short stories, and while she effortlessly proves the ferocity of the strength of these found-family bonds, she also can draw some pretty firm lines there. Like when Marilla won’t permit Anne call her “aunt Marilla,” because Marilla doesn’t believe in calling people by names or titles that don’t belong to them. For Shirley, there’s that line in Rainbow Valley narrative where Maud gives the ole air-quote to Susan’s “mothering” of Shirley – put there to pointedly differentiate from plain mothering.

Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery

My own preoccupation on this subject has always been like, welllll what about Shirley? What did he feel? And it’s again, very hard to resolutely say. We just know too little. We only know Susan’s feelings. Like at the end of Anne of Ingleside, when Anne and Gilbert leave for a second honeymoon, and Shirley goes with Susan to her sisters house instead of Avonlea with the rest of the bigger kids… the text doesn’t tell us that this was necessarily Shirley’s choice. It doesn’t say, “Shirley wanted…”, instead it says: “Susan took…” (btw I don’t mean this to reflect poorly on Susan, only highlighting that it doesn’t give us any insight into Shirley’s feelings lol). Meanwhile, we do have examples of Susan putting Shirley to bed each night and ‘allowing’ Anne to on special occasion, but even in those, we also emphatically hear that Shirley still wants Anne to be the one tucking him in, despite it all.

Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

Then we’ll flip-flop and have something like Shirley going to Susan about his bumps and scrapes, and to avoid “well deserved” spankings… which all things considered, this is a less of a motherly trait, so much as an indulgent grandmotherly trait (keep in mind, Susan was described as ‘elderly’ back in HOD days).

🫠 So yeah lmao all this to say/for the TLDR, at least for me and what can be fairly deducted from the text, that Anne and Susan are basically equals in the matter of Bringing Up Shirley… and that we definitely can’t say it’s canon that Susan is an usurper (or baby stealer!) of Anne in this way.