Identity Construction Through Imagination: Resistance to Conventional Girlhood in Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables

Abstract

Anne of Green Gables, a novel by L. M. Montgomery published in the early Twentieth Century, presents an orphan girl whose strong imagination becomes a powerful tool for self-expression and identity formation. The author portrayed her personal struggles and hardships through the character Anne, which allows readers to gain insight into the imaginative mind of a child who struggles to find acceptance and belonging within a society governed by rigid social expectations. The aim of this research paper is to analyse the social structure of the Avonlea community to lay the groundwork for understanding Anne’s personality and her need to use imagination. The findings show that Anne is expected to conform to patriarchal social order; however, her imagination consistently allows her to challenge this model, transforming moments of marginalisation and exclusion into acts of self-definition and creative agency. The study concludes that imagination, far from being a mere personality trait, operates as Anne’s central strategy of resistance to patriarchal expectations, enabling her to construct an identity that exceeds the conventional girlhood Avonlea attempts to impose on her, and contributing to a feminist reading of female agency in late-Victorian children’s literature.