Date of Award

Fall 12-2012

Degree Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

School

Humanities

Committee Chair

Eric Tribunella

Committee Chair Department

English

Committee Chair School

Humanities

Committee Member 2

Ellen Weinauer

Committee Member 3

Jameela Lares

Committee Member 3 Department

English

Committee Member 3 School

Humanities

Abstract

In L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), heroine Anne Shirley seemingly dreams her way through life, envisioning scenes of romance or adventure in order to endure and overcome obstacles. This use of imagination serves as a means of ideological transcendence for an early twentieth-century girl in rural Canada, thus enabling Anne to triumph in her community. Anne's employment of imagination functions in similar ways to that of certian discursive strands of Canadian suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining Anne of Green Gables alongside the ways in which these suffrage factions used imagination to free themselves from conventional thought, as well as influence others to join their cause, we see how imagination can operate as an agent of change.

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