Vivacity and Restraint

 Looking at L.M Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, as an adult reader, I relate more to the adult characters (such as Marilla and Matthew) than to Anne herself. I am pretty sure that things would have been different had I read this book as a pre-teen or as a teenager. The exuberance of Anne, at one point, leads Marilla to realize the depth of her love for Anne, only to then restrain herself again with the injunction to "not show her feelings", much less encourage Anne to show hers. And, of course, I begin to see a change in Anne herself as the novel progresses, and she herself loses her appetite to talk voraciously as she matures. This perhaps leads me to wonder whether many, if not most, children lose that natural vivacity to talk or to volubly express their thoughts, in the name of "maturity". (And then comes the deeper question of what maturity is, and what cultural factors shape one's understanding of its meaning and direction).
  One of the clues, perhaps, comes at the beginning of the novel, when Anne describes how it's better not to get too close to things we love if we know that they are going to leave us (I am paraphrasing, here). This is the same plain that I heard when I read Freud's accounts of melancholy: the idea that beautiful things scare people, and cause them to back away, because loving something too much might lead to a huge mourning that cannot be surmounted. To put it in another way, perhaps the hidden shadow of restraint is a lack of restraint, just as coldness and rigidity might be hiding a warmth that is afraid to lose.
   In any case, the mourning I feel the most in this novel is Anne's eventual socialization into the competitive world, starting with rivalry with other students for the top grades, and continuing into her journey as a teacher. But at the same time, the process does shape Anne's character, and allows her a sense of purpose that her vivacity would have denied her. Too much vivacity and romanticism,without restraint, can lead to all kinds of dead ends, which are recounted humorously throughout the book. Eventually Anne (and Marilla, for that matter) find a balance in all of this, as their souls begin to connect as mother and daughters do.