Philosophy and Anne of Green Gables: Dropping in the Harness
As a lifelong Anne of Green Gables fan and as a philosopher, I can’t help but recognize the many ways in which Anne of Green Gables, both the original book series by L. M. Montgomery and the 1985 television miniseries (and its sequel Anne of Avonlea) by Kevin Sullivan and Sullivan Entertainment, have shaped my personality, my ideals, and my philosophical temperament and worldview in more ways that one.
We all know that death is inevitable. And yet, we humans seem to relate to death in various ways. Some people fear death. Some people think of it as being in the far future, not letting it affect their thinking from day to day. Some people feel a conscious anxiety about death, while other people have a latent anxiety about death that causes subconscious anguish and stress in the here and now. Some people, like the ancient stoics (e.g., Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc.) seem to embrace the inevitability of death with full awareness. Other philosophers, like Heidegger and Camus, see our inevitable death as the primary factor that motivates us to make the most of the present and to pursue the projects and goals that are most authentic to us, that give our lives subjective meaning.
In the 1985 Kevin Sullivan version of Anne of Green Gables, Matthew Cuthbert, Anne Shirley’s adoptive father, makes a curious statement about death a moment before he dies in a field in Anne’s arms:
Matthew Cuthbert: I've worked hard all my life. I'd rather just drop in the harness. (Anne of Green Gables, Sullivan Entertainment)
In the Western world, we generally have a cultural ambivalence toward death. On the one hand, many religious believers in the Christian tradition view death in a positive light. Death is when some Christians expect to go to heaven to commune more directly with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and their deceased loved ones (at least for those Christians who believe they go to heaven immediately upon their death) or when other Christians expect to enter a type of peaceful soul sleep awaiting their bodily resurrection (for those Christians emphasizing a bodily resurrection and the restoration of creation, and of all of mankind, in a new heaven and a new Earth. (What exactly Christians believe about death as it relates to the afterlife, to heaven, and to resurrection is unclear, as various passages of scripture can be found to support either interpretation of death.)
For nonbelievers, death is either something to fear, presumably because of the prospect of a painful death, or something that provides, like it did for 20th-century existentialist philosophers, motivation for living in the moment in the here and now. Death takes on a particular sadness for nonbelievers, knowing that death has a finality to it that Christians reject in favor of belief in an afterlife and in the prospect of being reunited with loved ones. Whereas Christians generally view death as a type of temporary separation from loved ones, nonbelievers tend to view death as a final and absolute end—except for those with a new-age belief that death is a matter of ascending to some different or higher, yet unfamiliar and unknown, plane of existence.
So given these possible approaches and relations to death (and there are still others to numerous to recount here), and to bring the discussion back to Anne of Green Gables, what can one make of Mathew Cuthbert’s (figurative) deathbed claim that he’s worked hard all his life and that he’d rather just drop in the harness, to give in to the immediacy of his own death, instead of continuing to work, to decline physically, and to keep fighting the inevitable? If anyone has earned the right to drop in the harness, it’s Matthew Cuthbert, having lived his entire life at Green Gables, working the fields and presumably never having much of a chance to pursue other opportunities. One can hardly fault Matthew Cuthbert for not wanting to muster up the energy to keep working in light of his declining health, especially when the farming work that he is used to has such a Sisyphus-like quality to it, milking the cows and working the fields day-in and day-out.
Surely Matthew Cuthbert is aware of the fact that his death will cause Anne and Matthew’s sister Marilla much sadness and hardship. After all, following Matthew’s death, Anne and Marilla must then figure out how to run the Green Gables farm without Matthew’s labor and oversight. So in choosing to drop in the harness, is Matthew also choosing to bring pain to others, perhaps in the same way that someone who commits suicide brings pain to others in easing his or her own pain and suffering in life? Or is he being kind both to himself and to Anne and Marilla insofar as he will prevent himself from being as burden to them as his health would presumably continue to decline, to the point where he wouldn’t be able to run the Green Gables farm anymore anyway?
In addition, there s something tragic about Matthew’s dropping in the harness, as it is a rejection of future possibilities, by definition. Any future happiness and joy that Matthew might have experience by living a few more days, weeks, months, or years are immediately negated by the facticity of his death, at the hands of a heart attack or otherwise. Any possibility of medical intervention to prolong his life is likewise negated and rejected (although, obviously, in the story Anne didn’t have time to fetch the doctor to try to prevent Matthew’s death before he passed away in her arms).
So what should one make of Matthew’s relation to his own death in Anne of Green Gables? Is it respectable for Mathew to have worked away his entire life only to drop in the harness when death is at hand, or possibly when he no longer wants to struggle against the inevitable? Or is it more respectable to fight against death with every last ounce of one’s strength? Is it more respectable to prevent oneself from being a burden to his or her loved ones? Or is it more respectable to continue to have hope and to see possibilities for the future, to continue to bring love and joy to one’s family and friends, no matter how tired one is, how hard one has worked in life, or how inevitable or immediate death seems to be?
This might be heretical to ask, even for me as an Anne of Green Gables fan with an abundance of reverence for a character like Matthew Cuthbert and for the role he played in the life of his adopted daughter Anne Shirley. But should we consider Matthew Cuthbert to have a degree of cowardice, selfishness even, to, in his own words, drop in the harness instead of pushing and fighting and clawing for every last breath of life, even when the end is near? If anyone has earned the right to drop in the harness, however, it’s Matthew Cuthbert, no matter what we ourselves might think about death and the importance of continuing to fight the good fight as long as possible.
Where to Watch Anne of Green Gables:
