🌻Anne of Green Gables was the first, and best, Manic Pixie Dream Girl
I'm sorry in advance for this post
I just read Anne of Green Gables with my book club. The 1908 classic by L.M. Montgomery is a children’s literature staple, but I’d never read it, and also had never seen any of the many TV/movie/musical adaptations. I didn’t know what I was getting into.
As a novel, for my own taste, it was just okay. The overarching plot is quite light, with each chapter almost a standalone episode of “what shenanigans will Anne get herself into today?” — I felt like I was watching a Nick Jr. show. Which is no diss on Nick Jr., it’s just maybe not something I need to sit down and engage with for hours at a time like I would a compelling book. Regardless, it was pleasant and I’d certainly read it to a kid, but I’ll be skipping the rest of the series.
If you’re not familiar with the story, Anne is an orphan who gets accidentally adopted by a nice, traditional farm family who were actually trying to adopt a boy to come help on their land (Green Gables). Chaos ensues, because Anne is not only not a boy, but a very, very talkative, very imaginative, very quirky little girl who quickly wins over and softens the hearts of everyone in her sphere.
Anne is constantly — constantly — saying stuff like: “Dear old world, you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” and “I’m so glad my window looks east into the sunrising … I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest sunshine.” and “I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
It occurred to me that Anne of Green Gables might be the earliest recorded case of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
I have gone deep down the rabbit hole trying to decide if I like this theory (and I do) so I figured I would share with you. (And apologies to Nathan Rabin for not putting the MPDG to rest.)
Origins of the MPDG
For the uninitiated, the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” is a character trope — like a “girl next door” or a “femme fatale” — who has a certain personality and role in a story. The phrase MPDG was coined in 2007 by film critic Nathan Rabin, in reference to Kirsten Dunst’s character in the 2005 movie, Elizabethtown. He wrote:
“Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family. As for me, well, let's just say I'm not going to propose to Dunst's psychotically chipper waitress in the sky any time soon.” (Source)
Translation: you’re either swept away by her whimsy, or you find her very, very annoying. “Psychotically chipper” is a great phrase.
“It’s an archetype, I realized, that taps into a particular male fantasy: of being saved from depression and ennui by a fantasy woman who sweeps in like a glittery breeze to save you from yourself, then disappears once her work is done.” (Source)
This original definition of the MPDG was a criticism of this use of a female character as a plot device: To be a true MPDG meant the character lacked depth and, specifically, only existed as a prop to draw the male lead out of his shell. She has no nuance beyond her quirkiness, and her quirkiness only exists as a catalyst to his development. Elizbethtown’s writers certainly didn’t invent this, Elizabethtown just happened to spark the blog post that first uttered the phrase.
(The internet generally thinks Katharine Hepburn's character in Bringing Up Baby, in 1938, is the earliest instance of the MPDG.)
To break down the phrase itself:
They’re manic — she has endless energy and an unrelenting verve for life. “Come on, you fuddy duddy, there’s a whole wide world out there! Don’t you just love the world!” She might have a sad moment, but she’s anything but depressed.
They’re pixies — she’s almost otherworldly. People who encounter her shake their heads and say, “where did she come from?”
And they’re dream girls — she doesn't actually exist. At least not as written. She’s a fantasy. (More on this in a sec.) She frolics into your life to support you unconditionally and pull you out of your shell, only to flit away on a cloud once her work is done.
The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is eccentric. She’s whimsical. She seems to see the world differently than the rest of us — and there’s so much we normals can learn from her. She’s unconventional. She’s scatterbrained — but her little mistakes somehow only make her more endearing. She pushes people out of their comfort zones.
Does this sound like anyone we know?
Anne “with an e” perhaps?
Here’s Anne again: “Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive — it’s such an interesting world. It wouldn’t be half so interesting if we knew all about everything, would it? There’d be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.”
It’s a little on the nose, if you ask me.
Now, of course, Anne Shirley is a child and Anne of Green Gables is not a romantic comedy. So because Anne doesn’t exist “solely as a prop to the male lead,” you could argue that she can’t be a MPDG.
But I disagree, I think the trope very much still applies: Anne’s character doesn’t develop much at all, nor does she have much depth besides being “unreasonably quirky.” Almost all the character growth in AoGG happens in the people around Anne and it happens because of Anne. She’s running around like a banshee, touching the lives of all the stodgy folks of Prince Edward Island who have never met anyone like her. Everyone loves her and everyone is changed by her.
Not only is Anne an MPDG, she’s an over-achieving one, changing not one other character but her whole village!
Hey! Quick side quest for you. I wrote a post over at Ampliflora (aka my day job) about how to tell whether your website is doing its job — and what to do if it’s not. If your organization or business has a less-than-ideal site, check it out. Be sure to send it to a friend whose website stinks — and give them my number. Tee hee.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming:
As MPDGs go, Anne of Green Gables is the G.O.A.T.
The deeper I get into learning about MPDGs, the more I’m convinced that Anne of Green Gables is one. But I’m also convinced that she’s the best one.
So what if her character exists only to enrich the lives of those around her? She’s not pulling the male lead out of his shell, she is the lead and she’s pulling everyone out of their shells. I’d like to see Zooey Deschanel take on an entire turn-of-the-century Canadian village with her quirkiness!
There’s also an elephant in the room here, which is that the true source of Anne Shirley’s power, and perhaps that of every Manic Pixie Dream Girl, is her rampant untreated ADHD. Not that L.M. Montgomery would’ve known the diagnosis in 1908 — but she must have encountered kids like Anne to have written her so perfectly.
(Fun fact, doctors were starting to take notice of ADHD-like symptoms around this time: “In a series of lectures in 1902, Sir George Frederic Still talked about mental conditions in otherwise healthy children of normal intelligence. These children were more impulsive, and had problems with attention and self-control...” Source)
Anne’s whole vibe is classic ADHD. And she’s got it bad. She talks too much (like, way too much), she’s always off in her own world, she takes dangerous risks on impulses, her attention to detail is truly egregious (often resulting in cooking mishaps), she is constantly spacing out and burning the pies or forgetting her chores or not doing what she says she’ll do even though she intends to. Girl needs some Ritalin!
But for me, knowing that many (all? lol) of Anne’s quirks are textbook ADHD symptoms just makes her more relatable and the story more realistic. She’s not a fantasy — kids like this exist. And it’s nice to read a story where, instead of being told to shut up and sit down, the kid is given space to flourish. That makes the storyline, for me, all the more charming.
I confess that Anne — and everyone’s adoration of her despite her insufferability — annoyed me a bit while I was reading. (This may mean I am a jerk.) But upon reflection, I think it’s a special story of accepting people as they are, whether it’s Anne, her stern neighbor Mrs. Rachel Lynde, quiet-to-a-fault Matthew, or anyone else. Even if I didn’t love it, I can appreciate it.
Do Manic Pixie Dream Girls exist in real life?
My research on this topic (lol. aka watching YouTube videos) has made it very clear that by definition, the “D” in MPDG is mandatory; she’s only a dream, only a fantasy. The MPDG is not a personality type, but a plot device. But I argue the term has grown since its conception, and the MPDG does now exist as her own entity.
We must admit the MPDG has a clearly definable vibe even without her vanilla male lead counterpart. And although it might be semantically incorrect to call a person you meet in real life a MPDG, everyone would know what you meant. It seems there is, in fact, a new character type in the mix, one that’s joined the ranks of the jocks and geeks and whoever else we’re used to stereotyping — even if it’s uncommon to see an MPDG fully formed in the wild.
Part of why I think MPDGs can exist is because ADHD certainly exists, and quirky people certainly exist. There are plenty of people with no filters, and with vivid imaginations, and I see no reason why there wouldn’t be people whose excessive whimsy inspires those around them to loosen up. The MPDG personality could spontaneously generate.
But the other reason I think MPDGs exist is that the trope itself had such a ripple effect on culture. As we all watched Garden State (2004), Elizabethtown (2005), 500 Days of Summer* (2009), New Girl (2011-2018)... a whole string of characters showed teens of my generation how absolutely beloved and desired this type of girl was.
Consciously or not, I think girls did start to model themselves after them. Be more quirky and carefree! Don’t be boring! Go dance in the rain, go learn the ukulele, don’t be like the other girls! That was the message. “Don’t care so much!” the MPDG told her guy in every movie and my friends regularly told me in real life. Move over, unreasonable beauty standards of the 90’s, we are now adding unreasonable personality standards to make you feel inferior among your peers!
The pressure of the MPDG as the mid-00’s “most desirable girl” was real. In my mind, it became the new route to popularity instead of the preppy cheerleader of decades past. The real-life MPDG is the modern “it” girl: her clothes are both vintage and trendy, she “doesn’t care what other people think,” she’s got the record collection, she’s aloof, she probably has that indie-goddess, Zoey-Deschanel-type singing voice, which she has no reservations about sharing. Poll the general populous in 2006, and you’d have found that the rich cheerleader had become the villain, and the MPDG was on the pedestal.
But now we must revisit the original definition: that to be a true MPDG, you must exist solely to serve the “stale white Wonder Bread boy” (as one YouTuber put it) male lead in your story. Obviously there’s no “male lead” in real life, but certainly the MPDG can impact the people around her, intentionally or not. Likewise, a person with strong MPDG traits might easily come across as lacking depth beyond their eccentricity.
Cue Santa in the M&M’s commercial: “They DO exist!”
Lessons from Anne’s MPDG
Maybe the real difference between Anne of Green Gables and the usual trope isn’t how eccentric she is — it’s how much space she’s allowed to take up for herself.
Sure, I would’ve liked to see more character development from her (beyond “gets slightly less annoying as she matures”). But Anne does learn lessons. She grows older. And most importantly, she stays. She doesn’t vanish once everyone around her has softened — she stays in Green Gables. She gets seven more books.
Exhausting as she may be, she is thriving on her own terms, and that makes her a much better role model than most MPDGs we’ve seen. Honestly, I’d love to see more main characters like Anne.
Actually, if we’re being really honest, what I want is the modern Anne of Green Gables adaptation where Marilla drags her to a psychiatrist, she gets put on meds and can finally get her chores done without setting anything on fire — but everyone slowly realizes they miss her whimsy.
But if that’s not an option, more MPDG leads will do. A little more eccentricity might do us all some good.
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* So apparently the movie (500) Days of Summer is actually a commentary critiquing the MPDG because the plot is that Joseph Gordon Leavitt keeps thinking Summer is his MPDG here to save him, but she’s not, and she keeps telling him so, but he doesn’t listen. And a lot of people watching it missed the point and thought Summer was the villain. I need to re-watch this movie…