L.M. Montgomery’s Short Story, ‘The Finished Story’

“Woman Reading in a Landscape,” circa 1869, Camille Corot. A young man helps a spinster find love. Public Domain

Love, one of the most long-lasting and powerful emotions in the world, not only endures, but it also harbors hope in any time of life.

L.M. Montgomery contemplates such a love in her short story “The Finished Story,” in which she relates the sad history of Miss Sylvia. Through Miss Sylvia, Montgomery inspects a lasting, loyal love that was never believed returned.  

Love Lost

Miss Sylvia, an old spinster, is very popular with young people, who gather around her “in a corner of the west veranda at the hotel.” In her special corner, Miss Sylvia sits, knits her many creations, and listens to the many joys and sorrows of her young admirers.

Though she often pays attention to their episodes of youthful romance and loss, she never tells them her own love story. She avoids their crafty questions about her own love story, until one specific day.

One of the young men, a writer for a magazine, reads his story to Miss Sylvia. The story tells of a young man and woman who fall in love, but the young man (out of self-restraint) decides not to confess his love to her. Because his circumstances prevent him from marrying her, the young man leaves, and she can only wonder about his intentions.

Hearing the ending of the story, Miss Sylvia pleads with the young writer not to give such a suspenseful ending: “Oh, no, no; don’t let him go away without telling her. ... Think of her shame and humiliation—she loved him, and he went without a word and she could never know he cared for her.” She pleads with him to change the ending.

Though slightly reluctant, the young writer promises to do so. Miss Sylvia is all gratitude and confesses to the young man that his story is exactly like her own.

As a young woman, Miss Sylvia fell in love with a wonderful man and truly believed that he loved her as well. But one fateful day, he left for California without saying anything to her: “Oh, the shame of it! ... My heart broke then, I never cared for anybody again—I couldn’t. I have always loved him.”

About a year later, she heard that the man she loved had died in California. And though he never wrote to her and never said a thing, she continued to love him.

Love Found

With Miss Sylvia’s story fresh in his mind, the young writer goes to help an aunt finish all the business of selling her estate and disposing of unwanted things. His aunt gives him the specific task of organizing her brother’s, his Uncle Alan Blair’s, belongings. While doing so, the young writer finds his uncle’s private journal.

Montgomery permeates the entire story with the power of loyal love. The story is imbued with Robert Browning’s words: “I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever.”

True, loyal love stretches beyond physical and time limits. Seeds of hope are planted, which blossom at the most unexpected times.

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