“Anne’s tribulations over puffed sleeves were an echo of my old childish longing after ‘bangs’.  ‘Bangs’ came in when I was about ten.  In the beginning they figured as a straight, heavy fringe of hair cut squarely across the forehead.  A picture of ‘banged’ hair of course looks absurd enough now; but, like all fashions, ‘bangs’ looked all right when they were ‘in’.  And to anybody with a high forehead they were very becoming.

Well, bangs were ‘all the rage’.  All the girls in school had them.  I wanted a ‘bang’ terribly.  But grandfather and grandmother would never hear of it.  This was unwise and unjust on their part.  Whatever the present day taste may think of ‘bangs’ it would not have done me or anyone any harm to have allowed me to have one and it would have saved me many a bitter pang.  How I did long for ‘bangs’!  Father wanted me to have them—he always wanted me to have any innocent thing I desired.  Oh, how well he understood a child’s heart!  I often pleaded with him when he came to see me (that was the winter he was home from the west) to cut a ‘bang’ for me, but he never would because he knew it would offend grandmother.  I was often tempted to cut one myself but I dreaded their anger too much.  I knew that if I did I would be railed at as if I had disgraced myself  forever and that I would never set down to the table that grandfather would not sneer at them.

‘Bangs’ remained in a long time—nearly twenty years.  When I was fifteen and went out west I got my long-wished for ‘bang’ at last.  Grandfather sneered at it when I went home, of course, but the thing was done and he had to reconcile himself to it.  Besides, the ‘bang’ had changed a good deal in that time.  The heavy straight bang was gone and the accepted fashion was an upward curling fluff, not unlike the pompadour of today in general effect, with only a loose curl or two downwards.  How I did envy girls with naturally curly hair!  My hair was very straight.  I had to curl my poor fringe constantly and even then the least dampness would reduce it to stringy dismalness.  It is only about six years since bangs went hopelessly out.  It is not likely they will ever come in again—in my time at least.  But I shall never forget them.  I longed for them and how humiliated I felt when I could not have them.”

What kind of things did you pine for growing up?  What do you think it is about the scene where Anne finally gets her dress with puffed sleeves that resonates with so many viewers?

Source: The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921