'New Moon Emily' by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Emily Starr never knew what it was like to be lonely – until her beloved father died. Now Emily is an orphan, and her mother's snobbish relatives are taking her to live with them at New Moon Farm. She's sure she won't be happy. Emily deals with her strict, stern Aunt Elizabeth and her mischievous classmates by keeping her head up and using her quick wit. Things start to change when she makes friends: with Teddy, who makes wonderful drawings; with Perry, who sailed around the world with his father but never went to school; and most of all, with Ilse, a tomboy with an explosive temper. Surprisingly, Emily finds New Moon beautiful and fascinating. With new friends and adventures, Emily may one day think of herself as Emily from New Moon.

MY THOUGHTS:

This is the first book in a trilogy that Lucy Maud Montgomery was eager to begin working on, in part so she could move forward with the Anne series she felt trapped in for so long. Its new heroine is Emily Byrd Starr, whose beloved father dies early from tuberculosis, leaving her at the mercy of intimidating relatives on her mother's side of the family. The proud and haughty Murray uncles and aunts disowned their younger sister (Emily's mother) when she ran off with a penniless guy they rejected (Emily's father). They all hesitate to face Emily now and decide to settle the issue by lot. Poor Emily is the one forced to take the paper!

She ends up going to New Moon Farm, the center of the ancestral family, with her maiden aunts Elizabeth and Laura, and her cousin Jimmy, who is said to be intellectually compromised after a childhood accident, although we readers are left to wonder if he simply thinks more Fresh, more original thoughts than the average person. (More on Jimmy here.) Laura is sweet and easy-going, but Elizabeth, who rules the roost, is dark and set in her ways, making her one of Emily's biggest trials.

There are strong similarities to the relationship between Anne and Marilla in Anne of Green Gables, but it is the exact opposite. While Anne and Marilla understand each other by being so essentially different, Emily and Aunt Elizabeth lock horns because they are so similar! Both are stubborn, strong-willed, and strong-willed individuals who are perceived by others as sharing the same fierce family pride and carrying themselves with the same haughty bearing. In both cases, the eventual warming between them is very touching.

Emily's main tool to help her deal with change is a rich inner life that atones for the loss of many other things. Your 'flash' is a fascinating phenomenon. It's her name for those sensual moments that provide sudden glimpses of a broader, more wonderful spiritual plane far beyond our own. His story of daily triggers is one we can all practice taking into consideration. It includes “a high, wild note of wind, a gray bird lighting up the window sill, the singing of “Holy, Holy, Holy” in the church” and his first sudden glimpse of a garret in the early evening sky of the New Moon. . This kind of rich and simple pleasure is available to all of us.

Montgomery endows Emily, more than any other heroine, with her own passion for writing. For both Maud and Emily, the mere need to get things down on paper puts it beyond the scope of hobby to a definitive vocation. Emily needs to empty her soul with her pen so that all the emotional dross can be cleaned away. The solace she gets from reading and writing keeps her on an even keel. Aunt Elizabeth has an old-fashioned suspicion of fiction and wants Emily to stop, but Emily knows she can't comply. Writing is as necessary to her as breathing. It's elemental and cathartic for your soul. I often think that if Aunt Elizabeth managed to prevail, Emily would be much more difficult to live with.

Emily's three closest friends provide excellent subplots, as their equally colorful backstories enrich the entire text. (Interestingly, they are all only children raised by single parents, or in Perry's case, it's a great aunt, after her sailor father passed away.)

The first is Emily's best friend, the vibrant and angry Ilse Burnley, whose father, the local doctor, neglects and resents her for a mysterious reason that is hidden from the children but tacitly understood by all adults. When we finally find out what this is about, Dr. Burnley emerges from the secret looking like a rat in my opinion, although colleagues from his time seem to understand where the guy was coming from. I won't say anything more and let you form your own opinions about him.

Both Burnleys are famous for their tantrums! It's a lot of fun to read, especially Ilse's colorful insults, but could anyone really get away with such tantrums without alienating their friends? In the case of Allan and Ilse, people just seem to accept that they were born that way. It seems to me, at the very least, that both father and daughter are doomed to blood pressure and cardio problems if they don't tone it down. Many good properties are broken or damaged by being kicked, crushed or thrown out of windows. I love Ilse, though, for her honesty and energy.

Next up is budding artist Teddy Kent, whose intensely taciturn and neurotic mother has her apron strings tied so tightly around him that the poor boy can barely breathe. Even though Teddy is loyal enough to tell her she's amazing when they're alone, she's a menacing force capable of doing great damage to his psyche. Everything she thinks he really likes is destroyed, whether it's pets being drowned or works of art being burned. Because she must have all his love for herself! Seriously, this lady needs help.

And finally, Perry Miller, the hired boy who helps cousin Jimmy in New Moon! What a boy! He is quick-witted and penetrating with abundant confidence to make up for being born on the wrong side of the tracks. This boy comes from Stovepipe Town, the nearby slum, but he has no doubt that he can become the Prime Minister of Canada if he tries hard enough. He is a fabulous example of rising from humiliation. I remember as a child thinking that Perry would be a great match for Emily, but now I can see that he is very pragmatic. Emily needs a much more artistic, head-in-the-clouds guy, if you know what I mean. (I once wrote a blog post explaining why this kid is one of my favorite LMM heroes. You can find it here.)

I read a suggestion somewhere that Montgomery may have based Emily and her three best friends on the four basic temperaments. Emily is melancholic, Ilse is choleric, Teddy is phlegmatic and Perry is sanguine. Although each of them, like most of us, is more of a mixture, I like this generalization, although I'm not sure it was intentional on Montgomery's part.

Montgomery's talent for writing old ladies shines through in this book. Aunt Nancy Priest, her companion Caroline and Perry's Aunt Tom are all out-of-this-world wrinkles, as well as caring about making good impressions at their stage in life. The old ladies are given many impressive lines that reflect the wisdom of having seen the range of human nature in their time.

But practically all the characters are well drawn. Miss Brownell wins my award for nastiest teacher, Lofty John for mean-spirited prank, and Dean Priest for creepiest romantic intentions. One of the final impressions we're left with is this thirty-something guy who's biding his time, waiting for a twelve-year-old girl to grow up so he can woo her properly. Yes, Montgomery is setting him up to become one of Emily's serious suitors, and Dean's occasional passion-filled comments suggest he can't wait.

But I started with Emily and I'm going to finish with her too. Believe me, we don't have a happy-hearted, carrot-haired Anne here. Emily is a petite goth girl with black hair and pale skin to the bone! She's got a prickly, sassy streak a mile wide, and the chat flows so naturally onto her tongue that half the time she doesn't even notice. Simply stating that Emily lacks Anne's essential sweetness is an understatement. Sure, Anne blows up at Mrs. Lynde and Gilbert for outright insults, but can you imagine her delivering a line like this from Emily to Great-Aunt Nancy? 'If I were Salome, I would ask your head in a charger.' In all honesty, I can see why some people (both within the story and outside) consider Emily a job.

She even lives in a darker, darker version of Prince Edward Island than Anne, to match her gothic personality. Emily's world is populated by control freaks like Mrs. Kent, perpetual grumps like Dr. Burnley, and cynics like Dean Priest. It contains eerie rooms with chilling portraits and terrifying four-poster beds. Horrible things happen to innocent people, like Ilse's mother.

But Emily's brilliance, devotion to writing, love of cats, and openness to being impressed humanizes her and makes me want to keep rereading her adventures. Most of all, I admire your self-restraint. When her old housekeeper, Ellen Green, warns her not to make waves because she is unimportant, Emily responds, "I'm important to myself!" Yay, a girl like this will survive the dark Halloween turns her life sometimes takes.

Bring on Emily Climbs!

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