Emily of New Moon (Emily Part 1) (Emily Starr Trilogy)

by L.M. Montgomery

1923. Bought on 5/9/2022 for a dollar. Now reading for discussion with the GMD Reading Group on August 26, 2024 and September 9, 2024. I read three of the Anne of Green Gables series for a discussion class with Brenton Dickieson in the Spring of 2022, who will join us for the GMD Reading Group. Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_of_New_Moon Fandom wiki: https://emilyofnewmoon.fandom.com/wiki/Emily_of_New_Moon C.S. Lewis and L.M. Montgomery by Brenton Dickieson: https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2018/05/03/csllmm/ Abominable Virtues and Cured Faults: Disability, Deviance, and the Double Voice in the Fiction of L.M. Montgomery, by Kylee-Anne Hingston. Chapter 3 is on the Emily trilogy with pp. 77-95 on this novel: https://academia.edu/resource/work/1530097 The Pilgrim’s Progress: Christian, Christiana, Apollyon Special Providence Tennyson, pp. Comparing Anne Shirley with Emily Starr: https://consumedbyink.ca/2017/02/12/emily-readalong-emily-of-new-moon/ When does this take place? 1900? Back to Blair Water: #ReadingEmily as an Adult https://messy-baker.com/2017/02/17/back-to-blair-water-readingemily-as-an-adult/ the Murrays – Emily’s late mother’s much-older half-brothers and sisters. Emily is quite a resilient young woman. Curious, independent, smart, introspective, ambitious, And oh, gawd, the *humor* - almost every page, some sad, some hilarious, some wry, “the flash” 22 times mine were in Canada too, but they lasted 10-20 seconds: the Vermont-Canada border with Stuart Coleman, and out near tip of the Gaspe Peninsula with Patty and Stuart Coleman. Mine stopped c. 1976. “she was kin to tribes of elfland.” As is cousin Jimmy p. 20 with his “elfish face with a forked grey beard” Independent and brave, e.g., pp. 23-24, 29, “with the air of one who challenges destiny” p. 34. Thoroughly resilient, e.g., “Emily was insensibly becoming happy again.” p. 70. She thinks of her death a good bit, not obsessively but as a way sometimes to make people feel sorry for her, and to prepare for what folks would think, e,g., p. 100, NOTE: TB runs in her family …. Emily’s “pale face” is mentioned many times; >> Anthropomorphic friends, and friends with fairies and the Wind Woman - more imaginative than Anne Shirley? Broad (too broad?) parody and satire. A bit crude and relentless. A parody of adult cruelty to so dismiss and ridicule a child. Would be considered abusive today. And she’s so direct and plain-spoken, sometimes *too* plain-spoken. Family members p. 10, 19-22, 29-32 (toward Emily), 55 (cousin jimmy’s take), powerfully mocked passim. “so easily do we misunderstand each other” p. 33. She felt that she had offended Aunt Elizabeth, and she hadn't the least notion why or how. p. 50 Ellen Green, parody on the order of Mrs. Norris in Mansfield Park: self-congratulatory and self-absorbed, unsympathetic, thinks too much of her perceived “duty” and what others will think, BUT she has good motives, and loves Emily in her way. Her exhibition of emotion at Emily’s departure is too little too late for Emily’s understanding. Douglas Starr, laughs a lot (e.g., when Emily says she doesn’t like God, and when EllenGreen tells him he spoils Emily) and wonderfully, is not sad at his own death (p. 15 and note), But Dr. Burnley, atheist. Cf. Lilith by Nikki Marmery (2023) - lots of gods, and Yahweh is not the first or the most powerful; he was the consort of Asherah until he rebelled and kicked her out, wanting to be the boss. Daughter Ilse, friendless yet strong and independent; agnostic Aunt Elizabeth actually *fosters* illiteracy: no paper, burns Emily’s writings, refuses to let her write, and, p. 76, “I know frays is not spelled right but there is no dixonaryat New Moon.” Consequently, there are many delightful misspellings. There are a few books but Aunt Elizabeth tells her not to read novels. See p. 77. It’s wonderful to see others’ *behavior* in response to Emily’s since we know her interior life and reasons. E.g., when Uncle Wallace kisses her without permission: As an author, Emily will give these terrible characters the spotlight they deserve. Is she both the writer of the letters to her dead father AND the narrator? Who is the narrator? Clever device to have two voices, the precocious child and the wise adult. NOTE Some events and comments are HORRIBLE. Some UNFAIR what about due process? Is there something in the Canadian constitution about that? p. 132 Emily is unable to forgive Aunt Elizabeth for burning her notebook, and Miss Brownell for slapping down (literally) her demonstrative rapture at first hearing Tennyson. But she gets past it - she doesn’t let it rankle, she doesn’t stew in resentment. Is Emily a Pippa (Pippa Passes by Robert Browning 1841), whose effect on the other characters is "the … recovery [or discovery] of moral [and interpersonal] awareness”? [Jacob Korg: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40001418 ] Full text of Pippa Passes: http://telelib.com/words/authors/B/BrowningRobert/play/pippapasses/index.html NOTE Fairy 33 mentions / also many more with elf, elfland, elfkin, elfish. There is more of the uncanny here than in the Ann Shirley novels, even more than in the fairy-haunted Rainbow Valley (1919). https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4718968362 Lofty John’s bush is a fairyland with “a wild, dear, little path with lady-ferns beckoning and blowing along it, the shyest of elfin June-bells under the firs, and little whims of loveliness at every curve … and everywhere the frolic of elfin lights and shadows… and branches interlaced as if to make a screen for dryad faces … and the great sheets of moss under the trees were meet for Titania's couch.” p. 52 The Tansy Patch, ch. 12, perhaps my favorite chapter: goblin torches of the fireflies, enchanted cups of the poppies, phantom trees, a creepy conviction, reflections in the pond where the Wind Woman was making wonderful, woven lights and shadows, a tiny, tiny fairy and the cats are so queer and creepy, Emily’s faerie sight, p. 44: “a little fairy pattern, suspended in mid-air like a screen…. It was one of her secret joys when she went into a new room anywhere to ‘see the paper in the air.’” “nice whispery sounds” and “three magic notes,” p. 111 NOTE Aunt Elizabeth’s relationship to her father Archibald Murray, and Emily’s ability to channel him from time to time is her superpower over A.E., “a ghost from the grave,” e.g., pp. 47, 83, 113 >> LMM wisdom: Darkness and hobgoblins were nothing when you had plenty of company. "A living present is so nice," she told Ellen, "because it keeps on getting nicer all the time." “Remember you're not of much importance." "I am important to myself," cried Emily proudly. p. 16 "I don't want to learn sense and be done a world of good to," cried Emily with a quivering lip. "I—I want somebody to love me." p. 16 “How very big and empty the world had suddenly become. Nothing was interesting any more…. None of these things had any charm or consolation for her now. In her inexperience she believed they never would have again.” p. 19 “I don't want [my faults] cured! …. I like my faults better than I do your—your— your abominable virtues!") p. 31 “I don't believe anybody ever loved you. So it's you, that's a failure.” p. 32 so easily do we misunderstand each other that the Murrays actually thought that she was indulging in a piece of gratuitous impertinence p. 32. Aunt Elizabeth often thinks Emily’s observations based in fact and experience is deliberate impertinence. "Why, you know, if a fairy was really-truly it wouldn't be a fairy," said Cousin Jimmy seriously. "Could it, now?" p. 43 "I thought books belonged to everybody," said Emily. p. 44 “God is good and the devil might be worse." p. 47 little whims of loveliness at every curve p. 52 people can be rich without money p. 67 "Oh," cried Emily, dancing down the garret stairs, "I feel as if I was made out of star-dust." p. 74 "And you'll tell me things—nobody ever tells me things. And let me tell you things—I haven't anybody to tell things to," said Ilse. p. 89 Many gods - i.e., many *conceptions* of God, each person has their own (uniqueness) p. 89 Cf. George MacDonald, UNSPOKEN SERMONS, First Series, The New Name: “Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship Him.” You never can tell what you can do till you try. p. 101 Oh, it was nice just to be alone and to be alive. p. 109 a certain placid, unhasting leanness as of a nag that has encountered troubles of his own and has lived them down by sheer patience and staying power. p. 112 (I know people like that) Aunt Elizabeth could be a not ungenerous conqueror but she was very disagreeable in defeat. It was really just as well that Emily could not summon the Murray look at will. p. 114 "I believe," thought Emily, "that a dog is better than a cat when you're in trouble." p. 203 “Are you never lonesome with only those two old survivals?" "No. I enjoy my own company," said Emily gravely. P. 207 remember that if there is to be drama in your life somebody must pay the piper in the coin of suffering p. 212 >> LMM wisdom of wrong: “what you want is to learn how to be like other children” p. 17 "With wise and careful training many of her faults may be cured," said Uncle Wallace, pompously. p. 31 "The Murray women have never been under any necessity for earning their own living.” p. 47 "Emily, you must understand right now that you are to be grateful and obedient and show your appreciation of what is being done for you.” p. 47. Aunt Elizabeth, in response to “Didn't you feel awfully lonely when your father died?" Aunt Elizabeth did smile sometimes when she thought she had silenced some small person by exquisite ridicule. p. 69 Metaphor for Aunt Elizabeth’s spiritual life, p. 76: She doesn't like fresh air or light in the house. Miss Brownell, thus suddenly halted in her elocutionary display, looked down into a rapt, uplifted face where great purplish-grey eyes were shining with the radiance of a divine vision—and Miss Brownell was angry. p. 72 Miss Brownell was very fond of ridiculing her pupils. p. 64 Aunt Elizabeth … knew that it was a cruel thing to shut an over-sensitive child like Emily in that gloomy room. But she thought she was doing her duty. p. 86 In such a mood she was entirely unreasonable. She would not listen to anybody— p. 113 Aunt Elizabeth could be a not ungenerous conqueror but she was very disagreeable in defeat. p. 114 Old maidishness Luringly spookish rasped hanks letter-bills unmixedly afflatus gimp puling, snivelling chit top-lofty biped posed the cat caste of Vere de Vere dickey tansy sprigged muslin dod-gasted obloquy a rip-snorter a gin jar

Maywood

Simile

Ellen Greene

Cf. Mrs. Norris in Mansfield Park: https://janeausten.fandom.com/wiki/Mrs._Norris

Emily

Father—and

Mike—and

Saucy...

Cf. the North Wind by GMD. At the Back of the North Wind was George MacDonald's first fantasy novel for children, and would become a favourite with C. S. Lewis, L. M. Montgomery, and the daughters of Mark Twain. ~ Douglas Gresham, Introduction to

Anthropomorphic friends. They’ll never leave or desert her. So imaginative, she talks to plants and animals, weather, and even to Emily-in-the-glass (mirror).

"the flash,"

the possibility of it kept her a-thrill and expectant.

Douglas Starr

The Pilgrim's Progress

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pilgrims/

Apollyon.

https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Apollyon_(The_Pilgrim’s_Progress) https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pilgrims/character/apollyon/

Darkness and hobgoblins were nothing when you had plenty of company.

Haha wise

Elfkin."

Haha

"A living present is so nice," she told Ellen, "because it keeps on getting nicer all the time."

Haha

It was her dead mother's smile—the

Juliet Murray.

she was kin to tribes of elfland.

Emily-in-the-glass.

Simile

her fairy birthright

a queen might have gladly given a crown for her visions—her dreams of wonder.

Imaginative

She was so very real there;

a new moon

It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down.

she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty.

leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it.

Mee too - when I was young.

Ellen Greene

Emily

Ellen Greene

Your ma's people will see to that—on account of the Murray pride, if for no other reason.

even if they have always hated your pa like p'isen.

Sad

He's been dying by inches for the last five years. He's kept it from you, but he's been a great sufferer.

Emily Byrd Starr,

You ain't the first child that's been left an orphan and you won't be the last.

I will say for her she's got spunk—which is lucky, from all I've heard of the Murrays. They won't find it easy to overcrow her.

Haha

It's a shame the way that child's been brought up—never even sent to school.

"If I was God I wouldn't let things like this happen," she said.

Perhaps if she were wicked enough God would strike her dead and then she and Father could keep on being together.

Haha

"The flash will never come again—it can't," she thought.

But Emily had inherited certain things from her fine old ancestors—the

The voices of the gentle spring night called to her all unheeded—unheard the Wind Woman whistled by the eaves. For the fairies dwell only in the kingdom of Happiness;

having no souls they cannot enter the kingdom of Sorrow.

Douglas Starr

Haha