Hello and welcome, ladies, to the Emily conversation! I’m the newbie so I will go first. This first post will cover the first three chapters of Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery. In these chapters we see Emily before, during, and after her father’s death from what sounded to me like Tuberculosis. Plot-wise it was pretty much all set up.
I’ll just give a quick overview: Chapter 1, Emily is a carefree child who has lived in a secluded country house with her father and a grumpy old housekeeper. She has created imaginary friends out of the wind, and the trees, and her own reflection. At the end of this chapter, the house keeper Ellen Greene (fat, lazy old thing of no importance) tells Emily that her father is dying. Chapter 2 gave us the history of the Murray family and gave hints to the possible avenues the plot might meander down. Chapter 3, Emily’s father dies and the Murray clan come to attend the funeral and meet Emily.
Things that struck me: Emily does seem to share a lot of characteristics with other young Montgomery heroes and heroines. I wonder if making friend with your own reflection was as common for real children in the twenties as it is for these fictional children. On another note, even though she surely isn’t the best possible housekeeper, I felt badly for Ellen Greene. Something in me rankles at the idea of teaching your eight year old daughter to think that the housekeeper who is supposed to be watching her is an idiot. All those off hand remarks about Ellen just made me think that Douglas Starr and Emily were mean. I’m sure it was a class thing, and their snobby disdain wouldn’t have seemed inappropriate at the time, however, it does seem like Papa Starr should have just found a better house keeper.
The stand out thing to me about these first few chapters were Emily’s “flashes.” They immediately reminded me of the concept of the Sublime. The best quote I could find characterizing the Sublime comes unfortunately from Wikipedia, not the most scholarly source, but it sums up well what I’m thinking about: “The experience of the sublime involves a self-forgetfulness where personal fear is replaced by a sense of well-being and security when confronted with an object exhibiting superior might, and is similar to the experience of the tragic.” I’m pretty sure that Montgomery was not reading German philosopher Max Dessoir, to whom this quote is attributed, maybe I’m wrong, but I do think this connection between the fear and tragedy and security is very present in the flashes. Emily describes her flashes as seeing behind a curtain to a world of beauty in chapter 1, and then later is comforted by the idea that her father is just going behind a curtain, not through a door. At the end of chapter 2, Emily decides that they are the same curtain, that her father is going into the beauty and he will be waiting there for her with her mother. Clearly, death was a part of life at this time, as evidenced by Ellen Greene’s attitude, but I still think it is a pretty creepy idea. I guess fear of death seems ngrained in our current culture, and it seems odd to think that not that long ago it would have been feasible for a child who had no clear theology to not only not fear death but also to find the world beyond the veil comforting.
I haven’t touched at all on the Murrays, I’ll leave that to you two.
Signing off,
Saucy Sal
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