In all the novels and short stories, there are tales of wonderful excess around the Christmas holiday.* The holidays are sometimes an excuse for the families to get-together, and at other times just for the immediate family to enjoy a cozy time without the dozens of first and second cousins hanging about. LMM never used any holiday as some sappy excuse for two lovers to get together, or even as some magical time when a long-lost relative reappeared. Thank God - Hollywood's played that game way too much.
Besides Christmas, and I suppose New Year's, there aren't any other holidays mentioned. One single exception would be the day for remembrance of the end of WW1. I believe Pat's father marched in a parade, and Jane wore a poppy in honor of her father.
This is different from my 19th/20th century American girlish novels - yes, I also read Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the American novels, there are scores of holidays. President's Day must be recognized, Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, and Independence Day. Canadian calendars had a famine of holidays, by comparison. Of course, most of the holidays on a US calendar are commemorative - Independence Day and Thanksgiving (Pilgrims) are the only 2 I can think of that would apply for this time period. I suppose Canada didn't have anything to commemorate then. ;-)
To make up for this lack of sanctioned state excuses to gather, the great clans have reunions to celebrate themselves. And of course there are clan gatherings for weddings, funerals, and the birthdays of the aged handmaidens. Or just any old excuse - dear Aunt Becky had levees! Levees! For no particular reason at all, she invited her family over to sit around her bedridden old bones and be ridiculed. Such clan loyalty there!
And then there are the celebrations to celebrate some singular auspicious event - dear Aunt Wellington's Engagement Anniversary Picnic. What. on. earth. Valancy's Stirling Family Obligations are magnificent. Everything deserves a gathering, it's fabulous.
I like it. I like the big families, the intermarried clans that magically don't have any genetic problems due to all the cousins marrying each other. I like how they all get together to celebrate events, and the big family weddings, funerals, and dinners. And the loyalty! Those Darks and Penhallows stick up for each other in front of strangers even on distant continents!
Of course, other life events can pass by without any notice. I can't think of any time graduations are celebrated - so many of the heroines went to Queen's College or Shrewsbury High, but I don't think there was ever a mention of even a family dinner recognizing the achievement.
Vacations are practically unknown as well. Some folks went off to Europe on grand tours (Jane's grandmother) and sometimes girls went off to visit family. There was a short story about a girl who went west and fell in love with a man a local girl was in love with. Oh, what a mad triangle that was. But besides those few instances, nobody had the time to go off and play. The farms needed to be run, the stores tended, the schools kept... oh right, there were a few schoolteachers who spent their holiday writing poetry. Kilmeny's beau, I think?
Vacations were taken by folks who traveled to the island to stay at the ol' White Sands Hotel. And rich old cousins who come to lord it over the poor relations, of course, like Jane's cousin. Children are an exception - they'd go off on long visits to become acquainted with their relatives, like the last half of Magic for Marigold.
I don't think I miss the holidays and gatherings - they're just excuses in most other novels to bring people together or cause trouble. Church, ah, now in the churches there's plenty of drama.
*I'll have to devote a post later to sweets - though I will mention now that I've bought dozens of eggs and I wish I could make the Pringle or Lesley pound-cake.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
The Tragedy of Emily Byrd Starr
I think Emily is my second-favorite heroine. Second-favorite, because my favorite is my favorite and can be no-one else. I'll devote a blog post to her later. For Emily's posts, I must use italics whenever the case calls for it. I hope I won't be too extreme with them. Emily's story is my favorite, not because I was misunderstood as a child, but because of how she grows up. In fits and starts, you see how she puts away childish things and becomes a girl and later a woman.
Emily's books were a birthday gift from my eldest brother. I think our mother told him what to get me. When you're a child, your parents usually tell you what to get someone else as a gift, or else the receiver will end up with the electronic chess set the giver really wants. Regardless, they're from my brother. He purchased the only copies available at the tiny Waldenbooks store in the plaza mall in town. I was told this when I received them, because my brother was apologetic about the dreadful crease on the cover of Emily Climbs. Larger bookstores were half an hour away - we didn't live in a small town, but apparently the library was the preferred source for reading materials. The Waldenbooks had a corner devoted to children's literature - preschool picture books and Nancy Drew, and a singular shelf near the floor for Anne and her ilk. Every time I went into the store, I checked that shelf for a book I didn't have. Usually it was full of Anne-books, but sometimes there was something new.
I didn't love Emily right off. A young reader can be excused for skipping the long paragraphs and first-person diary entries. I hated those diary entries. I knew there were probably some gems in there - Emily quoting Aunt Elizabeth or some description of a school day - but mostly they were unbroken paragraphs full of descriptions of trees. It took me years to fully appreciate Emily and Rilla Blythe and the other books full of diary entries.
Despite this dislike for tree descriptions, I kept coming back for those bits I loved. After all, you can skip the boring bits. Ilse Burnley and Perry Miller, Aunt Elizabeth, the Shrewsbury years and Emily's long walk back to New Moon after getting locked out by Aunt Ruth - oh, do you ever eat donuts and try to be dramatic? - the tragedy of Emily's first novel, but most especially, Emily's second sight. I reread the books within the last two weeks, and again my views shifted. As you get older and reread those books you loved as a child, you see more clearly how the books are put together. I see now the obvious set up for Emily to find out about Ilse's mother and the little boy. Emily could easily have put together all the clues about Ilse's mother - well, perhaps not easily, but there it is. In the case of the boy, she could have heard him yelling in the house, or seen some footprints against the wall where he had climbed to get in the window. Perhaps. The fact that she "couldn't draw" worth a lick adds to the mystery. I suppose it was just setting up for the fantastic fourth incident.
And it was fantastic. Projecting her spirit across the ocean to stop Teddy from booking passage on a doomed ship is romantic, and the end of the engagement with Dean is positively heart-wrenching. (For the young reader who doesn't understand how creepy and awful Dean is). But there you go, Teddy and Emily are soul mates. I will need to post about Teddy later, he's probably the worst soul mate in all of the books.
That third incident really clinches the series. Emily can't lose the gift, and so it must be used again. The growth of Emily's gift is paralleled with her increasing skill in her writing. When her book Moral of the Rose was published, she reached the start of a long and successful career. No more hurdles remained, only accolades and recognition for her work. Can you imagine Emily receiving a Newberry Medal?
And there is the great tragedy of Emily for the readers. Her story ended. She reached the top of her Alpine Path and found happiness. It would have been horrible of L.M.M. to make her story more interesting for the sake of writing about it - like Anne's House of Dreams. Anne experiences a real tragedy in that book, and Emily did not need any more tragedy. Her mother died when she was small and her father passed on when she was old enough to experience real grief. Putting Emily through something horrible, like the death of one of her children or Teddy would be too cruel.
Even revisiting with Emily's children would be difficult, because this would require a return to New Moon. Elizabeth, Laura, and Jimmy would be dead or aged, leaving Andrew to install gas lamps, a modern dairy, and clear out the old orchard. The magic would be lost. Other places in Blair Water are rarely mentioned - Emily sticks close to home inLofty John's Emily Byrd Starr's bush, the farmhouse, and the orchard. There is no Lover's Lane or Lake of Shining Waters. In Emily's world, the fairies live at New Moon. When changes come, and they will, Emily's childhood magic is lost and this leaves her children to find their magic elsewhere.
Emily's books were a birthday gift from my eldest brother. I think our mother told him what to get me. When you're a child, your parents usually tell you what to get someone else as a gift, or else the receiver will end up with the electronic chess set the giver really wants. Regardless, they're from my brother. He purchased the only copies available at the tiny Waldenbooks store in the plaza mall in town. I was told this when I received them, because my brother was apologetic about the dreadful crease on the cover of Emily Climbs. Larger bookstores were half an hour away - we didn't live in a small town, but apparently the library was the preferred source for reading materials. The Waldenbooks had a corner devoted to children's literature - preschool picture books and Nancy Drew, and a singular shelf near the floor for Anne and her ilk. Every time I went into the store, I checked that shelf for a book I didn't have. Usually it was full of Anne-books, but sometimes there was something new.
I didn't love Emily right off. A young reader can be excused for skipping the long paragraphs and first-person diary entries. I hated those diary entries. I knew there were probably some gems in there - Emily quoting Aunt Elizabeth or some description of a school day - but mostly they were unbroken paragraphs full of descriptions of trees. It took me years to fully appreciate Emily and Rilla Blythe and the other books full of diary entries.
Despite this dislike for tree descriptions, I kept coming back for those bits I loved. After all, you can skip the boring bits. Ilse Burnley and Perry Miller, Aunt Elizabeth, the Shrewsbury years and Emily's long walk back to New Moon after getting locked out by Aunt Ruth - oh, do you ever eat donuts and try to be dramatic? - the tragedy of Emily's first novel, but most especially, Emily's second sight. I reread the books within the last two weeks, and again my views shifted. As you get older and reread those books you loved as a child, you see more clearly how the books are put together. I see now the obvious set up for Emily to find out about Ilse's mother and the little boy. Emily could easily have put together all the clues about Ilse's mother - well, perhaps not easily, but there it is. In the case of the boy, she could have heard him yelling in the house, or seen some footprints against the wall where he had climbed to get in the window. Perhaps. The fact that she "couldn't draw" worth a lick adds to the mystery. I suppose it was just setting up for the fantastic fourth incident.
And it was fantastic. Projecting her spirit across the ocean to stop Teddy from booking passage on a doomed ship is romantic, and the end of the engagement with Dean is positively heart-wrenching. (For the young reader who doesn't understand how creepy and awful Dean is). But there you go, Teddy and Emily are soul mates. I will need to post about Teddy later, he's probably the worst soul mate in all of the books.
That third incident really clinches the series. Emily can't lose the gift, and so it must be used again. The growth of Emily's gift is paralleled with her increasing skill in her writing. When her book Moral of the Rose was published, she reached the start of a long and successful career. No more hurdles remained, only accolades and recognition for her work. Can you imagine Emily receiving a Newberry Medal?
And there is the great tragedy of Emily for the readers. Her story ended. She reached the top of her Alpine Path and found happiness. It would have been horrible of L.M.M. to make her story more interesting for the sake of writing about it - like Anne's House of Dreams. Anne experiences a real tragedy in that book, and Emily did not need any more tragedy. Her mother died when she was small and her father passed on when she was old enough to experience real grief. Putting Emily through something horrible, like the death of one of her children or Teddy would be too cruel.
Even revisiting with Emily's children would be difficult, because this would require a return to New Moon. Elizabeth, Laura, and Jimmy would be dead or aged, leaving Andrew to install gas lamps, a modern dairy, and clear out the old orchard. The magic would be lost. Other places in Blair Water are rarely mentioned - Emily sticks close to home in
Monday, June 13, 2011
Once upon a time...
...there lived a little girl in Kansas. This little girl read fairy tales and pioneer stories, Nancy Drew mysteries and American Girl books with gusto. She read short books and short stories in big books. All the best books were reread during the summer vacation, with library reading programs redeeming this enthusiasm with more books to keep. A grandmother in New Jersey sent books every Christmas and birthday - and one year, she sent the first three Anne books. The rest of the series was quickly added to the collection, and over the next few years the other novels and short story collections by L.M. Montgomery joined them.
Lord, I don't even know when I got them. It seems like Anne, Emily, Pat, Jane, Marigold, Gay, Rilla, and Valancy have always been a part of my life. When I was younger, through my teenage years, I reread them all every year. When I started university studies, academic articles and other dry materials took their place. But I always carried them with me - first to undergraduate, then to graduate school 1700 miles away.
Studying, writing, and reading other types of literature, history, and scientific articles led me to think more about Montgomery's books. I know only as much as the Wikipedia article. Shameful. At any rate, I started to get curious about what wasn't in the books - and what was, as my education progressed and questioning everything became the rule.
This blog serves to pose questions, discuss my favorite bits, and just gab about the books and short stories. Except the ones I don't own.
My collection currently includes:
Novels
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Avonlea
Anne of the Island
Anne of Windy Poplars
Anne's House of Dreams
Anne of Ingleside
Rainbow Valley
Rilla of Ingleside
Emily of New Moon
Emily Climbs
Emily's Quest
Pat of Silver Bush
Mistress Pat
Magic for Marigold
The Blue Castle
Jane of Lantern Hill
A Tangled Web
Kilmeny of the Orchard
Short story collections
Chronicles of Avonlea
Further Chronicles of Avonlea
The Road to Yesterday
The Doctor's Sweetheart
Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans
Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea
Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side
After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed
Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement
At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales
Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence
What's missing and why? The Golden Road, The Story Girl, The Blythes are Quoted, and a holiday short story collection. I first heard the story of... Sara and her cousins, when I picked up the short novelizations of the television series. I saw some episodes of the series, but there was no cable tv at my house so viewings were sporadic. Somehow, those short stories have left a bad taste in my mouth. I did get The Golden Road one year - and I'm sorry to say I returned it. The second book in a duology doesn't interest me much if I don't have the first one, and The Story Girl was never available at the small bookstore in my town. I have no excuses now. The internet and eBay make them easy to get, and frankly I haven't even read them all the way through - how can I say I don't like them? Same excuses apply for Blythes and the holiday book - I must take myself to eBay and get them. But not just any edition, if I can help it. I'm a bit proudish of my book shelf; I really, really like the editions Bantam issued in the 80s and early 90s. The soft pastels and dreamy covers of the heroines are lovely and look very appealing lined up on my bookshelf.
That's a bit of my background. I hope to post as frequently as the spirit moves me, as an outlet for my musings.
Lord, I don't even know when I got them. It seems like Anne, Emily, Pat, Jane, Marigold, Gay, Rilla, and Valancy have always been a part of my life. When I was younger, through my teenage years, I reread them all every year. When I started university studies, academic articles and other dry materials took their place. But I always carried them with me - first to undergraduate, then to graduate school 1700 miles away.
Studying, writing, and reading other types of literature, history, and scientific articles led me to think more about Montgomery's books. I know only as much as the Wikipedia article. Shameful. At any rate, I started to get curious about what wasn't in the books - and what was, as my education progressed and questioning everything became the rule.
This blog serves to pose questions, discuss my favorite bits, and just gab about the books and short stories. Except the ones I don't own.
My collection currently includes:
Novels
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Avonlea
Anne of the Island
Anne of Windy Poplars
Anne's House of Dreams
Anne of Ingleside
Rainbow Valley
Rilla of Ingleside
Emily of New Moon
Emily Climbs
Emily's Quest
Pat of Silver Bush
Mistress Pat
Magic for Marigold
The Blue Castle
Jane of Lantern Hill
A Tangled Web
Kilmeny of the Orchard
Short story collections
Chronicles of Avonlea
Further Chronicles of Avonlea
The Road to Yesterday
The Doctor's Sweetheart
Akin to Anne: Tales of Other Orphans
Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea
Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side
After Many Days: Tales of Time Passed
Against the Odds: Tales of Achievement
At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales
Across the Miles: Tales of Correspondence
What's missing and why? The Golden Road, The Story Girl, The Blythes are Quoted, and a holiday short story collection. I first heard the story of... Sara and her cousins, when I picked up the short novelizations of the television series. I saw some episodes of the series, but there was no cable tv at my house so viewings were sporadic. Somehow, those short stories have left a bad taste in my mouth. I did get The Golden Road one year - and I'm sorry to say I returned it. The second book in a duology doesn't interest me much if I don't have the first one, and The Story Girl was never available at the small bookstore in my town. I have no excuses now. The internet and eBay make them easy to get, and frankly I haven't even read them all the way through - how can I say I don't like them? Same excuses apply for Blythes and the holiday book - I must take myself to eBay and get them. But not just any edition, if I can help it. I'm a bit proudish of my book shelf; I really, really like the editions Bantam issued in the 80s and early 90s. The soft pastels and dreamy covers of the heroines are lovely and look very appealing lined up on my bookshelf.
That's a bit of my background. I hope to post as frequently as the spirit moves me, as an outlet for my musings.
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