![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Oct. 24th, 2022 08:50 pmPost about my (insanely busy but very good) weekend later, but for now: random thoughts on the Emily books, which I have just reread.
I'm struck by how much the Emily books are Maud with her gloves off. The books are decidedly darker, eerier, with more of a bite than the Anne books (and a tad bit of the supernatural stirred in). This works. Anne's books are more hopeful and warm and joyous because Anne as a character is more hopeful and warm and joyous. Emily is more reserved, ambitious, and even selfish than Anne is, and so it makes sense that books from her perspective would have more of an edge to them.
Anne's books are not saccharine, despite what people say (well, maybe in spots here and there, but not overall). Anne has real sorrows, mostly in her backstory and then in the death of loved ones (Matthew, obviously, but also her stillborn daughter, Ruby Gillis, Marilla, and even another of her children--though that one we don't see from her perspective but from that of her daughter, so we don't really know what it does to her). Anne and her books know sorrow.
But Emily, I feel, knows darkness, which is a different thing. Emily has more explicit mental health problems than Anne ever does--much of Emily's Quest is about her depression. (I do think we see Anne with post-partum depression in Anne's House of Dreams, but it doesn't last that long.) The only other explicit exploration of mental health issues that I remember offhand in her books are the Pat books, which I will always argue are about a girl with a severe anxiety disorder. Emily, though, knows the dark night of the soul.
And it isn't just Emily. A character like Mrs. Kent or Dean Priest--or even an episode like Ilse's mother's story--wouldn't really fit in the Anne books. But they work within Emily's story, and even though Emily is deeply disturbed by the story of Ilse's mother, by the time we get to Mrs. Kent's backstory, she's been through enough and seen enough of the shadows in the world that she's ready to accept that that kind of toxic pain is part of life.
( cut for length tbh )
I'm struck by how much the Emily books are Maud with her gloves off. The books are decidedly darker, eerier, with more of a bite than the Anne books (and a tad bit of the supernatural stirred in). This works. Anne's books are more hopeful and warm and joyous because Anne as a character is more hopeful and warm and joyous. Emily is more reserved, ambitious, and even selfish than Anne is, and so it makes sense that books from her perspective would have more of an edge to them.
Anne's books are not saccharine, despite what people say (well, maybe in spots here and there, but not overall). Anne has real sorrows, mostly in her backstory and then in the death of loved ones (Matthew, obviously, but also her stillborn daughter, Ruby Gillis, Marilla, and even another of her children--though that one we don't see from her perspective but from that of her daughter, so we don't really know what it does to her). Anne and her books know sorrow.
But Emily, I feel, knows darkness, which is a different thing. Emily has more explicit mental health problems than Anne ever does--much of Emily's Quest is about her depression. (I do think we see Anne with post-partum depression in Anne's House of Dreams, but it doesn't last that long.) The only other explicit exploration of mental health issues that I remember offhand in her books are the Pat books, which I will always argue are about a girl with a severe anxiety disorder. Emily, though, knows the dark night of the soul.
And it isn't just Emily. A character like Mrs. Kent or Dean Priest--or even an episode like Ilse's mother's story--wouldn't really fit in the Anne books. But they work within Emily's story, and even though Emily is deeply disturbed by the story of Ilse's mother, by the time we get to Mrs. Kent's backstory, she's been through enough and seen enough of the shadows in the world that she's ready to accept that that kind of toxic pain is part of life.
( cut for length tbh )
