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100 things #2: Emily Starr
"That is true-and I do try- but it seems to me there is something beyond words-any words-all words-something that always escapes you when you try to grasp it- and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t reached for it…. Oh, that ‘random word’- that is the Something that escapes me. I’m always listening for it- I know I can never hear it- my ear isn’t attuned to it- but I am sure I hear at times a little, faint, far-off echo of it- and it makes me feel a delight that is like pain and a despair of ever being able to translate its beauty into any words I know.”
— Emily Climbs, L.M. Montgomery
Emily Byrd Starr is the heroine of L.M. Montgomery’s other, not-as-famous series about an orphaned girl growing up on Prince Edward Island (don’t worry—Anne is on this list, too). Her father dies at the beginning of the first book, and she’s sent to live with her mother’s relatives, whom she hasn’t ever met because the family disowned Emily’s mother when she married Emily’s father. She has a best friend who couldn’t be less like Diana Barry if she tried, a guy friend who reminds me a bit of a grown up Davy from the Anne books, and a love interest who wants to be an artist as much as Emily wants to be a writer. Since this is a LMM book, there’s loads of descriptions of nature’s beauty and insight into people’s hearts.
“Well, you won’t have the choosing likely. You ought to be thankful to get a home anywhere. Remember you’re not of much importance.” [said Eileen]
“I am important to myself,” cried Emily proudly.
Also since it’s a LMM book, I haven’t outgrown it. I guess the first (and possibly the second) book is technically a YA novel, but the beauty of LMM’s talent is that every time I go back to reread and think that I might have outgrown her books, I find instead that there is even more to love than I originally thought. I think LMM is very underrated as a writer because she most often writes about women and young girls in a fairly domestic setting. If she had applied her talent to writing about white guys going through mid-life crises or something, she would probably have been celebrated by the literary world. But I’m so glad she didn’t, because her books speak to my soul.
“Well, it all comes to this; there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own. After all, I believe in myself. I’m not so bad and silly as they think me, and I’m not consumptive, and I can write. Now that I’ve written it all out I feel differently about it.
The Emily books are darker than the Anne books—Emily doesn’t have Anne’s boundless optimism, but I think she sees the beauty in melancholy in a way that Anne can’t quite manage most of the time. She has an edge that Anne doesn’t have, either. Emily has a unique way of looking at the world—she’s a little bit psychic and very, very sensitive, especially to beauty and nature. She can be a little cold and selfish, and she takes after her mother’s family in that she is very proud. She also has loads of ambition: she decides very young that she wants to be a writer, and she is unwavering in pursuing that goal. Anne has a literary heart—she loves books and learning—but Emily is a writer to the core. You can easily read the books not just as a generic girl-grows-up series but as a very specific girl-grows-int0-a-writer series. Honestly, Emily’s writing is more important than the romance, and her relationship with her family is as well. Her family life is an interesting mixture of “OMG THESE PEOPLE WILL NEVER UNDERSTAAAAAAND ME!” and “these people will do anything for me, if they believe it’s good for me.” LMM understands (in a way that reminds me of Faulkner, though the writers couldn’t be more different otherwise, writing about their “postage-stamp of soil” aside) that family can be the place that makes you feel safe and loved but can also be suffocating at times. And she understands that growing up is painful and exhilarating and mundane all at the same time. LMM has a way of seeing the drama or the importance or the humor in little, everyday happenings, and I love her for that.
To-night I wrote a story and Aunt Elizabeth knew what I was doing and was very much annoyed. She scolded me for wasting time. But it wasn’t wasted time. I grew in it—I know I did. And there was something about some of the sentences I liked. ‘I am afraid of the grey wood’—that pleased me very much. And—‘white and stately she walked the dark wood like a moonbeam.’ I think that is rather fine. Yet Mr. Carpenter tells me that whenever I think a thing especially fine I am to cut it out. But oh, I can’t cut that out—not yet, at least. The strange part is that about three months after Mr. Carpenter tells me to cut a thing out I come round to his point of view and feel ashamed of it.
As much as I love the Anne books (and I love the Anne books), I think I embraced Emily’s stories even more. I couldn’t always relate to Anne’s view of the world though I always appreciated it, but Emily I understood. And as I figured out that I wanted to be a writer, I started to love her even more. Our shared goal made me appreciated her even more than I already did. And while I’m not psychic myself, those touches in the books were some of my favorites—they gave me goosebumps every time (the scene where she gets locked in the church all alone at night and what follows is still one of my all-time favorite scenes from anything ever). Emily’s deep flaws appeal to me, too: when she gets angry or snooty, I love her even more.
Last night Aunt Ruth found me reading David Copperfield and crying over Davy’s alienation from his mother, with a black rage against Mr. Murdstone in my heart. She must know why I was crying and wouldn’t believe me when I told her.
"Crying over people who never existed!" said my Aunt Ruth incredulously.
“Oh, but they do exist," I said. "Why, they are as real as you are, Aunt Ruth.”
Emily talks a lot about the Alpine path that leads to her dreams, and as I reread her books over and over again as I grow up, I sort of feel like she’s walking beside me on my Alpine path, that she gets what I’m going through and wishes me well. That’s how real she is to me.
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If she had applied her talent to writing about white guys going through mid-life crises or something, she would probably have been celebrated by the literary world. But I’m so glad she didn’t, because her books speak to my soul.
Ha! Ha. So sad and true about the literary world.
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I kind of hate the established "literary" world. SO PRETENTIOUS. SO SNOBBY.
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This post just made me so happy.
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I'm so glad!
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The Emily books are amazing and totally readable as an adult, too. :D
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Emily is more of a hazy memory for me, because I don't think I ever read more than one of her novels - and that I didn't own ever - so while I know this is true for me also, I feel selfish in saying... I spent so much more time with Anne - but I didn't want to be Anne - I wanted to BE Emily... there was something about her that made me feel like, if she stepped out of the pages of her novel into my living room, we would be friends. Anne I was never sure about - it was like she was a lovely, delicate thing that I could love but never get close to. Emily is easier to embrace in some ways.
That makes no logic - but I'm sure that LMM would understand my late-night ramblings...
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