Emily of New Moon Trilogy
Lucy Maud Montgomery is a household name to many of us. Her audacious, red-haired orphan, Anne Shirley has certainly accompanied me at various points in my reading life. The Anne of Green Gables books follow Anne’s life from childhood to old age, while her Emily of New Moon series stops at Emily’s coming-of-age. This winter I enjoyed all three of L. M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon books: Emily of New Moon (originally published 1923), Emily Climbs (1925), and Emily’s Quest (1927). Titular character and heroine, Emily Byrd Starr, feels the call to the creative life at a young age. There is a magic tug that draws her to put pen to page. As such, her story, told over the course of this trilogy, is very much a portrait of the artist as a young woman of sorts.
The Emily books share many things in common with Montgomery’s more famous Anne Girl. Emily becomes an orphan as a young child. Emily goes to live with a household of unmarried siblings (and a cousin), headed by a stern old maid. And, of course, they are set on lovely Prince Edward Island. Thus, culturally, these books very much echo the stories of Anne of Green Gables. But they are written less for the young reader, perhaps. Even as a young child, Emily is wise beyond her years. There is some element of uncanny knowing about Emily, which Montgomery toys with in several plot turns throughout the series. There is also a dedication to the craft of writing and the pursuit of success as a writer that differentiates Emily from Anne. While Anne Shirley pursues publication, Emily Starr desires it above all other things.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching Emily establish herself as an independent young woman. The Emily books delve into Emily’s interior space. As such, the reader witnesses the intimacy of her creative struggle alongside the challenges of coming-of-age. What’s more, Montgomery provides inspiring writing about the natural world of agrarian Prince Edward Island. In fact, part of Emily’s maturation becomes wrapped up in the beauty and draw of the everyday places she has known and loved since girlhood. I found Emily’s love of place both inspiring and moving.
Lest I mislead, Emily of New Moon is not all creative process and toil; she struggles with friendships and romances as she matures. Montgomery’s Emily Starr reflects the challenges of feuds and grief, loss of innocence and dashed dreams, in terms that are undoubtedly relatable to us all. While I certainly felt disturbed by some romantic interests in the last book, and cheered on others, I think it was the young life of the writer that I found most satisfying in these books.
If you have enjoyed other writing of Montgomery’s, I highly encourage you to pick up Emily of New Moon and take another trip to the farms of Edwardian Prince Edward Island These books are entertaining and soothing. And ultimately, they may inspire any of us who endeavor to climb the golden path of literary achievement by recognizing in Emily something of ourselves.
Bibliography:
Montgomery, L. M. Emily Climbs. Oxford City Press: 2010.
--- Emily of New Moon. Wilder Publications: 2019.
--- Emily’s Quest. Oxford City Press: 2010.
A Few Great Passages:
“To feel within her the creative urge and be forbidden to express it – to tingle with delight in the conception of humorous or dramatic characters, and be forbidden to bring them into existence – to be suddenly seized with the idea of a capital plot and realize immediately afterward that you couldn’t develop it. All this was a torture which no one who has not been born with the fatal itch for writing can realize” (Climbs, 81).
“I’ve got to writer, that is all there is to it. That hour in the grey morning is the most delightful one for me” (Climbs, 101).
“There are times when I am tempted to believe in the influence of evil stars or the reality of unlucky days” (Climbs, 232).
“Trees have as much individuality as human beings. Not even two spruces are alike. There is always some kink or curve or bend of bough to single each one out from its fellows” (Climbs, 237).
“Some fountain of living water would dry up in my soul if I left the land I love” (Climbs, 297).
“She belonged by right divine to the Ancient and Noble Order of Story-tellers. Born thousands of years earlier she would have sat in the circle around the fires of the tribe and enchanted her listeners. Born in the foremost files of time she must reach her audience through many artificial mediums” (Quest, 6).
“[W]riting, to Emily Byrd Starr, was not primarily a matter of worldly lucre or laurel crown. It was something she had to do. A thing – an idea – whether of beauty or ugliness, tortured her until it was ‘written out.’ Humorous and dramatic by instinct, the comedy and the tragedy of life enthralled her and demanded expression through her pen. A world of lost but immortal dreams, lying just beyond the drop-curtain of the real, called to her for embodiment and interpretation – called with a voice she could not – dared not – disobey” (Quest, 6).
“I know that when I am dead I shall sleep peaceably enough under the grasses through the summer and autumn and winter but when spring comes my heart will throb and stir in my sleep and call wistfully to all the voices calling far and wide in the world above me” (Quest, 158).
“Spring and morning were laughing to each other to-day and I went out to them and made a third” (Quest, 158).
