I've always liked Emily, you know Emily don't you? Anne of Green Gables' more temperamental (to quote the Murrays) cousin? Yes, Emily of New Moon, don't you consider any literary characters amongst your dearest friends? Too bad, even if you want to shake them for their idiocy sometimes. I've always loved L.M. Montgomery, especially the Anne and Emily books and The Blue Castle, to quote Anne, I believe we are 'kindred spirits.' I just reread the three Emily books, and thoroughly enjoyed the first two on reacquaintance but the third one was a little disappointing, minding me a little of Austen's Persuasion or Mansfield Park or even Jane Eyre, in that the whole book is mostly the main character wading through years of sorrow and struggle, but whereas Jane and Fanny and Anne are all patiently enduring miserable circumstances and heartbreak beyond their control, Miss Emily is mostly a victim of her own pride and her mopery is not much to be pitied. I've always love Montgomery's ability to paint the splendor of an evening sky or haunted wood with words, which she does a lovely job of in the first two books but in the third it only appears as a mild backdrop against which our mopey miss is contrasted. The first two books explore what it is to be a sensitive person in a hard world that doesn't understand, a topic very close to my heart, while the third just has Emily moping around waiting for her scorned lover to come crawling back on his knees, perhaps hinting that a career just isn't enough to make a happy life, nor yet are stars or twilit seashores enough to fill an empty, aching soul. While those would have been a happy moral and a far more endurable tale were they the main plot of the book, rather they are subtle subpoints and hardly explored.
Rather we discover that if you pine long enough, fate will intervene miraculously and the desire of your heart will show up in the last ten pages and magically make everything better without the least bit of humbling on your part, save perhaps an airy paragraph or two expounding your newfound humility. Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy provide a far more interesting and slightly more believable story arc of just that, which is far more edifying and enjoyable than watching Emily mope about while scores of men fling themselves at her feet. I have far more respect for the bold Rebecca of Ivanhoe who spurns the desires of her heart, staying faithful to her faith even when it might get her burned for a heretic and loses the man who might be called her ideal, leaving him with the rather flat and insipid Rowena, than I can ever now have for poor Emily who suffers from her own surfeit of pride but doesn't seem to learn anything from it until the very last, much like the villainous knight who thought to make Rebecca his own no matter what. And we don't even get a thrilling jousting match to tie up the plot. Perhaps one should rewrite the plot entirely as Emily did and so grievously offended Mr. Greaves! At least Montgomery will not be happening by and throwing heirloom vases at me for my hubris, though no doubt I'll deserve it!
