Previously in this series.
“I’m so sorry for that house. I wish it had been finished. It wants to be – even yet it wants to be.”
*
“We are both going to pray that we may live together all our lives and die the same day.”
*
“There has been a dark shadow over this day. I dropped my cent in church.”
*
“There is a beautiful fringe of isikles along the cookhouse roof. But there will be much more beautiful things in heaven.”
*
“I hope I shall never have a million dollars. I am sure it would crush me utterly.”
*
Along the snow the sunbeams glide
Earth is a peerless, gleaming bride,
Dripping with diamonds, clad in traling white,
No bride was ever half so fair and bright
*
“I feel as if I was made out of star-dust.”
*
(0f the wind)
“You’re such company, Wind Woman.”
*
“Cousin Jimmy, do you think I’m likely to die of consumption?”
*
“Your hands are fat and pudgy.”
*
“How am I queer?”
*
BONUS: IF ELLEN GREENE WERE YOUR “FRIEND” IRL
“Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?”
*
“He makes a better looking corpse than I thought he would, what with being so wasted and all.”
Tags: beauty, books, fuck ellen greene, gifs, lm montgomery, oh this is fun
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I’m rereading the Anne books right now and basically all these gifs apply there too. I keep reminding myself that if Anne were around right now she would be talking in exactly the same high-flown and overdramatic way about her Teen Wolf OTP or something similarly Tumblr-y. I’m not sure if this is depressing or delightful?
ETA: OH MY GOD I JUST CLICKED THE PREVIOUSLY IN THIS SERIES LINK AND ALL MY DREAMS CAME TRUE THANK YOU THANK YOU TOAST
Anne never got over it when they killed off Erica and Boyd, the only OTP that ever mattered. Then Zayn left One Direction and now she just doesn’t know who she is anymore so she might as well sell out and write ad copy.
My childhood best friend was OBSESSED with Emily of New Moon, and yes, that was what it was like to be her friend. She would cry during EVERY art class in grade school because our teacher didn’t understand her VISION. Our art teacher, who was basically a Midwestern version of Dame Maggie Smith, had no time for that.
My favorite LM Montgomery character as a child was Jane of Lantern Hill, because she GOT STUFF DONE. She was SO COMPETENT once she was given a chance! I love you forever, Jane of Lantern Hill!
I was unaware of Jane of Lantern Hill! I feel quite sure I shall love it, though! Thank you ever so much, lilah80!
Ohhhhhhh man. It’s really great. It reminds me in some ways of a children’s version of her book The Blue Castle, because both Valancy Stirling and Jane have stultifying early childhoods weighed down by societal expectations and terrible family members, which leave them meek and damaged in front of said relatives. Both have irritatingly “perfect” girl cousins. But when they’re given a chance to get out from under those burdens, they prove themselves to be wonderfully strong and capable.
Basically, Jane and her beloved mother live with her terrible rich grandmother (and aunts? I feel like there was at least one aunt). Jane thinks her father is dead, but it turns out he and her mother are just separated, and he writes to demand Jane come to spend a summer with him so they can get to know each other. And then it turns out they go together like peas and carrots, and she sets up a household for them to live in, and as she goes back each summer, she gets stronger and surer of herself, and is widely respected by the folks of Lantern Hill and then she, like, Parent Traps her parents and it’s wonderful.
I just bought a copy for Kindle but now I have to work instead of read it. Boooooo. Booooooo, work. Boo.
Wait, it’s available for kindle?! Oh, anniekate76, you are my new favorite person. My copy doesn’t even have the original cover anymore, I had to construct one out of cardboard. E-BOOK, HERE I COME.
Yes! Here is the link!
http://www.amazon.com/Jane-Lantern-Hill-Virago-Cl…
Valancy is my Bestrogen.
Jane of Lantern Hill was THE BEST. I wanted my own house to decorate and tidy up! Now I get to tidy an apartment which isn’t quite the same thing.
Hold up…if my best friend though she was Emily of New Moon, did she think I was Ilse Burnley?!?!
Oh wow. So much of her sweetly judgmental smugness has just been explained.
YES, she cast me as Ilse! I was the mouthy, tomboy wild child who wouldn’t go to church! Oh my god you guys. This is such a revelation. This explains so much about our friendship TO THIS DAY. I AM ILSE. (I also made the right call in not marrying a Teddy, so yay me!)
This is why I never told MY best friend about Emily, because she was always the main girl, and I was always the sidekick, and I wanted to continue to fantasize about being Emily without being told I couldn’t because SHE was Emily.
In other notes, girl play rules are hilarious sometimes.
The parents in Jane of Lantern Hill are the worst, though. I loathed her father. “Oh, I haven’t seen you in years, but I’m going to be all weird and over-familiar and just expect you to keep house for me” (I know Jane liked that, but how could he have known that she would?).
I can’t decide of Lucy Lui’s Give Me A Break face or Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Give Me A Break face is better.
Both. I shall have both, and triumph.
On the other hand, it would be super easy to know what to get her for her birthday.
NOTEBOOKS. Piles and piles of notebooks. She would be enraptured.
#fuck ellen greene indeed
#fuckellengreenesgod too. 😉
I wish to be BFFs with Valancy Snaith (née Stirling) from The Blue Castle, though. Valancy can continue to be polite and kind and I will coyly needle Cousin Olive on her behalf. Because suck it, Cousin Olive.
Oh my god, I reread The Blue Castle approximately 400 times as a melodramatic teen and thought it was the most romantic story that had ever been written WHICH IT IS KIND OF! Now I am remembering the reveal that Valancy’s husband also turned out to be her favourite beloved author whose books were the one thing that got her through her terrible youth ahhhhhhhh.
I knoooooowwwww! AND a secret millionaire with a heart of gold who cares not for material things! Plus he has a rakish eyebrow and loves cats!
If you follow Nicole on twitter, she had an awesome discussion going on yesterday about whether or not Valancy and Barney were having sex.
I have to check that out. I have *always* wondered about this! They obviously shared a bed, but it’s not clear whether they shared anything else. Especially since Valancy was delicate and they both were careful about not overstimulating her (tee hee).
As a lady with the pluck to deal with Roaring Abel and the boldness to propose to A MAN, and not just any man but the scandalous Barney Snaith, I am convinced that Valancy wouldn’t have settled for anything less than the full marriage experience. That’s my girl!
Yes, but she did have the condition that they were supposed to forget about her heart condition …
I think they absolutely were. Barney would want to give her a proper married life, and plus, their relationship was so physical… the feel of his arm around her…
They were TOTALLY doing it. How about when he brings her home right after the wedding and this happens:
“Barney lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her first kiss. ‘Welcome home, dear,’ Barney was saying.”
And then it FADES TO BLACK, and the next chapter is FOUR DAYS LATER and Valancy is walking down the road to tell her folks she got married, in a TOTAL BLISSED-OUT SEX HAZE, and doesn’t even give a shit about Cousin Georgiana being a pill.
” ‘Yes?’ said Valancy absently. What on earth was Cousin Georgiana looking so mysterious and important about? But did it matter? No. Nothing mattered but Barney and the Blue Castle up back in Mistawis.”
And then she comes home and her ROSEBUSH IS BLOOMING because of SYMBOLISM, and she says, “My cutting it to pieces must have done it good,” and laughs.
And then they’re like, why won’t you marry this elderly widower instead? He seems appropriate, and has $20K! And:
” ‘That sounds very fine,’ said Valancy scornfully, ‘but it isn’t worth that‘–she snapped her fingers–’compared to feeling Barney’s arms around me and his cheek against mine.’ ”
THEY WERE DOING IT, THEY WERE DOING IT SO MUCH, AND IT WAS GOOOOOOOD, TOO. I REST MY CASE.
I wish I had 50 more +1s to give you. This made my day.
And I even left out the part a few weeks into their marriage where he spends a full paragraph just complimenting her and the last thing he says is, “And you have such a nice, sweet, throaty, summery voice. Such a nice voice for love-making.”
That is not something you say to someone you are #pals with. That is something you say to someone you are tenderly banging.
You are right that they were probably doing EET, though I think “love-making” in that context meant something less physical/sexual. It used to just mean something like “wooing” or “courting”, which of course would make a pretty speaking voice necessary for a good experience.
Yes, I remember being very scandalized as a child at all the “love-making” that went on in L.M. Montgomery books, before my mom explained to me that the meaning had changed over the century. 🙂 I read a lot of books from the turn of the century as a kid, and I still remember one in which it said one character “made violent love to” another and I was like 8|
That was Emma! She was in a hansom cab or something with Mr. Elton, and suddenly found herself “being made violent love to”, which shocked me too! I thought Mr Elton tried to rape her in a hansom cab. That he did not, is about the only thing in Mr. Elton’s favour.
My mind still insists upon reading it in a modern context. So much more fun that way.
Except when it’s Dean Priest telling 12-year-old Emily that he will teach her all about love-making and warning her not to go looking for any other teachers *shudder*
Oh, ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ewwwwww I had forgotten about THAT
Modern context: only fun in relation to Barney Snaith
YESSSS and thank you for this.
This is why I love all you Toasties so much. If I brought this question up with folks I know IRL, they’d be like, “Valancy who?”
this is perfect.
Also, they live in a cabin on an island! What else would they do!? Not to mention that in the winter, they were definitely doing it in front of the blazing fire.
I can only concur. Of course they were doing it, A LOT.
And they only have one bed! Cousin Georgiana gives her a quilt for her spare-room bed and she explains that she doesn’t have one. She and Barney are sharing a bed and TOTALLY DOING IT.
oh god would you please quickly write me up some erotic fanfic about this situation, I really need it
YASS.
This thread has made me feel like I’m coming home. You guys are the best.
As for whether or not Barney & Valancy were doing it, have any of you ever read The Ladies of Missalonghi? It’s by Colleen McCullough and is so much a copy of The Blue Castle that it’s actually a little weird… it’s like McCullough decided to write Barney/Valancy fanfic but set it in the Australian outback because she’d never been to PEI.
Anyway, Missy & John Smith have LOTS of sex, so that could be an acceptable substitute if you’re into that. (Spoiler alert: my 6th grade self was totally into that.)
Is it bad that I still relate to 80% of these on an oddly personal level?
Emily always kind of creeped me out. Not quite right in the head. I wish Ilse had gotten her own book.
I grant that Ilse has better taste in men than Emily. Perry Miller!
I’ll take Perry over Teddy any day, thank you very much!
LEAVE EMILY ALONE [/meme]
The ending of the trilogy was annoying though.
I’ve tried reading Emily of New Moon but can never finish it. I don’t know why.
I loved the Emily books when I was an adolescent, but I reread them as an adult and found Emily to be kind of Mary Sue-ish, especially in the first two books. I’ve since read that L.M. Montgomery viewed Emily as a sort of stand-in for herself and her dreams of becoming a writer, so that makes sense.
Emily was probably the Montgomery heroine whom she was most guilty of making beautiful-but-not-quite, which would result in characters exclaiming over her looks while adding caveats like, “you’re not beautiful, but [gushing over eyes/hair/figure/complexion…gee she sounds pretty beautiful to me]….”
This is true! The Emily trilogy is considered the most autobiographical of her novels. Meanwhile, the Anne books (in hindsight) are a bit more wish fulfillment.
My attempts at reading Emily were in my early twenties, as I recall. It likely coincided with the time I’d begun reading LMM’s journals, which I found more interesting. Now everything makes a lot more sense!
I feel like Mr. Carpenter spent 80% of his teaching time on complicated classroom projects so that he wouldn’t get caught making this face all the time.
Also if you thought you were going to read treacly stories about fairies and dew and ended up reading a cutting profile of your personality as written by a Madaline Bassetesque 11 year old, wouldn’t you be delighted too?
EMILY IS THE BEST. HATERS DOWN THE WELL.
DAMN RIGHT SHE IS.
I loved Emily and hated Anne.
We don’t see Emily become a dull and rather prissy mother of umpteen. We can fantasize about her writing the Great Canadian Novel and not worrying about the housework too much.
I mean, who’s that woman who comes to stay with the Blythes and is a jerk and doesn’t leave for months in “Anne of Ingleside”? Emily would have given her the Murray look and sent her packing.
Personal headcanon: Emily grew up and wrote “Anne of Green Gables”. It’s all there! The pretetious wood nymph drivel! The acid characterizations! The terrible temper that never forgives!
Then the later books are the result of Teddy slowly completely failing her as a person.
This is genius- as if anyone didn’t see that narcissist Teddy failing as a partner! Leslie in “Anne’s House of Dreams” and Katherine Brooke in “Anne of Windy Poplars” are hints at sapphic dalliances that took place later in her life. (I want Emily to be fairly happy. Heaven knows LMM wasn’t.)
I mean, when a bunch of us got together one summer during college and watched the two good Anne miniseries, we made “oooooohs” you could hear across campus every time Anne and Katherine had a scene together. By the time they were in the orchard together at Green Gables we were all dead.
You made my headcanon better.
Ah, but if you keep reading into the later Emily books she gets so much snarkier and much more fun than Anne, and she takes great delight in occasionally going through her old poetry and notebooks and shitting all over her twelve-year-old writing attempts. I love Emily. She and Ilse should’ve ditched Teddy and Perry entirely and run off to live happily ever after together.
I may or may not have just searched for Emily/Ilse tags on Archive Of Our Own and only found like THREE. This must be fixed post-haste.
Also, I want to MURDER Dean Priest. Creepy manipulative pedophilic asshole.
OK, so in my new headcanon, Helena and Gracie from Orphan Black team up and take down literary assholes and Dean fucking Priest is first to go.
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY
COSIGN. Such a creepster!
AND SHE BURNED HER NOVEL BECAUSE OF HIM!
Dirtbag Emily
“Oh, you’ll ‘wait for me’? That’s good. I’d hate to be edged out by the stream of women pounding down your door.”
Okay. I’m now worried because I adored Dean Priest and would cheerfully have seen the ghastly Teddy poison himself with his own paint.
Dean was my favorite Montgomery male character except for the creepy grooming of Emily. He was complex and kind of bad, which made him interesting.
Montgomery sort of made it up to Dean in “A Tangled Web”. There’s a Dean-like character named Roger who is besotted with a beautiful young girl who is crazy about a pretty young boy with glossy locks and lustrous eyes (rather Teddy-like). He murmurs poetic phrases to her and eventually gets on her nerves by being such a pretentious, fatuous KID. She realized that Roger/Dean is a MAN and marries him instead.
Sort of, not quite–Gay is infatuated with and engaged to Noel, who is this charming little bit of fluff, and Noel cheats on her by going to a dance with her man-eater cousin Nan and feeding her cake all sexy-like. Gay storms out, breaks the engagement, and starts hanging out with her distant cousin Roger, who is a good bit older than her–I think 10+ years or so–and has had a crush on Gay like, forever. She was never interested in Roger because her whole family was just throwing him at her, but Gay starts to like him as a friend because he’s smart and interesting and doesn’t talk down to her and treat her like an idiot, and Roger proposes and Gay accepts because she figures ugh, she likes him fine, whatever. But she runs into Noel again after Nan dumps him and realizes that Noel is just a cheap and tacky little boy, and falls in love with Roger for real as he is a mature, wonderful man, and they live happily ever after.
Teddy was totally the worst, but at least he wasn’t grooming her from, like eight years old. Perry forever.
Also acceptable: Emily/Ilse/Perry.
Oh, ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ewwwwww I had forgotten about THAT
Modern context: only fun in relation to Barney Snaith
I feel like this is the post I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
Dear Toasties: I love you all! In a misandrist and non-creepy fashion! I feel that I have just discovered my true identity as a misandrist librarian! I’ve been lurking for a while, but this post has brought me into the open because EVERYTHING ABOUT IT and specifically Emily, who is awesome. Dean Priest is a horrible abusive pedophile who burned Emily’s magnum opus because he was so jealous of it. “The Priest men rule their wives”, I hear. Creepy family. Emily was well out of it.
Teddy’s not much to write home about, but I accept that Emily loved him. And one thing I much preferred about Emily over Anne, was that she admitted to herself all along that she was in love with Teddy, rather than being all oh I hate Gilbert I hate Gilbert I hate Gilbert ok Gilbert is not so bad but I will toy with Roy’s affections until I admit that I am in love with Gilbert and want to live in a house-of-dreams and have 27 babies.
To be fair to Dean, he unfairly criticised Emily’s writing and she burned the manuscript, but that was a pretty shitty thing for him to have done. I always found him more interesting than Teddy, though, even when I was a teenager.
Oh, you’re right! Yes, I will concede that Dean did not physically shove the manuscript into the fire. However, this is the best thing I can find to say about him. He is interesting indeed, but terrible.
Never looked this up before, but there are 24 Emily of New Moon fics on ff.net.
I am indebted to the Emily series for the idea that writing two good sentences in a pile of drivel is progress.
My favorite LM Montgomery character as a child was Jane of Lantern Hill, because she GOT STUFF DONE. She was SO COMPETENT once she was given a chance! I love you forever, Jane of Lantern Hill!
To be fair to Dean, he unfairly criticised Emily's writing and she burned the manuscript, but that was a pretty shitty thing for him to have done. I always found him more interesting than Teddy, though, even when I was a teenager.