Montgomery Gothic

[osprey_archer]

littlerhymes commented in my post on Pat of Silver Bush that L. M. Montgomery Gothic should be a thing, and the more I think about it, the more I like it. Her books are already halfway there, after all. (More like three-quarters in the case of Emily of New Moon. What could be a more gothic house name than New Moon?)

A few thoughts:

There is a house. It has always been there. It will always be there.

The house is full of beautiful and broken things.

There is a car somewhere in the distance. The sound of its motor is the hum of a terrible encroaching future, full of shiny new things. The very words shiny and new send a shiver down your spine.

You will grow up someday. This is a great tragedy.

The trees with their blossoms are like ghosts in the evening.

The trees talk to you.

The house is on fire.

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Nice ;o)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hee, this sounds like a Laurie Anderson lyric.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Is that a good thing? Should I be alarmed?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

In my books, it's a good thing.

Here's one of her oldest performance pieces, "From the Air" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hedIexysvK4) --you have to listen on to get the surreal quality.

The part I was thinking of in particular was,

Put your hands
over your eyes.

Jump out
of the plane.

There is
no
pilot.

You
are not
alone.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Please, please write more because you are so right. The Disappointed House, amirite?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Houses have feelings and personalities. I feel like any attempt at LMM Gothic would simply need to dial this up to eleven. A house with a vendetta against one of its inhabitants, perhaps?

There are also lots of mentions of ghosts and fairies in LMM's work, and characters who believe as children and mourn when they stop believing. In Gothic LMM, they discover to their great regret that the ghosts and fairies are there after all.

[littlerhymes]

Obviously I am 110% here for this. :D

So many of the elements are pre-existing. If we simply approach from a different angle... The ghosts and the orphaned children and the occasional creepy older man who tries to control your creative impulses and maybe psyches you into burning the only manuscript of your first novel, no big deal.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

So many orphaned children! All alone in these big houses with the whispering pine trees outside and the ghosts in the garret. The gothic novels practically write themselves.

I'm pretty sure Dean Priest has his own special circle in hell for the novel incident. The terrifying thing is that, aside from that, he usually does seem genuinely interested in her intellectual development - and he's one of the few people who is - so of course she believed him implicitly when he told her that her book was trite adorable garbage.