osprey_archer: (art)
osprey_archer ([personal profile] osprey_archer) wrote2016-01-08 09:34 am

Montgomery Gothic

[livejournal.com profile] 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.

[identity profile] emma-in-oz.livejournal.com 2016-01-09 12:09 am (UTC)(link)
Please, please write more because you are so right. The Disappointed House, amirite?

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2016-01-09 02:55 am (UTC)(link)
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.