Meme Answers: L. M. Montgomery

[osprey_archer]

Meme answer time! For sovay, the L. M. Montgomery ‘verse.

the character I least understand

The Story Girl never quite gelled for me as a character. Compared to Emily or Anne or Pat, she just seems flat.

interactions I enjoyed the most

Honestly I think I will have to go with Valancy Stirling + the universe here, because Valancy just has no fucks to give and it is glorious. All the scenes where she starts standing up to her family, just by straight up telling the truth - EXCELLENT.

And of course there's that scene where she asks Barney Snaith to marry her.

the character who scares me the most

Teddy's mother in the Emily books always worried me. She's so creepily possessive; it would not have surprised me if she went all "A Rose for Emily" on her poor son rather than let him get married.

the character who is mostly like me

As much as I would love to say Anne or Emily, it is probably Pat of Silver Bush.

hottest looks character

Honestly I have trouble thinking of any Montgomery characters as hot (as opposed to pretty or beautiful) - but Anne, once her hair has turned auburn, is obviously the most beautiful. Although Anne would probably insist that it was Diana.

one thing I dislike about my fave character

How am I supposed to pick just one favorite Montgomery character? IMPOSSIBLE.

However, I read the Anne books first so probably I've imprinted on Anne the most strongly. But I can't think of anything I dislike about her, so that's not helpful.

I always thought that Emily's occasional psychic moments seemed super weird and out of place with everything else in her books, even though she is sometimes compared to an elf or other magical creature which really ought to have tipped me off. But the dream she has, especially, the one about Ilsa's mother who everyone thought ran away with another man - that seemed silly.

one thing I like about my hated character

I'm trying to think if there's a Montgomery character I straight-out hate. I have extremely mixed feelings about Dean Priest, because he's a good influence on Emily until he is really really NOT, so while I hate some of his choices I don't think I hate him, exactly. If that makes sense.

Oh wait. There is Ilsa's father, though. I will never get over the way he ignores his daughter for years, and then it turns out his wife wasn't unfaithful, so he loves Ilsa again, hurrah! What a jerk. Uh, but I'm not sure he has a quality I like - he's not sketched out in much detail so there's not much chance for him to develop redeeming qualities.

a quote or scene that haunts me

The entire Dean Priest plot in the Emily books - particularly the bit where he tells Emily that her book is rubbish, and she burns it and falls down the stairs on the scissors and spends ages wasting away in bed and then gets engaged to him in something like despair. WHY, DEAN, WHY? (This is a rhetorical question: I understand why, which is part of what makes it so horrible.)

a death that left me indifferent

I wasn't terribly put out when Valancy's friend Cissy died. Sorry, Cissy!

a character I wish died but didn’t

I don't think I would wish death on any Montgomery characters - not even Dean Priestly despite his flaws. He went elsewhere and is probably learning important life lessons and certainly eating his heart out about how he destroyed the most important friendship in his life (with Emily) by being such a jerk, which is clearly a better punishment for his faults than mere death.

my ship that never sailed

I've always been partial to Anne/Diana. And I really wanted to ship Emily/Ilsa, but Emily doesn't go on and on about Ilsa's loveliness, or sit in the window weeping at the thought that someday Ilsa will get married, or otherwise go on about her the way Anne does about Diana, so I just didn't see it.

Comments

[evelyn_b]

Aw, man. So many of your answers are the same as mine. I didn't really get the Story Girl either - she was more of a plot device than a character, though it's been a while so that probably isn't fair.

Ilse's dad is such a dick, and his miracle redemption (I don't mind the silly psychic stuff) just makes it worse in a way: it confirms for Ilse that he was never going to love her for herself. I think he's a great character, though.

[osprey_archer]

I read the Story Girl within the last couple of years and I also saw her as mostly a plot device, so I don't think it's just that it's been a while since you've read it. Poor Story Girl. Presumably there's more of her in there somewhere?

Poor Ilse, man. She deserved a better father!

[evelyn_b]

I liked her (the Story Girl) a lot better on re-read, as an adult, than I remembered - but I think she suffers as a character from being a memory and an ideal. Beverly keeps associating her explicitly with The Wonder of Innocence and the Magic of Storytelling and the Alchemy of Adolescence - she gets a lot of nostalgic gilding that is always present in some way in LMM but is shoved to the front in the Story Girl books because of the nostalgic first-person narrator.

(Though I've probably just started remembering it as worse than it was again).

Poor Ilse. :(

[staranise]

Dean is certainly an interesting character--just the right mix of sympathetic and creepy to stick in your mind, like a mold.

[osprey_archer]

I realize that Dean Priestly would actually be a terrible husband for Emily, even if you could leave the age difference and the fact that he's a mentor figure out, which you really can't, and yet at the same time he is by far the most interesting person to pair her with. Clearly Emily should just run away and embrace her writing as her one true love.

[sovay]

Clearly Emily should just run away and embrace her writing as her one true love.

+1.

[sovay]

For sovay, the L. M. Montgomery 'verse.

Thank you!

the Story Girl never quite gelled for me as a character.

I feel I must have read The Story Girl, because there was a period of time when I was reading everything I could find by Montgomery that wasn't nailed down, all Anne sequels right up through the World War I novel included, but since I can't remember anything about the title character, I don't blame you.

but Anne, once her hair has turned auburn, is obviously the most beautiful. Although Anne would probably insist that it was Diana.

Aw.

I always thought that Emily's occasional psychic moments seemed super weird and out of place with everything else in her books, even though she is sometimes compared to an elf or other magical creature which really ought to have tipped me off.

I actually didn't have a problem with Emily's occasional psychic moments, but I am still going to link you to rushthatspeaks' review of Opal Whiteley's The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow.

because he's a good influence on Emily until he is really really NOT, so while I hate some of his choices I don't think I hate him, exactly. If that makes sense.

Yes. Dean is the character I found most interesting in that series (very old discussion here), my far and away favorite until he made a bunch of terrible life decisions, and I still can't tell if Montgomery intended that entire arc for him from the start or if it evolved as the books went. I agree with you about the eating his heart out learning important life lessons.

I wasn't terribly put out when Valancy's friend Cissy died. Sorry, Cissy!

. . . I think I forgot about Cissy. I should re-read The Blue Castle. I have great memories of the rest of the book.

[osprey_archer]

I have actually encountered Opal Whiteley before when I was doing a project about girls' literature in the early twentieth century and ping-ponged through pretty much the same set of reactions: "Could a brilliant and possibly mentally ill six-year-old write this? Or is this a hoax? It must be a hoax. But who would carry out such a ludicrously complicated hoax?"

At the time I ended up tipping toward "but this must be a hoax" because Opal fits so well into popular literary tropes of the time: the lonely, unloved child with only Shakespeare and Nature for company who bootstraps to success through her observations of the natural world. She could have walked right out of A Girl of the Limberlost. Of course her book was hugely popular - and, given that this set of tropes was falling out of fashion by 1920, no wonder she was quickly accused of being a desperately twee hoax. The nature and Shakespeare and fairy obsession, it all dovetails far too nicely with early twentieth century ideals of childhood innocence and imagination etc. etc.

But in retrospect, none of that proves it was a hoax, really. I think I came down on the "it's a hoax" side partly because that gave me a good excuse not to read the darn thing for my project; hoax or not, I find the style unbearable. I guess it's just destined to remain a mystery.