Emily's New Cover

Today I was in the children's section of the library. While searching for general titles to share with students, a brightly colored book jumped out at me (metaphorically, not literally, thank goodness).

Image Found Here

It was one of L.M. Montgomery's Emily books. This series begins innocently enough about a young orphan girl who wants more than anything to be an author. Much like Montgomery's other orphans, Emily, while sharing her precocious vocabulary, manages to win over even the most curmudgeonly of neighbors. But then the series takes a darker turn.

By the final book in the series, the above-pictured Emily's Quest, Emily feels deserted by her friends, who are off living their lives, is struggling with her identity as an author, ends up crippled for a brief period, and then engaged to a predatory father figure.

Did you get that from this cover?

I am all for repackaging classics. One of my favorite things to do at the bookstore is peruse the various copies of Pride and Prejudice. Part of me was thrilled just to see this lesser-known Montgomery novel at my local library.

But there is something about the "prettifying" of this dark novel. Montgomery's final book in this trilogy asks tough questions of those wanting to achieve their dreams.

After Emily's illness and belief that her first novel was worthless, this passage occurs:

"My days of laughter are done," Emily said to herself. And her days of creation as well. She could never write again. The "flash" never came. No rainbow spanned the gloom of that terrible winter. People came to see her continuously. She wished they would stay away. Especially Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ruth, who were sure she would never walk again and said so every time they came. Yet they were not so bad as the callers who were cheerfully certain she would be all right in time and did not believe a word of it themselves. (Montgomery 57)

Not exactly the happy-go-lucky thoughts of a pink-covered book. This may not seem too bad in the grand scheme of the novel, but there are chapters upon chapters of Emily being depressed. There are points where a happy ending doesn't seem possible. In fact, scholars posit that the romantic happy ending Montgomery offers her heroine is false - one that can never truly be happy (Epperly 190; Rubio 30).

Don't get me wrong. I think that this novel is important in the wider conversation around girlhood, even young adulthood. These darker emotions should be explored. Montgomery herself says that she relates the most to Emily (Epperly 145), and so to an extent these feelings are based on real life.

But why package them in pink and dreams? Do we need to tell ourselves that everything is going to be okay - at least on the outside? Or in knowing the plot, do we see this cover as what we hope will happen for Emily? That she will keep looking out over the horizon, searching for the fulfillment of her dreams?

Works Cited

Epperly, Elizabeth Rollins. The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass: L.M. Montgomery's Heroines and 

the Pursuit of Romance. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1992. 

Montgomery, L.M. Emily's Quest. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.

Rubio, Mary. "Subverting the Trite: L. M. Montgomery's `Room of Her Own."' Canadian Children's Literature 65 (1992): 6-39.

Defining Research

For a lack of relevant pictures, here is a place I imagine would be excellent to research in. Image found here.

As an adjunct I teach four composition classes at two different universities. So, I think about research and writing a lot. As you can imagine, I also talk about research and writing a lot with my students.

Recently, during a conference with one of my students I was asked point-blank to what research was. I felt at a loss for words. What was research? Other than the thing that I was supposed to be doing when I was really grading papers (or watching TV or washing my hair or... you get the idea).

Before I could answer, she added this observation: she thought that research was simply gathering others' ideas and writing them down. I told her that in some ways she was right. After all, the first part of a large project is figuring out what everyone else has said.

But it's more than that - it's taking everyone else's ideas and laying them down as a foundation and building from there. This is why I encourage my students to use the first-person when they write. I know that's not the traditional way of writing essays (and in fact, I'm only "permitted" to do so at one university). I want them to own their ideas though. To separate their ideas from the critics' ideas. To see how their "building" is being constructed.

This student then mentioned that her preconceived notion of research included interviewing people (to what end, I don't think she knew). We are not interviewing people, though. Not even a little. In the realm of children's literature, as previously mentioned, I am strictly a book person. Occasionally, I consider the "ideal reader," maybe the author, but that's as close as it comes.

Books are data, I explained to her. They are the "what" that we are researching. They hold this snapshot of ideas, of a culture, of what it means to be human. For this class specifically, it's what a young adult is in book form - how the books convey what "we" trust young adults with, what we think they are capable of, what we think they want and need.

The student was convinced in the end. She was most likely convinced at the beginning, as her research project this semester is to write a ten-page paper exploring themes in a YA text of her choice, so I'm sure she'd already put two-and-two together. But for me, it was refreshing to reexamine what research is.

Research is not always easy, and more often than not, it can be daunting. However, talking about research with this student reminded me of why I do what I do. I cannot escape the fact that literary studies strikes a chord deep within me. As cheesy as it sounds, I feel fortunate to be able to share that with these students.