Emily Of New Moon

Emily starts school and hates it immediately. Elizabeth makes her wear an old apron with sleeves and an ugly sunbonnet, and Emily is angry before she even gets to the school. Her teacher, Miss Brownell, is condescending and cruel to the students, ridiculing them if they make a mistake. The other girls in Emily’s class are unfriendly and stare at her rudely. They even put a snake inside a small box, and one of the girls, Rhoda, gives it to her as a “gift.” Another girl, Ilse Burnley, stands up for Emily and threatens the girls with all kinds of violent consequences if they bother her again. She tells Emily that they are just jealous of her.

Later, Rhoda tells Emily she is sorry and didn’t know a snake was inside the box. Rhoda tells her that her family is descended from Scottish kings and that they should be friends. She flatters Emily by telling her how pretty she is and that the Murrays are a distinguished family. She promises to invite Emily to her birthday party that is coming up, but she won’t invite Ilse Burnley because she is a tomboy and an atheist. Rhoda likes to gossip and tell Emily all about the families of the other students in their class.

Emily starts to feel better about school now that she has a friend. She asks her aunts why Ilse Burnley and her father don’t believe in God, and a man visiting them replies, “Because of the trick her mother played on him” (87). Emily doesn’t know what that means, but she pretends she does; she understands that she should not talk about Ilse’s mother.

After a few days of school, Emily finds that she does like it after all, even though she never does warm up to Miss Brownell. The other girls accept her, and she and Rhoda become close friends. Ilse, the girl who defended Emily from the others on the first day, did not come back, and Emily is curious about who she is and where she went.

Emily is also starting to feel at home at New Moon, though Elizabeth is still stern and distant, and she still misses her father. Another thing she misses is the yellow notebook that she threw in the fire to keep Elizabeth from reading it. There is not a lot of paper at New Moon and while she does write a little on her slate at school, she always must erase it. She wants to write to her father when someone has wronged her or she has experienced trouble in school. Once, when Miss Brownell is reading Bugle Song to some older students, Emily listens and is so overcome by a beautiful line of poetry that she interrupts and asks the teacher to read it again. Miss Brownell is annoyed and tells Emily to be quiet and mind her own business, which humiliates her.

One day, Emily sees that Laura is gathering old bank statements she had accumulated over the years. She plans to burn them, but Emily begs Laura to let Emily have them so she can write on the back. Emily spends hours up in the garret of New Moon writing letters to her father to tell him about all the people and interesting things she has encountered since she moved there.

In June, all the girls in Emily’s class are excited about Rhoda’s birthday party next month. She has said it will be exclusive and that she isn’t inviting everybody, so they are all very anxious to see who has been chosen. Rhoda promised Emily at the beginning of their friendship that she would invite her, so Emily is not terribly concerned.

In July, Emily notices Rhoda sitting with an unfamiliar girl at Sunday School. Jennie Strang tells her that the girl is Muriel Porter, and she is only visiting Blair Water for the summer. Muriel’s family is wealthy, and Rhoda always tries to be friends with people she believes are of a higher class. Jennie tells Emily that the invitations have already gone out, and Emily is shocked and hurt that she has not been invited. She doesn’t understand why until Jennie tells her that Muriel hates her even though they’ve never met and has refused to attend the party if Emily is there. Apparently, Muriel has a crush on Fred Stuart, and Fred has been teasing her by praising Emily, making Muriel jealous of her. Jennie tells Emily that Rhoda is not to be trusted; she may act sweet but she can be deceitful.

Emily is heartbroken over Rhoda’s rejection. She decides their friendship is over and does not give in when Muriel leaves Blair Water early because her father is sick, and Rhoda tries to be friends again. She loses her appetite over this incident and is depressed for a month. Elizabeth believes the problem is that Emily’s hair is too long and heavy, so she decides to cut it all off. Emily is horrified, and she staunchly refuses. When she defies Elizabeth, she has an expression on her face, the Murray look, which is exactly how Elizabeth’s father would look at her. The look unsettled Elizabeth; she gives in and does not cut Emily’s hair. After that, Emily gets over Rhoda’s snub and is happy again.

One day, Elizabeth tells Emily to go to town on an errand on a hot day. She insists that Emily must wear shoes even though Emily wants to go barefoot. Emily walks a short way, then removes her boots and stockings and hides them in a hole. On her way back, she is too distracted by writing lines of poetry in her head to remember to put them back on before entering the house. Aunt Elizabeth sees her bare feet and punishes Emily by locking her in the spare room until dinner.

Emily is scared to be alone in the spare room, but Elizabeth digs her heels in on this punishment because she is a little ashamed that she let Emily win the haircut fight just because she had the Murray look.

Emily knows that many of her relatives have died in that room, and she imagines that it is haunted and that something will jump out at her. She panics when she sees a picture of her grandfather Murray on the wall, who is looking menacingly back at her. She runs to the window and sees a ladder leaning on the side of the house.

She climbs down the ladder and runs from the house until she sees Ilse Burnley sitting on a fence. Ilse is impressed that Emily was brave enough to climb out of a second-story window the way she did, and they go to Ilse’s house to play because a thunderstorm is coming. Ilse tells Emily she likes her and would come to school every day if she could sit with her. Now that Emily is no longer friends with Rhoda, she agrees. They talk about the existence of God, and Emily says that she’ll pray for Ilse, but Ilse doesn’t want her to do so.

Eventually, Emily decides she is brave enough to go home and face the consequences of sneaking out of the spare room. She is surprised to find that only Aunt Laura is home. She tells Laura what she did, and Laura is only glad she didn’t get hurt because she knew the ladder was rotten. Laura gives Emily a cookie and advises her to remember to put her boots and stockings back on before coming home if she goes to town barefoot again. Emily knows that Laura will keep her secret and knows that she is lucky to have escaped Elizabeth’s wrath.

Emily and Ilse become very close friends and play together every day. After a couple weeks, they have their first fight about the playhouse they are building. Like her father, Ilse has a fiery temper, and she screams terrible things at Emily, calling her a “sniveling chit” and a “proud, stuck up, conceited, top-lofty biped” (118). Emily’s fighting style is to remain calm but sarcastic, which enrages Ilse even more.

Emily is sure their friendship is over, but the next day, when she returns to the playhouse, she finds Ilse already there, pretending nothing happened. Ilse explains that she has a bad temper and they will probably fight frequently, but she is still a better friend than Rhoda or many other girls at school.

During these weeks, Ilse’s father, Dr. Burnley, has barely paid attention to his daughter. He is often too absorbed with his patients to care about Ilse. That summer, he had been caring for a boy, Teddy Kent, who had been very ill. One day, he tells Ilse and Emily that they should go visit him because he is getting stronger but is lonely and needs someone to play with.

They go to Tansy Patch, where Teddy lives, and the three children immediately become friends. Ilse tells Emily that Teddy’s mother is strange; she never leaves the house and people rarely visit them. Emily especially enjoys sitting on the porch with them in the evening, singing, reciting poetry, and watching Teddy’s cats play in the garden. Teddy is also a talented artist, and he would sometimes draw pictures for them. Emily senses that Ilse wants Teddy to like her best, but it seems that he favors Emily.

Emily writes to her father about her new friendships with Ilse and Teddy, telling him that Aunt Elizabeth doesn’t really approve of her friendship with Teddy, but she lets her visit him anyway because Dr. Burnley recommended it. Her aunts do approve of her friendship with Ilse, and Emily muses that Dr. Burnley seems to have a strange influence over her aunts. She also tells her father about writing poetry, various interactions with neighbors, and Ilse’s housekeeper, Mrs. Simms, who tries to care for her but is often on the receiving end of her temper tantrums.