Emily Of New Moon

“It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside—but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond—only a glimpse—and heard a note of unearthly music.”

This passage shows Emily’s intimate connection with the natural world and how she senses that she may be closer than others to accessing some magical realm that lies just beyond reality.

“It would hurt her with its beauty until she wrote it down.”

This quote shows that Emily has a very visceral response to beauty and her impulse is to write about it so that she won’t forget it. The idea that it would hurt her until she wrote it down connects with the idea that writing is therapeutic for her. She always feels better when she gets her thoughts down on paper, demonstrating her need for Creativity and Self-Expression.

“She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering twilight, all agog to get home and write down her ‘description’ before the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew just how she would begin it—the sentence seemed to shape itself in her mind: ‘The hill called to me and something in me called back to it.’”

After a walk outside, Emily is always brimming with descriptions of what she sees. She takes great care in choosing words and composing lines as accurate and evocative as possible.

“Do you know that your pa has only a week or two more to live?”

Ellen says this to Emily when she returns from a walk outside. Emily is inspired by nature and excited to write about it, but Ellen delivers her news in the most blunt and unsympathetic way possible. Douglas had not yet told Emily that he was dying because he was waiting for the right time and wanted to be as gentle as possible. This quote shows how different Ellen is from Douglas and Emily, who are sensitive and careful with their words.

“After she had written down all about them, these things hadn’t hurt her anymore.”

When Emily first meets her Murray relatives, they are unfriendly to and critical of her. Her feelings are hurt, and she is scared about going to live with an unkind aunt and uncle, but she refuses to cry in front of them. When she finally is allowed to go to her room, she feels better when she can write down everything about the encounter.

“I am important to myself!”

Ellen Green tells Emily that she should be meek and grateful that any of her relatives are willing to take her in because she is of little importance. Emily responds with this quote, showing that she has quite a bit of the “Murray Pride” that the family is known for and that her father raised her to have healthy self-esteem. She has a boldness that many children during this period would have been reprimanded for; in fact, she is reprimanded for it, but her father encouraged it.

“Whatever part of him was missing it wasn’t his heart.”

After Emily’s upsetting introduction to her aunts and uncles, Cousin Jimmy offers her some peppermints. Emily doesn’t like peppermint, but she accepts them gratefully because he is so kind. People sometimes talk condescendingly about Jimmy, saying he’s “not all there” because of a head injury, but Emily mostly notices how kind he is. Though a relative, he becomes the first person to show her The Importance of Friendships.

“Aunt Elizabeth was one of those people who never do understand anything unless it is told them in plain language and hammered into their heads. And they understand it only with their brains and not with their hearts.”

This description of Aunt Elizabeth is a good description of many of the characters in the novel with whom Emily does not get along. Elizabeth cannot interpret nuance or figurative language, which frustrates Emily because she thinks in terms of poetry and metaphor. Ellen and Emily’s teacher, Miss Brownell, are other characters who have similar mindsets.

“‘The Murray women have never been under any necessity for earning their own living. All we require of you is to be a good and contented child and to conduct yourself with becoming prudence and modesty.’ This sounded terribly hard.”

Emily tells her aunts that she plans to have a career as a writer. Aunt Elizabeth responds with this quote, which shows the emphasis her aunt places on what Murrays (and women) can and can’t do, and the behavior that she expects from Emily. Emily, in turn, would much rather earn her own living than live up to Elizabeth’s behavior standards.

“If it be true that we ‘count time in heart throbs,’ Emily lived two years in it instead of two days.”

During Emily’s first weekend at New Moon, she spent those two days exploring and learning about her new home. She found many wonderful things to like about the farm, so those two days held two years’ worth of excitement and interesting things for her.

“Folks say I’ve never been quite right since—but they only say that because I’m a poet, and because nothing ever worries me. Poets are so scarce in Blair Water folks don’t understand them, and most people worry so much, they think you’re not right if you don’t worry.”

Cousin Jimmy tells Emily that when they were young, Elizabeth pushed him into a well, and he hit his head, which is why many people say he is “not quite right,” but he believes people think that because he is just different from them as a poet. He is self-aware and doesn’t let small things bother him, so they think he is strange.

“As for the Murray look, you’ll know it when you see it. It’s as well-known as the Murray pride. We’re a darn queer lot—but we’re the finest people ever happened. I’ll tell you all about us tomorrow.”

This quote from Cousin Jimmy shows how proud the Murrays are of their family and shared characteristics. They often discuss which aspects of Emily’s physical looks and personality are inherited from different members of the Murray family.

“‘I can write poetry,’ said Emily, without in the least meaning to say it. But in that instant, she knew she could write poetry. And with this queer unreasonable conviction came—the flash! Right there, surrounded by hostility and suspicion, without backing or advantage, came the wonderful moment when soul seemed to cast aside the bonds of flesh and spring upwards toward the stars.”

When Emily is confronted by the other girls on her first day of school, they ask her if she can do things like sing or embroider, and she keeps responding, “No.” Eventually, she tells them she can write poetry even though she’s never tried. She has heard Jimmy talk about writing poetry and, in that moment, Emily decides she can, too.

“‘Why don’t you like me?’ She asked directly […] ‘Because you ain’t a bit like us,’ she muttered. ‘I wouldn’t want to be,’ said Emily scornfully.”

This quote shows how Emily is set apart from other girls and that she is sure of herself. She and the other students at Blair Water School immediately recognize that she is different from them, and she does not let them make her feel ashamed or inadequate about her differences. Instead, she is proud and asserts that she doesn’t want to be like any of her new classmates.

“There is a destiny which shapes the ends of young misses who are born with the itch for writing tingling in their baby fingertips, and in the fullness of time this destiny gave to Emily the desire of her heart—gave it to her, too, on the very day when she most needed it.”

This quote is about the day that Aunt Laura gave Emily the stack of bank receipts to use for writing; Emily had been without writing paper at New Moon until now, and she missed it. Earlier that day, she had gotten in trouble at school because she’d been listening to her teacher read a poem to another group of students and she thought one line was so beautiful she shouted in delight and asked her to reread it. After this incident, it was even more meaningful that she finally had paper to write on.

“But they had found the Tansy Patch a charming place and were glad to go again. For the rest of the vacation, there was hardly a day when they did not go up to it—preferably in the long, smoky, delicious August evenings when the white moths sailed over the tansy plantation and the golden twilight faded into dusk and purple over the green slopes beyond and fireflies lighted their goblin torches by the pond.”

This description is an example of the way Montgomery describes the natural landscapes around Prince Edward Island. The beauty surrounding Emily and her particular sensitivity to it is a motif throughout the novel and all of Montgomery’s writing.

“They say Mrs. John Killegrew swallowed her wedding ring. I wonder what she did that for.”

This quote exemplifies Emily’s short, newsy updates in her letters to her father. There is a bit of irony in this quote because swallowing one’s wedding ring sounds ridiculous and confusing to Emily, but adults may have more understanding and context for why someone may have done that.

“‘A human being should not kneel to anyone but God,’ said Cousin Jimmy, unexpectedly, still staring at the ceiling. A sudden strange change came over Elizabeth Murray’s proud, angry face. She stood very still, looking at Cousin Jimmy—stood so long that Miss Brownell made a motion of petulant impatience.”

Jimmy stands up for Emily when Aunt Elizabeth tells her to kneel in front of Miss Brownell and ask for forgiveness when she gets in trouble at school. Jimmy rarely speaks up this way, and Elizabeth listens when he does. She concedes that he is right, which disappoints Miss Brownell. This is an example of the several times Jimmy shows he is wiser than many of the characters and not a foolish simpleton as they believe.

“Not just now perhaps, dear. But when the moment of inspiration has passed it will do no harm to remember that the cookies in the box have not been counted and that they are as much mine as Elizabeth’s.”

This quote shows how sweet and sympathetic Aunt Laura is to Emily, even when her sister Elizabeth is much more harsh. She reminds Emily that she has as much authority over some things as Elizabeth, such as the cookies in the cookie box. Laura often allows Emily to get away with things that Elizabeth would not allow and tempers her sister’s strictness with gentle permissiveness.

“Teddy is teaching me to whistle but Aunt Laura says it is unladylike. So many jolly things seem to be unladylike. Sometimes I almost wish my aunts were infidels like Dr. Burnly. He never bothers whether Ilse is unladylike or not. But no, it would not be good manners to be an infidel. It would not be a New Moon tradishun.”

This quote, which is an excerpt from a letter Emily writes to her father, illustrates the Victorian values and expectations for behavior during Emily’s time. Montgomery seems to poke fun at some of the rules at New Moon, saying that neither whistling nor being an infidel like Dr. Burnley would be good manners.

“Then I told him I was worried because I knew I ought to love God better than anything but there were things I loved better than God. He said ‘What things?’ and I said flowers and stars and the Wind Woman and the Three Princesses and things like that. And he smiled and said ‘But they are just a part of God, Emily—every beautiful thing is.’”

This quote exemplifies the continuous interest that Emily and other characters have in what it means to love God, how to be a good Christian, and The Nature of God. Here, Mr. Dare gives Emily an explanation of God that seems more closely aligned with Douglas Starr’s version of God than Ellen’s or Aunt Elizabeth’s.

“When I read that the flash came, and I took a sheet of paper […] and I wrote on it: I, Emily Byrd Starr, do solemnly vow this day that I will climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.”

In a letter to both her parents, Emily describes a stanza from a poem that Dean Priest sent her, which inspires her to write her own vow to become an author when she grows up. She is determined to turn her Creativity and Self-Expression into a career.

“Emily blinked away tears and tried to laugh.

‘I—I’m sorry—you think it’s no good—’ she said.

Mr. Carpenter gave the desk a mighty thump.

‘No good! Didn’t I tell you there were ten good lines? Jade, for ten righteous men Sodom had been spared.’

‘Do you mean—that—after all—’ The candle was being relighted again.

‘Of course, I mean. If at thirteen you can write ten good lines, at twenty you’ll write ten times ten—if the gods are kind. Stop messing over months, though—and don’t imagine you’re a genius, either, if you have written ten decent lines. I think there’s something trying to speak through you—but you’ll have to make yourself a fit instrument for it.’”

Mr. Carpenter reads some of Emily’s writing and gives her honest feedback, saying he thinks a lot of it is not very good. This hurts Emily’s feelings, but Carpenter quickly tells her there are some excellent lines among the trash, which is better than most people her age can do. He believes she can become a writer but tells her that it will take a lot of work and she will need to continue to hone her skills and not get overconfident.