Later this year will be Lucy Maud's Montgomery's 150th birthday. It's an excellent reason to focus on her novels. The Race Who Knows Joseph Book Club on Bookstagram will be reading them in publication order throughout 2024. I decided to join them, starting with this story from her youth.
MY THOUGHTS:
This short romance novel was from early in Montgomery's writing career. I believe she wrote it in her teens, and it was published in 1910, not long after Anne of Green Gables. Now, sit tight while I try to explain why this story makes me see red.
Eric Marshall is a young university graduate and dreamboat; a total package sort of guy all the girls drool over. And he's already being quizzed by his father and friends, at the age of 24, as to why he isn't inclined to engage himself to one of the many lovely girls he knows. The answer turns out to be that he's waiting for absolute perfection.
Anyway, Eric accepts a plea from his ailing friend, Larry, to come and do some substitute school teaching until he recuperates. There in the little backwater town on Prince Edward Island, Eric chances upon a lonely and romantic old orchard where a reclusive, stunningly beautiful girl plays violin like an angel. She turns out to be Kilmeny Gordon, whose initial reaction to Eric is one of sheer terror. She's never set eyes on another man outside of her immediate family and the egg peddler, let alone one as drop-dead gorgeous as Eric. They strike up a friendship which becomes rock solid in a matter of days.
Eric has finally discovered a girl whose beauty ticks his high standards. Her wide-eyed naivety, and inclination to treat his every word as an oracle probably exceeds his wildest dreams. She's a one-dimensional character but that suits him, for he is another.
Kilmeny cannot communicate except through her violin and her trusty slate and chalk. Her backstory involves an intriguing possibility for her muteness, since there is absolutely nothing wrong with her vocal apparatus. Even though she quickly grows to love Eric wholeheartedly, Kilmeny refuses to marry him unless, by some miracle, she acquires the power of speech. She believes it would be unfair on him to put up with a mute wife. (There's a nice bit of ableism right there, but hold on, the 'isms' keep coming.)
Eric's good friend David Baker, a clever speech specialist, deems Kilmeny's silence psychological, which makes the whole stalemate extra tricky.
Maybe I'd rank this book higher if not for the plight of poor Neil, the boy of Italian descent who's partly Kilmeny's adopted cousin and partly a convenient plot device. The Gordon family are convinced they've always done right by Neil, who was born beneath their roof. They even, 'had him baptised, same as any Christian child.' Nice one, dudes! Reading between the lines, it's clear to the modern reader (although apparently not to LMM herself), that he's always suffered filthy racism and been kept at arm's length by his nearest and dearest, who just can't see what they've done to him. Neil, in his own tragic way, bears a 'curse of the innocent' as much as Kilmeny is said to do.
It's no wonder he has a sullen countenance! And I totally get why, after loving and caring for Kilmeny for so long, he'd develop an intense grudge against Eric, this smug Marty Stu character who breezes in and wins everyone's hearts after three measly weeks.
Neil's running away is treated as a blessing, which elicits a sigh of relief all round. No member of the Gordon family will try to track him down, even though he's been with them since he drew his first breath. Uncle Thomas' self-righteous, 'We have cared for him as our own...' is super-hypocritical in light of his earlier instruction to Kilmeny not to make an equal of Neil. Yet he can't see it. You see, to them, the tainted Mediterranean blood that flows through Neil's veins makes him a potentially volatile, embarrassing second-class citizen. My gosh, the whole Gordon family attitude is appalling!
But hey, it's happily ever after for everyone but Neil. Eric the newcomer, backed by his father's considerable Canadian lineage and wealth, wins the girl and nobody is happier to see the back of Neil than he. Kilmeny can at last give her fingers a break from scribbling so fast on that slate. She was as chatty and effusive with her pencil as Anne of Green Gables was with her tongue, and wrote such very long speeches, Eric must have waited around twiddling his thumbs a lot. And there is absolutely no need for Uncle Thomas and Aunt Janet to take a good, hard look at themselves, since Neil has conveniently removed himself from the picture. 'We have made more of him than we should,' Thomas decides. Charming way to regard your own adopted son.
(Sigh) Although I aim to overlook the standards of their own eras when ranking old novels, sometimes one comes along that pushes my buttons a bit too hard. My low score here is mostly about the triggers, but I also feel Maud was still finding her voice and perfecting her craft when she wrote this book. She's given Kilmeny's parents a melodramatic history which puts me in mind of the sensational stories that Anne and her friends wrote for their Story Club. And Kilmeny and Eric's relationship is a bit too saccharine sweet. She's a perfect fairy tale princess and he's Prince Charming. Lucy Maud Montgomery does Disney here. It wouldn't surprise me if Maud ended up agreeing with me, since she eventually decided love scenes were a challenge for her. This is probably her most lovey-dovey attempt at fiction.
I'm willing to wonder if Montgomery might have even agreed with my one-star ranking for this early novel of hers, and lampooned it herself down the track. Overall, I'm so glad she became a more sensitive writer who gave her characters far more depth as she progressed.
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