Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Kilmeny of the Orchard
This book is ridiculous. Doesn’t mean I haven’t read it a bunch of times – because some of the writing (the nature writing in particular) – is good – and also, it’s Lucy Maud – so I’ve read all of her books multiple times – but the premise is ridiculous, the very REALITY of the book is ridiculous – it’s like you have to blind your eyes to REALITY in order to accept this book.
Here are some of the themes:
— Looks are all that matter. Kilmeny is described as literally the most beautiful girl in the world. Therefore: she is good. Anyone with a physical deformity of any kind should be ashamed of themselves – because basically that means that they have something ugly in their souls.
— If you have foreign blood in you (meaning: anything other than Scotch or British) – you are not to be trusted.
— You must believe in deus ex machinae. Kilmeny has not spoken for most of her life (for no apparent reason) – and at the very moment when she needs to – out comes her voice!!!
— Oh and if you’re mute? You should be ashamed and hide yourself away from the world And if you’re a person who falls in love with a mute, then you must treat it as the biggest tragedy that has ever befallen you.
I mean, I guess it was a different time – yadda yadda – more provincial, there was more open prejudice against, you know, evil people like … ITALIANS … but for the most part, I am not confronted with the fact that Lucy Maud wrote her books at the beginning of the 20th century – her stuff still reads well, it’s not sentimental or treacly – but this one? I read it and I want to bust in on all the morons living their stupid provincial racist lives and say, “Okay, guys, here’s the deal, mkay? Just because he is half-Italian does not automatically mean that he is more prone to murder. That’s the first thing. Second of all: who gives a crap that she’s mute? Why does she have to never leave her farm in shame? Why are you all bummed out that she’s mute? And lastly: Kilmeny is obviously meant to be a supermodel or something. Dude: STOP obsessing on how beautiful she is. She’s not PERFECT, just because she’s a babealicious babealolio. Let her be HUMAN, how ’bout that? Stop being so focused on her beauty.”
So the story is: Eric Marshall is a 24 year old schoolteacher – and Lucy Maud makes some vague reference to the fact that he has been having a hard time recently. Maybe living a wild life? Running away from the expectations of his father? So he comes to this small sleepy town, and boards with someone, and teaches – and is basically all wrapped up in himself. Until one day – on a walk – he comes across THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD, standing in the woods. I think 2 pages are given to describing every nook and cranny of Kilmeny’s stupid beauty. We hear about the flush on the cheek, the teeny lovable dimple, the long lashes, the creamy skin, the long black hair … it goes on and on and on.
Lucy Maud makes Kilmeny’s beauty a fetish. It’s bizarre. She never really comes to life.
But anyway – blah blah – turns out Kilmeny never leaves her house – she sits there day in day out because she is mute, and this is the most shameful thing in the world. But – she can HEAR. She just can’t speak. Nobody can understand why. She has a little slate around her neck and writes what she wants to say on that. You get the sense that there are some deep psychological issues with this babealicious babealoliio. She lives with her very strict aunt and uncle – her mother is dead. There are many many romantic and dramatic secrets in Kilmeny’s past. And poor Eric just wants to be her friend. Yeah, right, Eric. You just want to be her friend. WhatEVS. Get a life, Eric.
Oh, and Kilmeny has a half-brother or something like that – and he has Italian blood in him (cue evil music) – and Eric has an immediate revulsion to him. But it just comes off as racist or stupid the way Lucy Maud writes it. It’s not anything in his CHARACTER that causes the revulsion. It is the FOREIGN-NESS of him.
Get over it, Lucy. Sheesh. Big world outside of Canada with all kinds of races and peoples living good lives. Get over your damn Scotch Presbyterian self. Also: are you aware that some people who are babealicious babealolios actually have ugly mean little souls? Outer beauty is NOT everything. Stop making a fetish of it. Kilmeny could very well be a bitch on wheels – her beauty has nothing to do with her inner self.
Anyway, I do like the writing in this excerpt. Eric goes to speak with Kilmeny’s strict aunt and uncle (whom he has never met) – basically to ask permission to hang out with Kilmeny. I just like the description of this old-timey room. Lucy Maud is able to make me go back in time in such excerpts.
Oh, and Eric is good-looking. And he knows it. He’s a metrosexual in 1910. I dislike Eric, too. He’s a shallow looks-obsessed pretty boy.
Excerpt from Kilmeny of the Orchard
Eric walked into the parlour and sat down as bidden. He found himself in the most old-fahioned room he had ever seen. The solidly made chairs and tables, of some wood grown dark and polished with age, made even Mrs. Williamson’s “parlour set” of horsehair seem extravagantly modern by contrast. The painted floor was covered with round braided rugs. On the centre table was a lamp, a Bible, and some theological volumes contemporary with the square-runged furniture. The walls, wainscoted half way up in wood and covered for the rest of it with a dark, diamond-patterned paper, were hung with faded engravings, mostly of clerical-looking bewigged personages in gowns and bands.
But over the high, undecorated black mantel-piece, in a ruddy glow of sunset light striking through the window, hung one which caught and held Eric’s attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was the enlarged “crayon” photograph of a young girl, and, in spite of the crudity of the execution, it was easily the centre of interest in the room.
Eric at once guessed that this must be the picture of Margaret Gordon, for, although quite unlike Kilmeny’s sensitive, spirited face in general, there was a subtle, unmistakable resemblance about brow and chin.
The pictured face was a very handsome one, suggestive of velvety dark eyes and vivid colouring; but it was its expression rather than its beauty which fascinated Eric. Never had he seen a countenance indicative of more intense and stubborn will power. Margaret Gordon was dead and buried; the picture was a cheap and inartistic production in an impossible frame of gilt and plush; yet the vitality in that face dominated its surroundings still. What then must have been the power of such a personality in life?
Eric realized that this woman could and would have done whatsoever she willed, unflinchingly and unrelentingly. She could stamp her desire on everything and everybody about her, moulding them to her wish and will, in their own despite and in defiance of all the resistance they might make. Many things in Kilmeny’s upbringing and temperament became clear to him.
“If that woman had told me I was ugly I should have believed her,” he thought. “Ay, even though I had a mirror to contradict her. I should never have dreamed of disputing or questioning anything she might have said. The strange power in her face is almost uncanny, peering out as it does from a mask of beauty and youthful curves. Pride and stubbornness are its salient characteristics. Well, Kilmeny does not at all resemble her mother in expression and only very slightly in feature.”
I could just be forgetting, but I don’t think I’ve ever read Kilmeny. I’ve heard quite a lot about how not-amazing it is, though, so I’m not too dismayed. Still, if I ever should happen to come across a copy I’ll read it, because it’s LMM.
Yeah, 2 pages into the description of Kilmeny and I’m like: I get it, I get it, she’s gorgeous. Let’s move ON.
I have to check her journals to see what was going on with LM at the point that she wrote this – I think it was her first book after Anne … that might be wrong. I have to check.
Also:
//”If that woman had told me I was ugly I should have believed her,” he thought. “Ay, even though I had a mirror to contradict her.”//
Oh, get OVER yourself you vain popinjay!
I’ve been thinking about flaws and trajectories for a while now, trying to put into words why I despise the victim mentality in politics and literary criticism. This post somes close to elucidating it – you like LMM, despite her flaws. You don’t put down the rest of her work becuase of this one. You don’t expect her to see things in a modern light. And, to be honest, the southern European immigrants of her day brought a lot of crime and social upheaval – that’s a fact. She didn’t see beyond that, but how many people did, in her generation and social circle? If it weren’t for the disapproval expressed by the establishment, the criminal elements might have ahad a much freer reign in the immigrant communities, too.
But the key is that society was progressive: LMM’s morality helped shape the people of the next generation who eventually integrated the immigrants into Candian and American society, because LMM’s generation had some good in them too, and they were moving in the right direction.
The people who throw out the baby with the bathwater in lit crit tend to see the world as a series of snapshots, and looking at one picture they scream about how horrible white men/America/Western civilization are / is. What they miss is that life is a movie, not a still. Things change, people change, and we would not be the people we are today if it were not for the flawed people who came before us. Flawed yes, but also on the right path. The seeds of 1964 are right there in the Constitution and Declaration. “All men are created equal.” All it took is for some people to get up and say “black people are people too”, and the descnedents of the people that created the Declaration, but accepted slavery in the Constitution, suddenly broke through the blinders, applied the ethos of the Declaration to everyone, and embraced civil liberties for all. It was a continuation, not a revolution.
Trajectories do matter – in fact they may be the only things that do matter. When I look at China and Taiwan in the 1970s, I see 2 countries both under martial law. But the trajectories were very different. Today Taiwan has freedoms and prosperity given only to a few in the coastal cities of China, and even then given with the threat that they can be withdrawn at any time. But in the 60s and 70s, commie stooges could and did point out the repressions of the GMD to say “they’re no worse than us”. But yes, the GMD was better than the CCP – time has shown us how their paths diverged.
Sorry for the long comment, I was sort of thinking out loud on the keyboard, as it were.
John, I mean, sure. But progress means we can look back and say “Hey. That was racist.”
It’s glaring here and elsewhere in her work in particular because she was so empathetic to so many different kinds of people – her books are fully populated with three-dimensional people, all of whom she seems to understand.
It was interesting actually visiting PEI–I learned a lot about the history of the island. I had no idea just how much antagonism there was between the Scottish settlers and the French Canadians. The levels of vitriol that are still there today are astonishing, and it was worse by several orders of magnitude in LMM’s time. So after learning about that, in reading her books I’m surprised that the French Canadian hired help and their Scottish employers didn’t try to kill each other–although I suppose that might be a little disrupting to the narrative!
Kilmeny is described as literally the most beautiful girl in the world.
I seem to remember several tween books in which this description was applied. It does make the mind bend.
And btw, Italians are evil.
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I really enjoyed reading these reviews. At least they are written by people who truly love and appreciate literature and can make thoughtful assessments.
I guess the main thing that stuck out to me was the huge disparity in plot, charater depth and development, and pacing between this and Anne of Green Gables. I’ve loved Anne of Green Gables since childhood. It is so well written that, not only was it interesting to read as a kid, but it is still engaging for me to read today.
Kilmeny of the Orchard seems to be the sentimental, sloppy, teenage tripe of a first novel. I can’t imagine that it was written after Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea. She must have been going through something when she wrote it, and even then I would think that an author of L.M. Montgomery’s talent would have thought twice about publishing it.
Very strange.
Dianna – excellent point. It is an odd experience, reading Kilmeny … I agree that she must have been going through something when she wrote it. The way she really really focuses on everyone’s surface – what everyone looks like – it’s so not like her!
Actually, I don’t think it’s that bad. Romantic novels are full of perfectly beautiful heroines.
She is prejudiced against Italians, it’s true, but it was fairly common to be prejudiced in 19th- early 20th century literature. (I wrote a thesis about this) We would like it if our favourite writers weren’t but nobody is perfect. I wonder what future readers would find offensive in 21th century politically correct books.
Kilmeny is mute because she suffered praenatal traumas (her mother was emotionally disturbed during her pregnancy). Do you remember the family situation? Her father turned out to be a bigamist, so Kilmeny was an illegitimate child. Both big scandals at that time. I think both her muteness and that she never left the farm were because of the harmful behaviour of her mother. She totally traumatised her and bullied the whole family. If I remember well, her uncle and aunt tried to take her to church but she wouldn’t go.
By the way the Italian guy is not a half-brother, he is a foundling and the family raised him, they are not related.
“Lucy Maud makes some vague reference to the fact that he has been having a hard time recently. Maybe living a wild life? Running away from the expectations of his father?” Where is this in the books? I think he is working there as a substitute teacher for a few month to help out a friend who is sick. It is also kind of a holiday for him before entering the family business. He is not running away from it, that is what he wants to do. And he wasn’t living a wild life, just graduated from college in the first chapter.
I’m glad you found so much in the book. I think it stinks, as I’ve said.
Kilmeny the character is a bore and the hero is a bore, too. The plot is bossy and manipulative, and the compulsive descriptions of how beautiful Kilmeny is makes the book read very strangely. Like: we get it, we get it, chick is gorgeous. What else does she have to offer.
If Lucy Maud’s every book was like Kilmeny, then she would not have the reputation she has today.
I don’t want Lucy Maud to be perfect, so please don’t lump me in with your “we would like it if …” I think her racism in this book makes her look stupid, and I call it out. Her writing is usually more psychologically astute and subtle.
Lady wrote 40 something books, there’s plenty more to choose from.
Well, I happen to have the book at home taken from the library to follow a study on LMM… and I didn’t read it yet. But I saw your comments and mad a quick search on the net, and verified that this story was based on an epic poem by James Hogg, based on Scottish folklore and balads. So thebasic plot was not original.
James Hogg (born 1770) was an illiterate shepheard until the age of 14, raised by a mother who collected old Scottish ballads. he was protected by his employer, James Laidlaw, who helped him to learn to read and write. His protector “introduced him to Sir Walter Scott, who asked him to help with a publication entitled The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border”… hence between the influence of his mother and Walter Scott’s, his best production was the EPIC POEM called “The Queen’s Wake”, vaguely reffering to the tortured life of Queen Mary, who was also a child of a bigamous father, and with many traumas like Kilmeny… Therefore, being based on an already irrealistic plot, in a poetic form, this work by LMM tended to be quite artificial and melodramatic. It is a pity that she couldn’t get rid of the original form/style and mindset, turning it into a more modern point of view, that was hers.
As for the circumstances of her life that may have influenced this sad, irrealistic story, you have to remember that her grandmother was dying and she was bound to stay with her most of the time, and although she was earning very good money at that time, she could not spend it as she would have liked, because her grandmother wouldn’t allow her to improve the house ( as she wished to, and could afford), and she couldn’t meet her secret fiancé or travel as she so much wanted. (DO read her diaries! They are even more interesting than the novels and explain many of episodes in the novels)
She only did all that after grandmother died and she married: she left grandmother’s house, married, furnished her own home in Ontario, and had a honeymoon in England and Scotland that lasted over two months!
Yet I agree that the book, as it is, doesn’t correspond to the spirit of her age and even less to her general positive style, no matter how much she usually abuses of description…
Maria Ingwall
Here is a resume of what I found in the net:
James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded.[1] His father, Robert Hogg (1729–1820), was a tenant farmer while his mother, Margaret Hogg (née Laidlaw) (1730–1813), was noted for collecting native Scottish ballads.[1][2] James was the second eldest of four brothers, his siblings being William, David, and Robert (from eldest to youngest).[3] Robert and David later emigrated to the United States, while James and William remained in Scotland for their entire lives.[3]
James had little formal education, and became a shepherd, living in grinding poverty, hence his nickname, ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’. His employer, James Laidlaw of Blackhouse in the Yarrow valley, seeing how hard he was working to improve himself, offered to help by making books available. Hogg used these to essentially teach himself to read and write (something he had achieved by the age of 14). In 1796 Robert Burns died, and Hogg, who had only just come to hear of him, was devastated by the loss. He struggled to produce poetry of his own, and Laidlaw introduced him to Sir Walter Scott, who asked him to help with a publication entitled The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
[edit] Writing career
In 1801, Hogg visited Edinburgh for the first time. His first collection, The Mountain Bard, was published in 1807 but he struggled to make an impact on the literary scene. Another venture, a magazine, The Spy failed after a year. But his epic story-poem, The Queen’s Wake (the setting being the return to Scotland of Mary, Queen of Scots (1561) after her exile in France), was published in 1813 and was a success. Now a well-known literary figure (if often mocked for his rustic accent and appearance), he was recruited by William Blackwood for Blackwood’s Magazine.
It was through Blackwood’s that Hogg found fame, although it was not the sort that he wanted
Hello everyone, I just finished reading this book. Although many of us end up feeling disappointment within the story especially over the simplicity and frequent lack of depth; I wanted to point out the strong impact the novel has on transporting you to a magical place. My point, isn’t anyone wondering what this place is like in person, and dying to see it? I looked up Prince Edward Island, orchards, and even Linsday. No search is anywhere near the beauty we envisioned while reading this book. As simple and naive as the story itself might be, there’s no way to be mad at it. Life in that time, and such places, were often that painstakingly simple. Even if our minds crave complexity, it seemed deceiving to my heart to want something so pure and simple, tainted with any twist of evil. There’s many things that puzzle us; Eric who seems to be smart and good hearted, yet so shallow and obsessive? While Kilmeny’s outward beauty was what some call “too much of a focus” let’s not forget Eric fell for her natural talents. Her violin skills, ability to communicate emotions through music, her wits and vast knowledge through books. Yes, there were many old fashioned ideals, but there are also wonderful lessons learned. I believe L.M. didn’t necessarily have to be going through a hard time to write this. How could she, with such scenery, and hope in Eric’s heart. He saw both her inner and outer beauty! If he were as shallow as we say he was, he would’ve gone for pretty ladies and be quite the Casanova well before meeting Kilmeny. But we see here the apparent fascination a man or anyone else can have with something rare. Kilmeny was a rarity. With childish innocence, and a curse, she was as fascinating to Eric as a specimen is for a scientist. I often found this a bit disturbing but realized it wasn’t coming from a bad place, and Kilmeny wasn’t naive. She fell for him as well, yet kept her composure. What I take from this novel is the simple lesson to not give up on love. I truly enjoyed how calm Eric always was and seemed to use the best, most honest arrangement of words during any argument. What struck me most disappointing was the abrupt ending. All in all, a light read. Above anything else, I wish to visit this orchard or what ever place inspired for such a tale! If anyone has a clue please say so! :)