Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
Emily’s Quest
In a weird way, even with all its … sadness and tragedy and thwarted passion (God almighty! The thwarted passion!!) – sometimes I think Emily’s Quest is my favorite of the 3 Emily books (it’s my least favorite of the titles though. It doesn’t give a sense of the feel of the book at all.) I love this one because it, like all the others, is a blend of comedy and tragedy – we have her diary entries, we learn about her successes in writing … we get the small domestic dramas (some second cousin the next town over is convinced that Emily “put her into a story” and she’s upset about it) … and then of course the romances.
Emily still hangs out with Dean Priest – but now that she’s a woman of 19, 20, 21 years old … the dynamic shifts a bit. It is Dean’s moment, the one he has been waiting for since she was a small child. Which is kind of creepy, and reading the book – I STILL am wondering what she sees in Dean. As an adult, I mean. Other fans of the booK: what do YOU all think of Dean? What’s your response to him? As her work grows in importance and relevance, as it starts to make her some money (not a lot at first, but some) … Dean starts to resent it. He used to take her seriously – when she was a child, and her “work” was no threat to him, it might be something she would grow out of, it also made her charming and precocious … but to keep on doing it? To have a passion in life other than … him? He doesn’t like that. I don’t know. I want to smack Dean upside the head at times. He wants to CAPTURE Emily. And although I have never met the woman (uhm, she’s fictional, remember?) and I do not know her personally, I do know one thing: you should never try to CAPTURE her. And you can never expect to be the only thing in her life. She will always have her writing. It will take her away from you. Deal. Are you man enough to deal? Dean Priest is not. It is not until Emily is completely BROKEN (this book goes to some pretty dark places) that she says, “Yes, I’ll marry you, Dean.” But she is only half a person by then. Her heart has been broken. And he is partly responsible for it. He condescended to her book, the book that she poured her heart and soul into. And it’s not that she just wanted praise. Its that Dean LIED. Dean saw the special-ness of the book itself – but also saw how much it meant to her … and oh no no we can’t have THAT. We can’t have Emily have a passion other than ME. So he lied. In my opinion, he’s a selfish bastard. I can barely forgive him for that. And once he has broken her … one she has burned up her book and injured herself by falling down the stairs and nearly died … Dean thinks she is broken enough to accept being his wife. grrrr. I’m putting a dark spin on him but I don’t know – that’s what I see. Only then does Emily turn towards Dean, as something known and comforting … his demands on her soul no longer bother her because her soul has been crushed. Lovely. And Dean Priest is the kind of person who would accept half a woman, because half is better than none at all. I don’t know, I don’t like the guy. He seemed oKAY when she was a kid – but even then there was something a little too … proprietary about his affections for her. I dislike that intensely. Let Emily be. Don’t assume you know her better than she knows herself. I’ve had people treat me like that before (also on this blog) and it is infuriating!
However, just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s not interesting – quite the contrary. Dean is one of Lucy Maud’s most interesting and intriguing characters. He’s never expected, he always seems slightly creepy to me, and yet I trust Emily (fictional character that she is) – that something in her is fulfilled by their conversations. Perhaps his whimsy, his education, the fact that he has traveled the world … also the fact that he is an ADULT, and he validates that she is SPECIAL. Like her father used to do. But nobody does that for Emily now. If anything it’s the opposite. Emily isn’t like anybody else and all of the adults around her are trying to force her into a different mold, a more conventional mold. Dean does not do that. Not at first, anyway. I do not understand Emily’s attachment to Dean (anyone who said to me, “Don’t worry about your art – Your smile and your eyes will get you way further than your art ever will” can expect to have my undying hatred forever) … I am like Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Laura who wonder, “What does she see in him??” … but that just makes it all the more fascinating. And almost horrifying – to watch everything unfold. Because … that’s how life is sometimes. Things DON’T work out the way you want them to. You DO make choices that you think might be temporary and then they turn out to be permanent. There AREN’T always happy endings. You don’t end up with who you are suppoesd to end up with. You are haunted by another. Blah blah. Life tasted sweet once … there were possibilities .. .hopes … but now, no more. Give up. Give up. This is the journey that Emily goes on in this book. And there are parts of it that are so freakin’ SAD, filled with such loss … that I really related to it. I really relate to Emily. I have had attachments to men that the majority of the people in my life found inexplicable. I have resisted getting attached to anybody – because so many men have that proprietary thing going on … and I can’t bear it. Love me, but don’t feel you must OWN me. Because I won’t be owned. I have been that sad, and for that long. So I may not get why she finds Dean’s company so refreshing … but that’s not because I think there is something wrong in the book, or in Lucy Maud’s description of it. There’s nothing MISSING. It’s just my personal response to the events that unfold. I want to scream at the book, “NO! YOU CAN’T MARRY HIM, EMILY! THIS IS GOING TO BE A HUGE HUGE MISTAKE!” But Lucy Maud makes us squirm, makes us wait … it goes until almost the very last second … the situation requires a sudden reversal (very typical of Lucy Maud’s plots – a situation goes on unchanged for 25 years and then suddenly, in 5 minutes, with one or 2 sentences, the whole thing transforms. “I always loved you!” “I never forgave you.” “I never got your letter.” Etc.) And in Emily’s Quest this wait is really agonizing – the most agonizing of all of Lucy Maud’s stories. Emily’s soul is on the rack. I mean, this woman goes through the wringer. And – I love her for it. I ache for her. Tears fill my eyes when she finds happiness because it is so hard-won, so RIGHT.
Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the book – an evening with Dean Priest.
And even though the excerpt itself is a foreshadowing of what will come – a cloud hangs over the whole thing, doesn’t it?? – I love the typical Lucy Maud touch at the very end, where she talks about “thirty years later”. Too funny. Really puts some perspective on it. It’s never good to be TOO serious.
Excerpt from Emily’s Quest
“Will you miss me, Emily?”
“That goes without saying,” answered Emily lightly – too lightly. Other years she had been very frank and serious about it. Dean was not altogether regretful for the change. But he could guess nothing of the attitude of mind behind it. She must have changed because she felt something – suspected something, of what he had striven for years to hide and suppress as rank madness. What then? Did this new lightness indicate that she didn’t want to make a too important thing of admitting she would miss him? Or was it only the instinctive defence of a woman against something that implied or evoked too much?
“It will be so dreadful here this winter without you and Teddy and Ilse that I will not let myself think of it at all,” went on Emily. “Last winter was bad. And this – I know somehow – will be worse. But I’ll have my work.”
“Oh, yes, your work,” agreed Dean with a little tolerant, half-amused inflection in his voice that always came now when he spoke of her “work”, as if it tickled him hugely that she sholud call her pretty scribblings “work”. Well, one must humour the charming child. He could not have said so more plainly in words. His implications cut across Emily’s sensitive soul like a whiplash. And all at once her work and her ambitions became – momentarily at least – as childish and unimportant as he considered them. She could not hold her own conviction against him. He must know. He was so clever – so well-educated. He must know. That was the agony of it. She could not ignore his opinion. Emily knew deep down in her heart that she would never be able wholly to believe in herself until Dean Priest admitted that she could do something honestly worth while in its way. And if he never admitted it —
“I shall carry pictures of you wherever I go, Star,” Dean was saying. Star was his old nickname for her – not a pun on her name but because he said she reminded him of a star. “I shall see you sitting in your room by that old lookout window, spinning your pretty cobwebs – pacing up and down in this old garden – wandering in the Yesterday Road – looking out to sea. Whenever I shall recall a bit of Blair Water loveliness I shall see you in it. After all, all other beauty is only background for a beautiful woman.”
“Her pretty cowebs–” ah, there it was. That was all Emily heard. She did not even realise that he was telling her he thought her a beautiful woman.
“Do you think what I write is nothing but cobwebs, Dean?” she asked chokingly.
Dean looked surprised, doing it very well.
“Star, what else is it? What do you think it is yourself? I’m glad you can amuse yourself by writing. It’s a splendid thing to have a little hobby of the kind. And if you can pick up a few shekels by it – well, that’s all very well too in this kind of a world. But I’d hate to have you dream of being a Bronte or an Austen – and wake to find you’d wasted your youth on a dream.”
“I don’t fancy myself a Bronte or an Austen,” said Emily. “But you didn’t talk like that long ago, Dean. You used to think then I could do something one day.”
“We don’t bruise the pretty visions of a child,” said Dean. “But it’s foolish to carry childish dreams over into maturity. Better face facts. You write charming things of their kind, Emily. Be content with that and don’t waste your best years yearning for the unattainable or striving to reach some height far beyond your grasp.”
I must just say how much I’ve been enjoying the Montgomery posts, particularly the Emily books as I still read these every couple of years.
As for Dean, I always found the fact that he had set his sights on Emily since she was a child very disturbing indeed. And he does want to possess her completely, which is clearly not what Emily needs. Despite all this, I have twinges of sympathy for Dean because his twistedness means he’s not going to find much peace. It’s such a relief when the engagement is broken off and she can finally remove that huge emerald and write again.
Having said all that, I never really liked Teddy either because he just seemed so bland and one dimensional to me. The idea of him as this brilliant artist always seemed a bit incongruous. And the whistling thing always rankled with me a bit, as I think has been mentioned here before!
Kat – ha. Yeah, I’m not a huge Teddy fan either. Like … I know his mother was nuts and she stole the letter he sent to Emily … but what … he couldn’t say, “Emily – did you get my letter? Why have you not responded?” I’m sure Lucy Maud being Lucy Maud had him say something like: “Please don’t even respond to this letter if your answer is No” just to make it all the more awful – but STILL. Do you want to fight for this woman or let her go?? You’re gonna let her marry Dean Priest????
But they’re soulmates.
And about the whistle. I don’t know … a week ago I got a letter from an old flame. He’s basically the one that got away. I hadn’t heard from him in years – and he just wrote to me. An innocuous letter – out of nowhere – but I’ll tell you: even after all this time (and I’m over him, I really am) … when I opened my mailbox and saw the envelope – his handwriting, just the sight of it, made me go a little weak in the knees.
I admit it. It’s something primal – physical. It’s not like I felt or thought: “ohmygod, maybe he still loves me!!” No. It was just the actual SIGHT of his familiar handwriting.
I see a similarity with the Teddy-whistle thing, although I get your annoyance at it. Now if it was Gilbert Blythe whistling!!! Gilbert always seemed like a much more real male romantic “lead” than Teddy. Do you agree?
And yeah – I never really bought Teddy as this big Charles Fana Gibson style artist. Didn’t really get that from him.
Yes, you’re completely right about that jolt of recognition one can feel. I just wished Emily had fallen for someone with a bit more edge or something!
Gilbert is great. He seems like a real person, and you get a real feel of the dynamic between him and Anne, whereas I didn’t get a sense of that camaraderie between Teddy & Emily. He just puts her face in all his pictures which seems like it should be romantic, but Gilbert doing something like give up the school for Anne is much more so, to me anyway.
Kat – excellent point. Yes – Gilbert seems to make a true sacrifice, knowing it will help Anne. Teddy, uhm, steals her likeness and makes his name as an artist with it. Heh.
Also – does he have a sense of humor? I never get a feel for who Teddy IS. Not in the same way that I do with, say, Perry – who seems like a very real character, I can hear him talking, I can picture him in situations … but Teddy is a cipher.
Yes, I like Perry a lot and I love his relationship with Ilse. I love the way they both drive each other absolutely insane, but you still just get the impression that they’re having the best time together. A great couple, I’d sort of like to go out for drinks with them or something!
Kat – right, how Ilse always seems mad at him, but it’s only because she loves him and he drives her nuts?
It would be like hanging out with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Tempestuous, kind of glamorous, and kind of fun.
Ilse’s fascinating. I love her. One of Lucy Maud’s rare rebels. She doesn’t live by society’s rules. Lucy Maud doesn’t write much about people like that.
I mean, how bout her climbing out of the window on her wedding day to Teddy – to run to Perry’s side who had been in an accident?
Nuts. I love her.
Fascinating is just the right word for Ilse. She’s completely exotic & gorgeous. And it’s true, she does remain pretty much untamed which is unusual for LMM’s characters. I remember being a little bit disappointed when Anne stopped being quite so outspoken about halfway through the first book.
Thank goodness Ilse ran to Perry when she did! Ilse & Teddy together would have been unthinkable! Not as bad as Emily & Dean, but still…
Yeah – I get the sense that Ilse would have run right over Teddy.
I still can’t really imagine Emily and Teddy, you know, hanging out. Eating dinner together. Talking about taking out the trash. Saying, “Could you pass the salt?” I just can’t picture that. Maybe Emily would send a telepathic message to Teddy across the table: “pass me the salt” and Teddy, with a haunting whistle that echoes thru the ages, obeys.
I mean … what?
It’s all too soulmate-y – there’s too much poetry, no prose, if you know what I mean.
I can see Ilse and Perry together. They’ll be nuts, and flamboyant, and fight like cats and dogs – kinda like Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald (although hopefully Ilse won’t die in a fire while locked up in a mental ward. Hm.)
Yep. Dean Priest is creepy. (Not as creepy as what’s his name from the story collection who _raised_ his wife, but still).
Granted, I do see Emily’s facination with him. He’s an adult who treats her like she’s special and great the way she is. Everyone else (execpt Uncle Jimmy, mostly), wants her to change to match their ideals. Not Dean. And, he’s a well-read, well-educated, well-travelled person. Emily and her old soul needs someone to tell her there is a world beyond New Moon – a world where she is not “strange”, but “wonderful”.
He also becomes (much to his chagrin, I’m sure), a father-figure to Emily. Emily needs his approval to be validated – even when she breaks off the engagement, he still gives her her validation before he leaves.
Dean becomes more twisted and possesive as the books go on. Yet, I feel some sympathy for him. (Not much, but some). It would be hard to let go the one person in his life that has made him feel needed, loved, and special. That he’s a possesive twit by nature (all the Priests were, remember) doesn’t excuse him from lying and deciving to get what he wanted, though.
melissa –
Good call with the Priest jealousy thing – I had forgotten that.
Come to think of it – don’t all the he Priests have those gleaming weird green eyes?? Green-eyed monsters, all of ’em?
Also – for some reason – to me, Emily seems like a very well-traveled worldly person – she seems like she would be at home riding a camel in the Sahara, or sipping wine on the banks of the Seine – I could picture her in those environments – and so I forget that she is a country girl who pretty much never leaves Prince Edward Island. Not that I can tell anyway!! She gets her chance to go work for a newspaper in NYC and she turns it down – she can’t leave.
So Dean – picking up and going to Japan – or Egypt … is like an emissary from a world she had only heard about.
I still can’t forgive him for lying to her about her book. :(
OK. Now that I’ve got Dean out of my system…
I love Ilse. The whole Ilse/Teddy wedding setup is amazing. As is Ilse in general – she’s got a great talent for outrageousness and likeability that keeps her bearable. I think she and Perry are a perfect match. (their lives will never be boring, at least!)
Teddy. Um. Yeah, what you all said. I see him both not helping Emily to grow, but at least not stopping her growth.And, as Ilse said… he’s boring.
Just to be clear – I do not think there is a deep enough circle in hell for Dean Priest for lying about the book.
But, yes – Emily seems like she should be a world-traveller. (I can always see her coming back to PEI, though). The time when she gets the flash (and feels homesick too) when Dean describes Ancient Egypt, the part where she connects so well to the Japanese Prince.
That is one thing Teddy will give her – the chance to travel. And, at the end, Dean did give her a home to come back to. I was always happier that the Dissapointed House would be dissapointed no longer than that Emily and Teddy would be married….
Just weighing in on the Dean thing. I think the thing that makes him creepy for us is that sense of how he creates a different world with Emily from when she is a child, one she can only share with him, one that she can’t really discuss with anyone else (“It’s our secret Only you understand me.”). We think it’s creepy, well, because there’s no space for grown men to have those kind of friendships with pre-adolescent girls anymore. Maybe when the book was written there wasn’t such a social sense of ick about that sort of thing. Because in a lot of ways he is a sympathetic character and even though you don’t want him to marry Emily, you do want him to be okay.
Erin –
I dunno. Not sure I agree. You might be right – and I may be just having a visceral response to him. I always have.
If he were a detached older man and their relationship (especially when she reaches, I guess, the age of consent) were based on similar interests, a bit of escapism perhaps, and no expectations … it might not seem so … ikky.
Kind of like her relationship with Mr. Carpenter – which I never find creepy – even though he takes an intense interest in her, they spend a lot of one on one time together, and he is FOCUSED on her singlehandedly – as a project, almost. He picks her out of the crowd. From when she was a child – and their friendship lasts into her adult years. But that seems natural, and not weird. If Mr. Carpenter ended up proposing to her … it might taint the whole thing … know what I mean?
And there’s a sense that Dean wants to be Emily’s guru. I’ve had teachers like Dean. They are actually frustrated artists themselves … and so they discourage you, subtly, insidiously … and yet they are in a position of power. They love that power. They withhold approval, in order to keep the student needing them. That’s what I get from Dean.
Maybe I’m too close to it – but even in this excerpt today, Emily says something like – Until Dean validated her work it wouldn’t mean anything.
Teachers sometimes hold that out – as a carrot … because if they ever validate the student, then perhaps the student will, uh oh, not need them anymore!! Mr. Carpenter seems to know that the point is to make Emily a stronger writer, to get her to give up the bullshit, “omit needless words” and keep working. Keep going. Dean wants to thwart it.
This is not to say that I don’t feel bad for Dean and that – by letting Emily go – he is letting go of his one and only chance at happiness of that kind. It is truly sad. And letting her have the Disappointed House … even after everything that happened … makes me like him. Because in his sacrifice – he is giving Emily a chance.
it’s heartbreaking.
Melissa – I love the part when she gets the flash when Dean talks about Egypt – I love the writing in that section.
And you know what I also love?
That we are all discussing this so seriously.
Thank you all. I just love this.
nah, thank you, sheila – for giving all us Emily freaks a forum! I love this discussion…
This comment is more than a few years on from the original post but… I always thought Emily and Gilbert would make an interesting couple. I’ve also always wondered what Emily and Anne would think of each other had they me as girls or teen.
I’ve never thought about crossing the characters in the Emily books with the Anne books! I only went as far are laughingly thinking that Emily is like Anne’s goth cousin 😂 But now that I’m thinking more of it, how do you think Anne would of responded to Dean Priest? I think Emily grew to really like Dean because of the close relationship she had with her father before he died. Maybe Dean reminded her of that, especially with Dean saying they went to school together and were friends. But I firmly believe before the days were it had the name coined for it that the character Dean is a narcissist. I’ve done research and still am not sure where Maud’s inspiration came from respecting him, but he is a textbook narc! He groomed her, love bombed her with praise when she was a preteen and teen, but as time went in he got more and more outwardly possessive. He’d minimize her wants because they didn’t exactly measure up to his. It broke her down. She became discouraged and depressed. With that and without her writing she was kind of like a shell of herself, which seemed like what Dean wanted. An easily molded, shell of a person who lived only for him and his approval. But in the end he didn’t get what he wanted after all.
As much as he makes me squirm I’m curious if anyone has thought of like rewriting these books from Dean’s perspective, starting from his childhood, becoming friends with Emily’s future dad (sorry, forgot his name), and dealing with his family of origin, making decisions to travel widely but always coming back. If he disliked his family so much then why didn’t he just move to Egypt or something permanently? 🤔 💬