Emily of Deep Valley - Maud Hart Lovelace
A wonderful story about a young girl who feels adrift creating a place for herself in her community.
Maud Hart Loveless is apparently famous worldwide for the 'Betsy Tacy' series of children's/YA books, but I have to confess that I hadn't heard of her until I read Emily of Deep Valley for a book group last year. It's set in the same town as some of the characters from the Betsy Tacy series – Betsy makes a cameo appearance. However, this novel story follows Emily for just over a year, starting on the day when she graduates from high school, and it shows the changes that take place during that time.
I read an article by Joanna Briggs in the London Review of Books a while ago where she wrote of how refreshing it was to see moral development in children's/YA fiction, as in most adult contemporary fiction, characters don’t really change dramatically. I agree. Emily of Deep Valley is a wonderful tale of personal development, and it was loved by everyone in the book group. There are moral lessons applicable for the reader, but it's not preachy, and I feel that it would be a comfort to anyone feeling down or stuck in their lives.
The transition from high school to adulthood can be difficult but there are hints from the beginning of the narrative that it may be more difficult for Emily than for most. She's an active member of high school groups, and, like most teenagers, she socialises mostly with her school friends. In Emily's case, this social network is vital as she was orphaned at an early age, has no siblings, and lives with her elderly grandfather. Emily longs to go to college, but she also feels it's her duty to stay with her grandfather (who in any case can't see the point of education for a young woman) and she reluctantly makes the decision to stay home after graduation. The trouble is that with all her friends leaving, she finds herself alone, and slides into loneliness and a mild depression.
How to get out of this? Emily decides she needs to “muster her wits”, essentially motivating herself with a series of ideas for personal development. She starts piano lessons and dancing lessons; she asks her former teacher to lead a small study group of enthusiasts in the reading of Robert Browning's poetry, and she befriends some recently-arrived Syrian refugees. Each step leads to a virtuous circle of positive changes. For example, through knowing the Syrian children, she gets to know their mothers, and she realises that they would appreciate the opportunity to learn English, so she forms a committee to appeal to the school board for federal funding for English classes, and so on. She creates a bigger life for herself, one that embeds her in the Deep Valley community in the way that she was embedded in her school. This strand of the plot still feels contemporary – the debate at the school board hearing features many of the anti-immigrant arguments put forward today, for example.
Similarly, the Browning club and its intellectual exploration “changed the colour of Emily's winter”. It isn't just Browning's poetry that inspires her: Emily admires Browning's auto-didactism, which she can see as a model for herself. Her membership of the club also opens her mind to wider cultural interests. The group talks of Ibsen, Wagner, and the plays other members have seen in New York.
The other route out of Emily's loneliness is through forming personal relationships, and in this strand is probably what dates the story a bit. Emily's society is determinedly heteronormative: it “wasn't customary for single girls” to go to dances, they have to be asked by a man, meaning that girls like Emily miss out on social opportunities. Her high school friends see nothing wrong with leaving Emily out of activities when the boys are around, and Emily believes it's “not their fault” that she feels low when left out; today, we'd probably consider that a fairly lousy form of friendship. And when her friends return for Christmas and discover that Emily has been asked to a dance by an older boy, she grows in stature in their eyes.
While I think you'll root for Emily and be pleased with her happiness as she forges a path in life, I would have liked to see more of Miss Fowler, Emily's teacher, who seems to be content with her single life (but who is very much in the background and only appears in the plot when she serves the narrative).
What I've been reading this week
I finished episode 7 of Ulysses earlier today. I don't want to write too much about it at the moment, but I find myself reluctant to listen to it, which rarely happens to me with books. (It reminds me of reading David Copperfield for school when I was 12, and what a slog that was.) Ulysses is very clever, and very creative, and even playful – but I don't really seem to care about any of the characters very much, there's no real plot, and I find that I would happily sacrifice a bit that intelligence and creativity and playfulness for some brevity once in a while – every single chapter seems like it has padding that could be cut without negatively affecting the book. Anyway, I'll keep going. Maybe I'll fall in love with it over next week's listening.
I'm also still reading The Springs of Affection by Maeve Brennan. I was disappointed in her first few autobiographical short stories, but the stories in part two are quite different. They're tales about the same couple – Rose and Hubert Derden – seen at different points in their lives. These stories feel far more meaningful than the memories of part one. As a middle-aged couple, Rose and Hubert seem discontented with their life and with each other, and while there are some moments of remembered happiness from their courtship and early marriage, the overall tones are of contempt, dissatisfaction, and deep dislike for each other.
I also started Tiepolo Blue by James Cahill. I bought this months ago on the back of several recommendations in 'books of the year' lists for 2023, and forgot about it for a few months. I've also forgotten the plot entirely but from the opening, I suspect it's going to be a story about a starchy and repressed Cambridge art historian having his life upended...
Hope you all have a lovely week! I'll be back with another mid-twentieth-century novel next week, one of Noel Streatfeild's novels for adults, I Ordered a Table for Six.