Emily of New Moon

The Writer’s Novel

Montgomery always maintained that Emily Starr was closer to herself than Anne Shirley ever was. Emily of New Moon, published in 1923, has the feeling of a novel written with a different kind of pressure — a portrait not of the charming, social child Montgomery made famous, but of the specific, solitary, intensely literary child she herself had been.

Emily is ten when her father dies and she is sent to the austere Murray family at New Moon Farm. Like Anne, she is an orphan sent to live with relatives who did not especially want her. Unlike Anne, she is not primarily defined by her social gifts and appetite for belonging. She is defined by her need to write.

Emily and Anne

The comparison between the two heroines is instructive. Anne transforms the world through her imagination and her talk — she makes the world around her brighter by narrating it. Emily observes the world and writes it down. She has what she calls “the flash” — sudden moments of piercing beauty and perception that feel like glimpses behind the surface of things. She knows from very early that she is a writer, and every pressure brought against her — Aunt Elizabeth’s hostility, her teacher Mr. Carpenter’s deliberately harsh criticism, the social expectation that writing is not a suitable female ambition — is resisted with a stubbornness that Anne’s more flexible nature never required.

Aunt Elizabeth

Aunt Elizabeth Murray is one of Montgomery’s greatest achievements in characterisation. She is strict, cold, unjust in her treatment of Emily, and absolutely resistant to any display of sentiment. She is also not a villain. She is a woman shaped by a culture that valued discipline and duty above warmth, and her incapacity for demonstrated affection is precisely calibrated as failure rather than malice. The reader understands her and resists her at the same time, which is exactly what Montgomery intends.

The Landscape

New Moon Farm and its surroundings are rendered with the particular intensity of Montgomery’s most engaged nature writing. The old farm, the Blair Water, the Disappointed House — these have the quality of places experienced in childhood and never entirely left behind. Montgomery’s PEI in this novel is less pastoral than in the Anne books, more ancient and strange, as befits a protagonist whose relationship to the world is aesthetic and spiritual rather than social.

Our rating: 4.4/5 — Montgomery’s most personally felt novel and perhaps her finest achievement — a portrait of artistic vocation in childhood that remains without equal in its genre.

A More Personal Heroine

When Montgomery published Emily of New Moon in 1923, she had been writing Anne books for fifteen years, and she turned with evident relief to a new heroine she considered closer to her own nature than Anne had ever been. Emily Byrd Starr is, by Montgomery’s own account, the most autobiographical of her creations — not the charming, social, belonging-hungry child who made her famous, but the solitary, intensely literary, fiercely private child Montgomery herself had been. The shift produces a darker, more inward novel, and many readers and critics regard it as her finest single achievement precisely because of the unguarded personal pressure behind it.

The Vocation to Write

What most distinguishes Emily from Anne is the nature of her gift. Anne transforms the world through imagination and talk, brightening her surroundings by narrating them; Emily observes the world and writes it down, possessed by a compulsion she can neither choose nor suppress. Montgomery’s portrait of this drive is one of the truest accounts of artistic vocation in all of children’s literature. Emily writes because she must, on whatever scraps come to hand, against every pressure brought to bear — her aunt’s hostility, her teacher’s deliberately harsh criticism, the social conviction that authorship is no fit ambition for a girl. Her experience of “the flash,” those sudden piercing moments of beauty that feel like glimpses behind the surface of things, gives the novel a spiritual dimension absent from the more social Anne books.

Aunt Elizabeth and the Murray World

Emily’s home at New Moon Farm, presided over by her stern Aunt Elizabeth, gives the novel its moral complexity. Aunt Elizabeth is one of Montgomery’s greatest characterizations: cold, unjust in her treatment of Emily, resistant to any display of sentiment — and yet not a villain. She is a woman shaped by a culture that prized discipline and duty above warmth, and her incapacity for shown affection registers as failure rather than malice. The reader understands and resists her at once. Around this central relationship, Montgomery renders the old farm, the Blair Water, and the Disappointed House with the intensity of places experienced in childhood and never wholly left behind — a PEI less pastoral than Anne’s and more ancient and strange, fitting for a heroine whose deepest relationship to the world is aesthetic and spiritual rather than social.

The First of a Trilogy

Emily of New Moon opened a trilogy — followed by Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest — that traces its heroine’s growth into a working writer, and the first volume remains the strongest and most personally felt. Montgomery’s portrait of institutional discouragement, of a child’s gift met with hostility however well-intentioned, gives the book a moral seriousness rare in children’s literature of its era. Emily endures her aunt’s coldness and her teacher Mr. Carpenter’s deliberately harsh criticism, and emerges from both not crushed but confirmed in her vocation. As an account of artistic compulsion in childhood — the simple, undeniable fact that Emily cannot help writing and cannot stop — it stands without equal in its genre, and many readers come to regard it, rather than the more famous Anne books, as Montgomery’s truest achievement.