“Little pitchers have big ears.” (Emily of New Moon, Chapter 17)

Courtesy of Christina Morrison

(From Sarah: This is the thirteenth guest post in “‘A world of wonderful beauty’: L.M. Montgomery at 150,” which began on October 30th. You can find all the contributions to the blog series here . There’s one more post in the series and it’s an essay by me, entitled “Stories, Girls, and ‘The Vanished Years.’” I’ll share it here tomorrow, on Montgomery’s 150th birthday, November 30th. Thanks for celebrating with us!)

In Eavesdropping in the Novel from Austen to Proust (2003), Ann Gaylin argues that eavesdropping “exposes the paradox of representing the ideology of separate spheres, in that the portrayal of private space requires the narrative violation of that area supposedly impervious to intrusion.” Indeed, this paradox is reflected in the etymology of the word “eavesdropping”: under the eaves, outside listening in. In a typical eavesdropping scene, a powerless person attains secret knowledge about others and/or self through private information garnered when listening from within an enclosed space: eavesdropping from behind draped windows and doorways and from closets is particularly popular; eavesdropping from under parlour tables or from overhead kitchen lofts or church steps less so.

Gaylin begins with examples of eavesdropping in much grander scenes than L.M. Montgomery’s Emily trilogy: those from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that initiate and resolve Elizabeth Bennet’s narrative arc. The title of Gaylin’s first chapter, “I’m all ears: Pride and Prejudice, or the story behind the story,” has been a clear influence on a line of wallflowers (I recognize, of course, that Elizabeth is nobody’s wallflower), a line that leads to Julia Quinn’s creation of Bridgerton’s (assumed powerless) wallflower Penelope Featherington. Gaylin argues that the theme of identity formation in Austen’s novel is strongly connected to that of the porous boundaries between gendered spheres and the “tenuousness of the false binary” between private and public, themes that are equally clear—perhaps even more so—in later novels such as Montgomery’s Emily trilogy from the 1920s and Quinn’s Bridgerton novels from the 2000s, both periods when modes of acquiring and transmitting information were rapidly changing.

Montgomery’s Emily trilogy has scenes of both inadvertent overhearing, as with Austen’s Elizabeth, and covert eavesdropping, as with Quinn’s Penelope, that align with transgressive power plays to attain private information, such as unsanctioned reading of diaries and letters, and disseminating this information through gossip. In Austen, Quinn, and Montgomery, it is especially the eavesdropping undertaken by those deemed small and powerless that profile power struggles at the core of identity formation. With Emily, as with Penelope, there is the added layer of negotiating boundaries of what is ethical to include in one’s writing.

In the Emily trilogy, the eavesdropping scenes, like those of snooping and gossip, raise non-negotiable questions about the social practice of applying different rules for children and adults—for Montgomery, this is blatantly wrong—and more subtle questions concerning Emily’s identity formation and apprenticeship as an ethically empathic storyteller. There are several eavesdropping scenes that are primarily about game-playing power struggles in Emily of New Moon, such as those in Chapter 16, “Check for Miss Brownell” (“check” having the double entendre of “watch out” and “checkmate”): Rhoda’s eavesdropping and snitching on Emily reading her poetry to Ilse, and the aftermath of this episode, the hilarious scene of Perry’s eavesdropping from the “blackhole,” the kitchen loft, on Miss Brownell’s one-sided reporting of Emily’s behaviour at school. It is, however, the more nuanced questions that eavesdropping raises about public and private identity and Emily’s storytelling that I will focus on here.

The most obvious eavesdropping scene occurs early in Emily of New Moon, and while Emily does not gain any power or influence from what she overhears—who will be adopting her—it prepares for later eavesdropping scenes. Domestic space, the parlour, itself often a feminized space (as opposed to the male domain of office, study, or library), has been converted to a public space, even a public forum on the fate of Emily Byrd Starr. Gaylin compares the parlour to a threshold because “[i]n both sites, public and private spheres and activities converge; boundaries are fluid” with eavesdropping profiling “the importance of boundaries in the very moment and act of their being defied.” The title of Chapter 4— “A Family Conclave,” which denotes a private and often secret meeting—underscores this liminality: the Murrays have converged on Starr terrain, and their proceedings are being judged and will be circulated beyond the family conclave by Ellen Greene. The narrator hedges on the legitimacy of Emily’s eavesdropping from beneath the parlour table as a transgressive practice because Emily knows no better, but for Aunts Ruth and Elizabeth, Emily is categorically a “shameless little eavesdropper.” Meanwhile, under the table, Emily has been honing her observational and writerly skills of description and narration as she silently (for the most part) partakes of the courtroom drama of custodial responsibility, mentally defending herself and taking humorous jabs at the opposition as conveyed through the narrator’s parenthetical insertions.

Powerless once discovered, Emily at first judges herself as others have done—as a sinful transgressor—but purges the pain and humiliation by writing it out and finds satisfaction that her impressions of her relatives—her own secret knowledge—remain private. This will prove to be an illusion when Aunt Elizabeth later asserts what she thinks her right as an adult to read Emily’s private writing. Aunt Ruth is even more aggressive as she riffles through Emily’s private property to expose her niece’s slyness. The adults may not engage in shameless eavesdropping on private conversations, but reading private or intimate conversations that one has with oneself in diaries is not considered trespassing. (Aunt Elizabeth does learn to respect Emily’s boundaries, which, it might be argued, makes her a better listener to Emily’s stories later in the trilogy.)

The second main eavesdropping scene occurs in Chapter 4 of Emily Climbs, aptly titled “‘As Ithers See Us.’” While the narrator says that the earlier scene “had been voluntary, while this was compulsory,” a qualification immediately follows with “at least, the Mother Hubbard had made it compulsory,” “compulsory” because Emily thinks the wrapper makes her look “ridiculous.” The occupation in which Emily is engaged when the two inveterate gossips, Mrs. Ann Cyrilla and Miss Beulah Potter, intrude—the traditional sanding of the floor in a herringbone pattern—is a matter of family pride, but along with hearing about herself as “ithers” see her, she hears about how they perceive the Murrays: as “mean” or penny-pinching, as old-fashioned, and . . . well, as “ridiculous.” Having been caught eavesdropping from a boot closet does not deter Queen Emily; it is the pity that these gossips express towards the Murrays and their invading private lives to humiliate the Murrays publicly that Emily finds so disturbing.

Like the first eavesdropping scene, this second one finds Emily replaying and learning from what she has heard, but much more extensively and deeply than the first time, as she now takes a “dispassionate” and honest view of what she has heard. As an empathic storyteller—or quite simply as a sensitive and empathic human being—this is a vital step: to remove herself far enough from the scene so that she can widen her lens and understand that there are multiple ways of listening (not just hearing) and understanding others and self. This comes only with Emily’s growing confidence that she cannot “live in other people’s opinions” (the public view) but must continue to believe in herself and to “live in” her own truth of herself. As Emily moves from poetry to storytelling as her preferred medium, this skill will be essential, the balancing—indeed, the blurring—of her own sense of self and the ability to see the world, including herself, as “ithers” do.

Just before this second eavesdropping scene is “In the Watches of the Night” (Chapter 3), the scene of Mad Mr. Morrison, which perhaps more than any other episode in the trilogy raises two related ethical questions: the ethics of eavesdropping on intimate scenes and the private terrain of the mind, and the ethics of eavesdropping on real people for artistic content. The artist’s dilemma of how to use their resource material responsibly and ethically is a thread that runs throughout the trilogy. Both these questions are raised when, as a prelude to the drama about to take place involving Mr. Morrison, Emily is in church observing and playing a “game of guessing” about the “inner, secret lives” and “hidden motives and passions” of the “public assemblage.” Our aspiring storyteller relishes the “sense of power” this game gives her.

Although this prelude is more visual than aural, the gothic drama that follows is clearly aural as Emily hears Mr. Morrison with his “dreadful, inhuman laughter” as he seeks his lost Annie. Later, in the coda to this drama, after Teddy has been mysteriously summoned by Emily’s call, “the artist in him” has a visual response to the scene. He thinks that he would like to paint this man and “the ageless quest in his hollow, sunken eyes,” but there is no indication that Teddy ever does so. Instead, he sends the old man on his way with the encouraging words that “I think you will find [Annie] sometime.”

Nor for Emily do the cries of the “heart-broken old man” inspire her to become a conduit of his story for public consumption, although she does think that she might tell Ilse and “bind her to secrecy.” But does Emily ever tell this story to Ilse? She more likely records the evening’s events as a chilling anecdote in her private diary. Unlike the “dramatic possibilities” of the sounds of the storm before she witnesses Mr. Morrison’s “inhuman laughter,” and which she imagines incorporating into a novel someday, Mr. Morrison’s very human story is one that Emily has experienced so intimately through her fear of being touched, caressed, by him that it must be given the sanctity of privacy. Moreover, it is a story that she has experienced in a moment of inadvertent eavesdropping, therefore not one that she can ethically tell, and must remain her own secret knowledge.

But she does take this secret knowledge forward into her life when she is later able to empathize with Mrs. Kent and her story, another story that is too intimate, too personal, too private, and that will not find itself into the public domain via Emily the storyteller. It might be argued that both Mr. Morrison and Mrs. Kent are archetypal characters and their narratives are ageless and so essentialized rather than particularized, but Emily has experienced their particular stories firsthand and is learning about respecting boundaries, however blurred, between private lives and public discourse. Mr. Morrison’s and Mrs. Kent’s are not her stories to tell, nor is she really ready (if she ever will be) to tell the intimate stories—theirs and hers—that transpired “in the watches of the night.”

At the end of Chapter 3, Emily feels that “somehow” she has “grown up all at once tonight.” Although there is still growing to do, Emily’s evolving understanding of the need for respecting her own soul (or humanness) and the souls (or humanness) of others is a powerful statement about privacy, publicity, boundaries, and ethically empathic storytelling. In the prelude to this eavesdropping scene, Emily has found “power” in trespassing on the souls of others; in the coda to this scene, she is learning about respecting humanness and the “power” to resist doing so.

Quotations are from the Tundra edition of Emily of New Moon and Emily Climbs (2014). Thank you to Christina Morrison for permission to include her illustrations from the Emily of New Moon graphic novel.

Lesley D. Clement, past visiting scholar at the L.M. Montgomery Institute (2019–21) and a consulting editor of the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, has held teaching and administrative positions at various Canadian universities, most recently Lakehead-Orillia. She is (co-)editor for the Vision Forum and the Vision, Mental Health, International Notes, Re-vision, and Back-to-the-Future collections of the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies. She has published on visual literacy, visual culture, empathy, and death in picture books and in Montgomery’s writings. Her work on Montgomery appears in Studies in Canadian Literature, L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys (ed. Clement and Bode), L.M. Montgomery and the Matter of Nature(s) (ed. Bode and Mitchell), the Journal of L.M. Montgomery Studies, L.M. Montgomery and Gender (ed. Pike and Robinson), and Children and Childhoods in L.M. Montgomery (ed. Bode, Clement, Pike, Steffler). She is the co-chair of the Scientific (Programming) Committee for the IBBY 2026 Congress to be held in Ottawa.

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Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:

L.M. Montgomery and the Lucky Cat, by Susannah Fullerton

Books and Chums, by Trinna S. Frever

Read more about my books, including St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade, Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues, and Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, here.

Guest post copyright Lesley Clement 2024; illustration copyright Christina Morrison 2024; additional text copyright Sarah Emsley 2024 ~ All rights reserved. No AI training: material on http://www.sarahemsley.com may not be used to “train” generative AI technologies.