Review: Kilmeny of the Orchard by Lucy Maud Montgomery

My Interest

I didn’t hear of Anne of Green Gables and the rest until I was an adult. I was obsessed with the Civil War at the age for reading those books. Like Little House on the Prairie, I discovered Lucy Maud Montgomery through television and read the books as an adult. I’ve written about one facet of my enjoyment of the Megan Fellowes version of Anne here.

Blogger, writer, and editor Sarah Emsley is hosting a month-long read-along of Kilmeny, so I decided to try a Non-Anne book by LMM. This one is super-short–the audio is only just barley over four hours, so it was a perfect fit for me for weekend errands. Plus it was fun to at least be part of a group read, even if I didn’t participate in the discussion–just knowing others were reading/listening while I was was enough for me. I didn’t want my enjoyment of the first experience of this book swayed by other’s opinions until I was done. I’ll have a look at the discussion once I post my review. Thank you, Sarah, for hosting this event! And, thank you to blogger Book Jotter, who alerted me to it.

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The Story

Lovely Kilmeny plays the violin to her own imagined music, making the orchard even lovelier with her presence. When Eric arrives to fill in as school master for sick friend, he accidentally encounters her and falls in love. But Kilmeny has a “defect” [in the word of the book’s era] she is “dumb” meaning mute. Due to this “defect” the aunt and uncle (brother and sister) who have raised her have kept her from all society–no school, no church even. She is innocent of worldly influence beyond that of her guardians and her “adopted” [not the word used in the book] pseudo-brother cum cousin, Neal.

Neal–a foundling of Italian immigrant parents whose darker hair and “emotional Latin temperament” are a foil to Kilmeny’s sweetness and lightness. While raised and even loved by the same brother and sister duo, Neal is not truly seen as part of the family in the same way Kilmeny is–typical of a generation that thought adoption was wrong because “no one ever gave away anything worth having” [a quote from an old and long-dead member of my own family that sums up the attitude]. Toss in predestination and sins of the parents being visited upon the children and well…you have a story that may not go down well with modern-day feminists! (But I’m a 1970s feminist and I still enjoyed it).

But is Kilmeny truly mute? Has she been to a doctor? 

My Thoughts

Like any LMM story, this one is beautifully told. However, I found the symbolism about as subtle as the anvil Coyote was always trying to drop on the Road Runner! While listening to it, while I enjoyed it thoroughly, I got a similar vibe from Eric at times to icky Daddy in the Elsie Dinsmore books (I’ve only managed to read the first of those really sick books the very very far right of American Christianity pushed for a while via the old Vision Forum catalog]. And, with good reason–Kilmeny represents exactly what the Quiverfull movement (think t.v.’s Duggar and Bates family) wanted for girls. 

Like the QF girls, Kilmeny is totally sheltered, has no opinions but those given her by her “parents” (in this case her aunt and uncle), believes she is ugly when in fact she is beautiful (that is explained in just the way Purity Ball  culture would explain it), lives with no mirrors (for exactly the reason the cultish Amish do). Nor did she wear any of the current fashions (think the Bates girls when first on tv with the Duggars). The woman raising her feels women should have no voice in matters of “church or state” [not atypical of the era of the story when women were only beginning to get the vote]. Best of all Kilmeny has been kept away from any notions of romance or romantic love or even being worthy of it. When Mr. Right shows up to tell her “father” that he wants to marry her, she will have nothing to compare him to and will agree. [Because in spite of what they both said on t.v. neither the Duggar nor Bates families, nor other QF families really gave their daughters much, if any, say in who they married]. 

Happily for Kilmeny, Eric was who she truly wanted to marry. She did have her “say” in determining she had to learn a lot in the waiting period between engagement and marriage, but Eric, showed his stipes by wanting her kept “pure” and to let her learn “after marriage” [No, not about the wedding night] and kept away from coarsening worldly influences. Like a QF man of today he wanted that dream of dreams–a women he could mold to suit himself–though happily Eric did not want to do that in any evil way. The way the story was worked out [No Spoilers] shows the racism and non-acceptance of adoption of the times. It also illustrated the difference between predestination and salvation. Very heavy symbolism in this one! 

My Verdict

4.0

Kilmeny of the Orchard by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I listened to the audio version of this book.

My review of another LMM book read recently:

The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery