Literary Ladies: Asha Gupta and Emily Webster
This post is for lisal825's Literary Ladies event.
I had a hard time thinking about which literary ladies to write about. I tend to read books more for story than character, and because most books are one shot with the character (unlike, say TV, where you see a character every week) they don't always make a really deep impression. Unless they are like Scarlett O'Hara and I've spent 1000 pages with her characterization. (But I suspected 12-12-12 would write about Scarlett and do a much better job than I could and I was not disappointed.) Finally I settled on two relatively low-key literary ladies whose stories I happened to love.
I didn't grow up reading the Betsy-Tacy books. Somehow I missed out on them, but it doesn't really matter because they are just as enjoyable to read as an adult. Due to how immersed I was in book marketing and chatter, I was actually quite turned off to the prospect of reading them at the time Harper Perennial reissued them a few years ago. It was only because author Mitali Perkins gushed about Emily of Deep Valley that I eventually picked it up.
Let me backtrack just a bit. I read Mitali Perkin's YA novel, Secret Keeper and loved it. I was impressed with how well she brought 1970s India to life and how invested I became in Asha, the main character. It's a coming of age novel and Asha faces a struggle throughout the book between asserting her independence and conforming to her family's expectations. She ends up writing in a diary as a way to deal with her emotions, her feelings of being trapped in her grandmother's house, her anxiety over her father being in America looking for work, etc. She befriends a boy, of course, who likes her a lot and she likes him. And at the end of the book, she makes a huge sacrifice for the sake of her sister and family. As a reader, it's both tremendously disappointing and also rewarding. If that makes ANY SENSE AT ALL.
What makes Asha's sacrifice (it's not death btw) so touching is that it's all for love of her sister. When faced with impossible choices, choices no one should have to make in this world, she chooses love. It's empowering because she makes the best choice she can in the circumstances. And somehow you know that anyone with that kind of strength will be okay.
So it was love for this book that made me pay attention when Mitali Perkins said writing the foreward for Emily of Deep Valley was a dream come true. It was love for Mitali Perkins (she is AWESOME) that made me read Emily. And I'm so glad I did.
Emily Webster lives in Deep Valley, Minnesota in the early 1900's. I fell fast and hard for Emily because she's so relateable, and so well fleshed out early in the book. She's an orphan, a shy, somewhat plain looking girl who is socially awkward. She's not going off to college like the majority of her friends, but it isn't because she's not as smart as them. She's actually quite smart, she was the only girl on the school's champion debate team. It's because she wants to stay home and take care of her grandfather who raised her. He's older and a veteran of the Civil War. This kind of loyalty and love for family is always appealing to me in any character. She is so respectful of her grandfather and the traditions of the older generation even when others her age scoff at them, she understand what it means to them.
Emily is incredibly perceptive as well, even if she makes excuses for the bad behavior of a boy she likes who ends up being a bit of a jerk. And she has a deep interest in social work, admiring Jane Addams and her work at Hull House. Emily at first thinks if she could just go to college, she could also do this great work. When her friends leave, she is at first depressed and down and even attempts to cling to life as it was. But eventually she befriends the new Syrian immigrants in town and strikes up a friendship with them. She helps them organize a boy's club and teaches their mothers English and it's WONDERFUL how she realizes that even if she didn't go to college, there's a lot she can do in Deep Valley. She fights to get classes for the Syrians, but also encourages the community to open themselves up to friendship with them.
I ought to be talking about what we want this board to do for the Syrians. But I can only talk about what we ought to let them do for us: share their gaiety and warmth and generosity and kindness with the rest of Deep Valley.
Emily's journey is super relateable and full of warmth and heart and triumph. Even though I read Emily of Deep Valley as an adult, the book became a keeper for me, one that makes me feel happy every time I look at it on my shelf. I hope I haven't made it sound really sentimentalized, because it's not, Emily feels real, but still hopeful.
I'm looking forward to reading about everyone else's literary ladies!