Emily of New Moon Episode 5

Summary

The school will be having a charity event to raise funds for giving books to children, and the students will be organizing stage plays for the said event. Rhoda suggests to give Emily a chance to produce her own play, knowing how she likes to write stories and such. She did this in the hopes of putting Emily to shame, since she won’t be capable of making a successful play if she was by herself (or even with only her and Ilse). Emily accepts the challenge and was delighted that she finally had the chance to impart her story to many people.

Emily tells her family about this play they’re going to have, but Elizabeth is not at all delighted that she’s going to write the script for this performance. She agrees to make her participate, however, if she’s simply going to act in the said play. But of course with Emily’s great love for writing, she still continues to do so despite her aunt’s prohibition.

Emily draws inspiration from nature for her story, and words just naturally flow out of her mouth as she gazes at its beauty. She once again crosses paths with Mrs. Wind, and also tells Teddy about her, making him hope that he could someday meet her too. Teddy then thinks that making a story about Mrs. Wind would be great for their play, and Emily agrees. Emily will be portraying the role of a young girl (who’s much like herself), who gets to meet Mrs. Wind, to be portrayed by Ilse. As Teddy’s mother looks at him and Emily spending time together however, a frown shows from her face.

Emily shows Ilse the script she made, and Ilse can’t help but be amazed. This gives her the motivation to work hard and make their play a success, also to show Rhoda just what they can do. However, Ilse is having problems memorizing her lines, but quickly overcome this as they sought Perry’s help in memorizing their lines. Perry’s learning how to read, and is progressing quite well, much to their delight. They continue practicing, in the hopes that they’d be able to convince Aunt Elizabeth to allow Emily to do as she wishes, knowing that she’ll be watching their performance together with Laura and Jimmy.

As the day of their performance draws near, Aunt Elizabeth finds out that Emily’s been doing what she forbid her to do as she finds the script she wrote on Teddy’s sketch, and confronts her regarding this. Emily however, continues to be as headstrong as ever and fights for what she loves to do, especially because she doesn’t even know why her aunt is considering writing and reading book such a ‘shameful’ activity. Her aunt rips her ’script’ to pieces, but despite the shock and sadness she felt after what her aunt did, she tells her that’s not a problem because the ’script’ is already engraved in her mind. Before leaving the room, she tells her aunt that she still hopes she’ll go and watch them perform.

The day of the performance arrives, and Rhoda’s group performs first. Rhoda became overconfident and thought she already memorized her lines without the need to practice, but was put to shame as she forgot her lines and ended up making a blunder out of her own performance. Emily performed after, and captivated the audience despite the lack of characters (only her and Ilse) and backdrops in their play. Elizabeth attends the play, but quickly left after their performance, still not fully accepting Emily’s love for writing.

Thoughts

As expected, Rhoda still continues to bully Emily, and in the end, “sows what she reaped”. She thought that ‘challenging’ Emily to the play will put Emily to shame, but instead, Rhoda’s overconfidence in herself led to her own downfall, and all the audience were captivated by Emily instead. “Emily totally owned the stage” =P

We only saw a little of Teddy in this episode, and I’m not really sure if what Emily feels for him is simply an admiration, or something more (with her daydreams of him). Teddy was a little left out, and we saw much more of the trio (Emily, Ilse, and Perry) instead. It seems that Perry’s quickly overcoming the barrier of illiteracy as he’s quickly learning how to read (on his way to being a diplomat? :p).

I just noticed that when Emily was talking to Teddy in front of their house, his mom was looking at them with stern eyes (somewhat). It seems that she disapproves of Teddy being friends with Emily, perhaps thinking that she’s a bad influence to him… I can’t help but feel a little worried.

The conflict with Aunt Elizabeth hasn’t been fully resolved yet too. We see some development in terms of Elizabeth’s acceptance of Emily’s love for writing, but just a slight and vague sign. Though, as the narrator says, there’s still a long way to go before this happens. But I can’t help but wonder why Elizabeth still can’t accept Emily writing… Why does she consider writing as a shameful activity? Is it because of Emily’s father and his profession, or the fact that writing isn’t really a noteworthy job… Perhaps there’s still something deeper about it, related to some painful memories about Emily’s father taking Emily’s mom perhaps.