#i love how tumblr is slowly rehabilitating my vision of teddy

[no-where-new-hero]

LOVE THIS. Dean really is a master of words, which is both what aligns him with Emily and then of course pushes her away. It’s always what he says that attracts or rebuffs her (rebuffing in the sense of when he slanders her writing). Even from the start, when he says he’d teach her how to write the “love talk” in her books. We can extrapolate his methods, but the emphasis is always on the speech, which is fascinating.

And I like how you characterize Teddy’s quietude and secrecy as something bred in him from childhood—it definitely makes sense for how he comes across as a shadowy figure. LMM always makes her characters shine through dialogue—hence Dean’s brilliance on the page versus Teddy’s—but that also makes a ton of sense for his personality. Not that it’s lacking, just that it’s shown or not shown because of the story medium.

So both of them have a different language of expressing affection, which is also such good writing. Like. Maud you did it again.

Does the “might have won her wholly” part of Emily’s Quest ever haunt you?

No-o-o, no haunting for me! If Montgomery asks a narrative question, I usually find that she answers it herself, later on. And for this especially, I do personally feel that we have a definitive, straight-forward answer granted.

First, the quote you’re mentioning:  

“Emily threw him a glance of coquetry that very nearly made him kiss her. He [Dean] had never kissed her yet. Some subtle prescience always told him she was not yet ready to be kissed. He might have dared it there and then, in that hour of glamour that had transmuted everything into terms of romance and charm—he might even have won her wholly then.”  

Then next (I’ll supply a quote just below here), comes the answer. This one small sentence comes many chapters later and, with an echoing of the same language previously utilised in the above text, I feel, nullifies the previous question. 

“In that fleeting moment, in that brief caress, he [Teddy] had made her wholly his, as years of wifehood could never have made her Dean's.” 

With full narrative, too. This isn’t Emily’s internal monologue that might be subject to change in the future or a spoken dramatic statement in a moment of heightened emotion, this is being presented to the reader as a simple fact. 

But please, please, @emilyclimbs, let me be so earnest and so clear — I’m in no way here to shoot holes in anyone’s ship. So, if this is yours – understand that you have my full support in that. These Emily books are so special and personal, and open to many different interpretations. This is literally just my one-small-person-on-the-internet’s-opinion own tiny wee minuscule take on this.

Now, lol, with that said, I do thank you so much for asking, of course!