One Secret to Writing an Idyll

My daughter recently recommended to me Jane of Lantern Hill by L.M. Montgomery (The Anne of Green Gables woman).  She thought I’d like the bit about the 12-year old girl bustling about to run her own little household.

What I discovered is that its an idyll.  And hat tip to friend E.C. who pegged Montgomery as an excellent idyll writer.

Idylls are hard, of course, because where does the drama come from if people are happy and the land is green?

In this book her technique was interesting.   There is an over arching drama about the girl’s parents.  It’s played lightly, but its there, and it gives you the plot.  There is also the daily challenges of the girl figuring out how to run a household on her own.  Quotidian challenges–the plum pudding that doesn’t quite work–would be a normal technique for a cozy domestic idyll.  But here Montgomery plays them very lightly.  They are just mentioned in passing and not given much in the way of arc.

The main thing Montgomery does is to start the girl in a bad situation and then to go on for pages and pages and pages about how bad it is.  She’s with her grandmother who’s awful, so awful that I had a hard time suspending my disbelief.  It all seems tedious.  But then when the girl makes it to the idyll, it all seems interesting by way of implied contrast to the now off-stage horrors.  It works quite well.

Some interesting parallels to the plan of happiness and why we needed a messy mortal experience before our own eternal idyll.