The question for the fourth group check-in is this:
Share the most memorable scene from one of your reads for this event.
There was one scene from Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery that I have remembered clearly for decades. As a teen, it was my favorite moment in the book because it was the part I laughed hardest over. While rereading it this fall for the first time in probably twenty years, I kept wondering when that scene would crop up. As I neared the end of the book, I began to wonder if I'd confused some other book with this, because I still hadn't gotten to it! But finally, on page 260, there it was:
"Mother and I went into Charlottetown yesterday to see the moving picture, 'Hearts of the World.' I made an awful goose of myself -- father will never stop teasing me about it for the rest of my life. but it all seemed so horribly real -- and I was so intensely interested that I forgot everything but the scenes I saw enacted before my eyes. And then, quite near the last came a terribly exciting one. The heroine was struggling with a horrible German soldier who was trying to drag her away. I knew she had a knife -- I had seen her hide it, to have it in readiness -- and I couldn't understand why she didn't produce it and finish the brute. I thought she must have forgotten it, and just at the tensest moment of the scene I lost my head altogether. I just stood right up on my feet in that crowded house and shrieked at the top of my voice -- 'The knife is in your stocking -- the knife is in your stocking!'
"I created a sensation! The funny part was, that just as I said it, the girl did snatch out the knife and stab the soldier with it!
"Everybody in the house laughed. I came to my senses and fell back in my seat, overcome with mortification. Mother was shaking with laughter. I could have shaken her. Why hadn't she pulled me down and choked me before I had made such an idiot of myself. She protests that there wasn't time.
"Fortunately the house was dark, and I don't believe there was anybody there who knew me. And I thought I was becoming sensible and self-controlled and womanly! It is plain I have some distance to go yet before I attain that devoutly desired consummation."
Those few paragraphs are still among my favorite in the book, and I chuckled over them while typing them up just now. Also, I like that she somewhat references Hamlet with that last line, echoing his "'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished."
So far, I have read 16 books for this event, all listed on this page. I aim to read 4 more by the end of December, to make it a nice, round 20. We'll see if I get there!
I love this scene too. It seems to offer just a shade of the liveliness we'd hope from Anne and her daughter. Just a glimpse!
ReplyDeleteYou and I have read a lot of the same titles for this event. Best wishes with your final four!
Exactly. This is what I want the whole book to be like. And the last couple of books too.
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