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Living in Victoria, British Columbia in the 1880s, Emily Carr struggles to conform to her family’s, and society’s, expectations of her. Young girls should be obedient, quiet, neat and godly. They need to learn to be good wives and mothers. But Emily is neither obedient, nor quiet, nor neat. Though she tries hard to listen in church, she finds it difficult to remember what the sermon was about. Rather, she sees the evidence of God’s presence in the trees and plants and animals around her. And, if being a wife and mother means that she is going to have to act like a lady, then she’d just as soon not bother with a husband or children.
Surrounded by four older sisters, whose behaviour is unimpeachable, and parents who try hard to instil proper manners, Emily chafes at the restrictions placed upon her. Whenever possible, she slips the leash and explores the world around her, often coming home wet and bedraggled to another scolding.
However, when her father sees a charcoal sketch she has made of the family dog, he decides that Emily should have art lessons and, for the first time in her young life, Emily discovers that, just perhaps, there is something she can be really good at. Emily sets up an easel in her bedroom and works hard to improve her drawing abilities, saving up her pocket money to buy plaster casts of body parts to practice sketching. She is angered and confused by the first real artists she ever meets, because they assert that Canada is not fit landscape for drawing. Emily decides, for a time, that maybe she hasn’t got what is takes to be an artist, but eventually her passion for art will prevail!
Jacqueline Pearce has written a fictional account of the early years of one of Canada’s most beloved and celebrated painters, British Columbia’s Emily Carr. Her story of this great artist’s life continues in Emily’s Dream!
FernFolio Editor