Emily of New Moon - Help me figure something out

[WTF2017]

I'm reading Emily of New Moon, the trilogy from L.M Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame, for the first time at the grand old age of 37.
I've just started Emily Climbs - so NO SPOILERS PLEASE!!! and I'm really uncomfortable with this one thing: what is the deal with Dean Priest? Why is this man in his 30s interested in this girl child? Bearing in mind he has known her since she was, what, 9 years old and immediately latched onto her as a kindred spirit of sorts and is basically obsessing over her, making weird comments about her being his possession etc. Emily at 14 is clearly feeling uncomfortable at times and making a point os saying she is no one's possession but how is no-one worried about the adult man basically grooming her in front of everyone's eyes?

I am curious as to how this relationship looked to anyone who read the story as a child, I am hoping it gets addressed at a later time but argh, my toes are curling in horror every time he appears in the story. Am I supposed to think he is nice? I appreciate Emily having a mentor in Mr Carpenter, but Dean Priest is basically a paedophile. Or am I wrong? Thoughts please so I can stop going over it endlessly in my mind

I often think of the landscapes LMM describes in the Anne books and wish I could go back in time to see them as they were then. She evokes the countryside and the seashore beautifully.

Beautifully put Humphrey and so true. I grew up wanting to visit PEI, only to realise it wouldn't really look like I pictured it anymore! A small tragic revelation in my teens

My Canadian cousin just sadly shook her head at me when I said I wanted to visit PEI. No red roads any more.

I may have google imaged it heavily to see

Oh no that was my epoch moment to visit PEI.

I've found my home! My eldest dd is called Emily. I'm going to be very, very wary of anyone called Dean who comes sniffing round....

Even as a child, I loved Anne but just felt it was all a bit too happy, considering what she'd been through. I loved the slightly waspish element to Emily.

It does read differently as an adult, but that's mainly because I didn't really think too much about the ages. I really only vaguely pictured him as a bit older than Emily.
I really disliked both Teddy's mum and Isle's dad, but again, only in the sense of 'nasty grown ups making life difficult for children', almost in an Enid Blyton type way. I didn't really think about it in terms of how they should have behaved towards their children. Not until I read it as an adult did that side of it occur to me.

The other thing I tended to do, as a kid, was file away things I didn't like as 'how people behaved back then'. So if someone showed behaviour towards a child that I thought was shocking, I was quite quick to think "That was how it was done then, it wouldn't happen now". So I rationalised a lot based on my own perception of history! In hindsight, sometimes I was justified in this, other times I was horribly wrong and the behaviour in question would have been no more acceptable then than it is now. But it allowed me to skate over things I might otherwise have been uncomfortable with, and enjoy the story.

I had never heard of the Blue Castle so just went looking and came across this:
www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Novels-Lucy-Maud-Montgomery-ebook/dp/B01GHQRFSU/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&keywords=the+blue+castle&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1512155167&sr=1-2

All the LMM books for 49p, if you have a Kindle. I will always have them with me..!!!

Ooh my people! I also thought Dr Burnley was appalling, mistreating his daughter for the perceived sins of her poor mother.

Ditto Dean Priest wtf? Although look at Jane Austen's Emma where Mr Knightley tells her he's loved her since she was 13.

Ditto Douglas Starr, what an irresponsible idiot!

I far preferred Emily to Anne. I didn't like the recent grim Netflix Anne series but as a pp said, it would've been very unlikely for a child to have such an unstable, unloving upbringing by a succession of rough ignorant people, yet to turn out so emotionally sunny, articulate and functional. It doesn't ring true.

How far did you get through the Netflix series? I barely made it through the first episode.

I wish Kevin Sullivan hadn't fallen out with the LMM estate. There was plenty of material for a third Anne film that wasn't the awful thing he produced. The first two were so good!

Still sad about Jonathan Crombie.