Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon

As you know, we will be looking at Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon for our first Open Roads reading club session on Sat 10 July 2010, 2pm, The Substation - email us at admin@inkpotreviews.com to register. (More information in our first post below)

Of course, the idea behind a reading club is to allow a free-flow of ideas to be shared but these are some things you might want to think about before the session while reading the play:

1. What are your impressions of Emily Gan? Different actors over the decades have emphasized different aspects of her multi-faceted character. Which quality of Emily's life and personality resonates most with you when you read the play? Does it change as the play progresses?

2. What are your favourite scenes in Emily of Emerald Hill and why? What do they tell us about the character and her life? Are there people and situations in your own life that these scenes remind you of? To what extent do you think Emily and her story are distinctively peranakan?

3. How do you feel about the way the story of Emily's life ends in the play? To what extent is she a "general who wins battles but finally loses the war" (Anne Pakir)? Do you think Emily is a victim of circumstances or ultimately responsible for her own fate? When you look back on your own life, what are some of the things you are proud of? What are some of your regrets?

4. Emily of Emerald Hill is certainly much-loved but to what extent do you think it deserves its place in the canon as a great work of Singapore literature? Is the enduring appeal of the play due to its literary merits as "compelling drama" (Pakir) or its wider cultural / historical significance as say, a heritage play about peranakan culture? Stella Kon once said that the play is not so much the story of one woman as it is "the story of a generation". Do you agree?

5. Have you seen stage versions of the play? If so, did you think they were successful? If you were a director, how would you stage the play? What are your thoughts about adaptations such as the casting of a man in the role of Emily Gan or having the part played by different actresses at different points in the play?

6. What do you think of Theodore Lim Li's poem Emily of Emerald Hill (1998)?

Testing the days against their patience,
stuttering through an intravenous
sequence of delusions, the
septuagenarian, paralysed from half a
side down continues divesting the
days with a serpentine rustling of
sheets.

Sliced by jalousies, each disjointed
mundane occurrence adheres only to
surrender at the next to the aberrant
itinerary of a fly, settling on a rim of
glass, mating the unfettered universe.

The soliloquy of tea taken
without a sound: a face is
a luminous stain dissolving in a
saucer before a human spout;
the spasmodic jerking: of a
bone-dry arm - a springroll
disembowelled.

Only the artefacts around her commune,
with time loosening its grasp on meaning,
and all that were left, nothing more than
the efflorescence of a flowering screen, or
the noble sentiments that fall down
hanging scrolls of silent calligraphy.

Still, as a matter of form
the relatives intrude
to resurrect the fact
that she
who had studied all her life
to serve, survived
her husband and her only son,
and now sequestered, sloughing offthe years
on batik prints.

It was actually the maid
who blurted before a shocked congregation
at Bethesda,
that the vociferous railing
of her venerable mistress
had had nothing to do with the miserable cancer
gnawing at her chest.
It was the ignominy rather
of having to share the late Master's
last official moments with another,
of admitting to the sanctity of the demised,
the pollution of another wife!

Upstaged to the very last
she would contrive
as forbearingly as before
to preserve the dignity
of a family of Emerald Hill.

The ivory cane that was
today a seven-bended kris
unsheathes.

A bell.
The arrival of the faithful.
The dignified cadaver turns
from the hieroglyphics
of a gutted dream
to regard the ragged band
of gold-brocaded, diamond-pointed
jade encrusted cronies
manipulated by their maids,
unfold the trivial pattern of their woes,
their flowers, their gardens,
their gilt-entangled mansions.

(Those of you who are unable to join us on the 24th but have ideas about the play that you want to share with us here, please feel free to use the Comments option below.)