I almost totally failed at the bookclubbing yesterday. [Did get a 2,400 words down despite also working a full 8h shift, though!] I was in bed (by 10pm) when I remembered I should read the chapter.
But this one's hard for me. I've had teachers like this. Well, almost like this, since it wasn't a case of a small school where there are just one teacher. But teachers who take out their frustrations on pupils in cruel and unexpected ways. Who think that ridiculing a student is somehow ok and even almost beneficial for the pupil. I've been the one they bully, and I've had to watch them bully my friends too. This was in the 90s, kids, so there was only the inkling of starting to work on this in schools.
I thought I'd left this behind when I went to high school, but no. And when I went to uni, I was sure this didn't happen in academia. Ah, the delusions of youth.
So I'm just going to say that Emily having advocates in Cousin Jimmy and Perry seemed to alleviate the situation a bit, but it's still horrible. And I'm glad Emily could distance herself from the situation by escaping into her imagination, because that's how I dealt with stuff as a kid too. As an adult as well, as it happens.
The last bit about Aunt Laura saying the cookies were hers as well as Aunt Elizabeth's makes me wonder about Aunt Laura again. She's this sort of benevolent but a bit powerless presence in New Moon. She mostly keeps to this role through the whole series, if I remember correctly. Is this by choice? Is she happy with her lot? Does she secretly like that she doesn't have to make decisions? What's her story? What does she like? This is a rare glimpse that there's something in her of the stubborness of the rest of the family.
