Heartstopping Moments - Rainbow Joy, Queering Spaces, and Shaping Futurities in L. M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily Novels

Aug 28, 2026

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Examines how “queer joy” operates as a political and affective force across L. M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily novels—especially from Rainbow Valley onward—and compares these patterns with contemporary YA queer representations. Using Sara Ahmed’s critique of the “promise of happiness,” along with theories of orientations, desire lines, and backcasting, the study analyzes how joy, safe spaces, and “futurities” enable (or frustrate) transformation from youth to adulthood. It contrasts Montgomery’s later implications with Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper multiverse, exploring whether queerness sustains heartstopping moments and alternative temporalities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages41

Reading Time1 h 43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

What Makes Joy Queer?

Queer joy, happiness, and possibility

Orientations, desire lines, and backcasting

Montgomery’s later Anne novels and Emily trilogy

Rainbow Valley

Rilla of Ingleside

The Blythes Are Quoted

Queer joy in contemporary YA representations

Heartstopper graphic novels and adaptations

Benjamin Lefebvre’s In the Key of Dale

Conclusion

Promise of happiness vs. heartstopping moments

Heartstopping Moments: Rainbow Joy, Queering Spaces, and Shaping Futurities in L. M . Montgomery’s Anne and Emily Novels DOI [https://doi.org/10.32393/jlmms/2025.0020](https://doi.org/10.32393/jlmms/2025.0020) Published on Mon, 05/05/2025-16:00 Queer joy is a ticket to a journey back to the future. In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne and Emily novels from Rainbow Valley onward and Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper books/Netflix adaptations, the queering of timelines and spaces for young people has the potential to nurture and be nurtured by rainbow or queer joy—the kind of joy that comes from transforming trauma into healing, the privileging of uniqueness into the valuing of differences and (inter)connections, and fixedness into personal and political becoming—by subverting conventional narrative patterns and tropes associated with queerness. Questions arise when Montgomery’s queer or marginalized characters reach adulthood as to whether queerness can sustain the joyful, heartstopping moments of their youth and shape the futurities that Oseman’s multiverses predict. In the final chapter of Emily of New Moon, Emily emphatically states to Mr. Carpenter that she “want[s] rainbow joy—lots of it” (401) . Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s critique of“the promise of happiness” and her theories of “orientations,” “desire lines,” and possibilities, and Rosi Braidotti’s “ethics of joy” as it relates to “potentia” and “backcasting,” this paper explores how the joy, retreats, and sense of futurities in L.M. Montgomery’s later Anne novels (Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, and The Blythes Are Quoted) and the Emily trilogy align—and do not align—with the queer joy, safe spaces, and projections of futurities in contemporary young-adult (YA) queer representations. These contemporary representations are well exemplified by Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper graphic novels and Netflix adaptations and Canadian YA author and Montgomery scholar Benjamin Lefebvre’s In the Key of Dale with its overt allusions to Heartstopper and Emily of New Moon. Oseman’s novels (including her prequel, coquel, and sequel images and books) and television adaptations are widely and highly regarded for their impact on expanding queer representation and possibilities in the context of queer joy as a political force to counter cynicism and despair in the face of social and psychological challenges without resorting to easy promises of easy happiness. As Kelley Robinson declared in her speech for the Human Rights Campaign on 1 February 2025, which honoured Joe Locke for his activism and his role as Charlie Spring in Netflix’s Heartstopper, among all the organization’s political and legal actions is another essential action: courageously“lifting up stories that matter” as one way “to make community out of all the chaos.”1 While the earlier Montgomery Anne books have elements of queerness—the destabilizing of norms related to binarized gender, sex, and sexuality and the consequent valuing of process and opening up of possibilities that challenge and deviate from these norms—only in the later Anne books are the longer-term implications of this destabilizing witnessed at both the individual character and collective social levels, the microcosm and the macrocosm. And, I will argue, it is only in these later Anne novels and the Emily trilogy that the misleading and misdirecting “promise of happiness,” as critiqued by Ahmed, is tested and found wanting because it thwarts the possibilities that come with leaning into moments akin to Oseman’s heartstopping moments, which are pivotal moments of potential radical transformation. In the conclusion of The Promise of Happiness, Ahmed contends that when joy and happiness are not conflated (214),“[p]ossibility means grasping terror as well as joy”(219).2 Montgomery’s rainbow valleys may cultivate happiness, but they impede experiencing and attaining the joy of climbing the hill—Emily’s (and Montgomery’s)“Alpine Path”—and participating in shaping a n

FAQs

What does the paper mean by “queer joy” in Montgomery and Oseman’s works?

It treats queer joy as a form of orientation toward the future that transforms trauma into healing, values differences and connections, and turns fixedness into personal and political becoming.

How does Sara Ahmed’s critique of the “promise of happiness” shape the analysis?

The paper uses Ahmed’s argument that joy and happiness should not be conflated to show how Montgomery’s later narratives test that promise, revealing limits that can block the joy of transformative “climbing.”

Which later Montgomery texts are central to the study’s concept of futurities?

The study focuses on the later Anne novels—Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, and The Blythes Are Quoted—and the Emily trilogy, comparing their retreats, joy, and sense of futurities with contemporary YA queer projections.

Aug 28, 2026

Upload by Skyler