By Elizabeth Ow

In preparation for this assignment, I watched the play starring Margaret Chan as Emily (excerpt and  full play). This rendition characterized Emily as a powerful matriarch who takes pride in her flawless running of her household. Theatrical dramatics were superb in that the plethora of Emily’s emotions were wonderfully delivered. The well executed gestures created a false sense of reality where silhouettes of the other characters interacting with Emily could almost be seen.

The highlight of my adventure with the play was when I went to the NUS Baba house for a panel discussion entitled: ‘Emily of Emerald Hill – The Modern Asian Woman?’ Arriving early, I toured the house imagining the scenes of the play unfolding. My sentiments were mirrored in Stella Kon’s opening address which related various parts of the house to Emily’s roles and activities in the household. The discussion was held in the middle of the house right in front of the air well. Stella remarked that this room would have been the “seat of Emily’s power”, a place where she entertained, controlled the kitchen, and kept an eye on the front parlour.

The dialogue was split into two parts. In the first part, the playwright would read a selected excerpt, and the panelists would take turns to share their reflections. The first two panelists, student Deborah Tan and artist Kelly Reedy, chose the climactic scene when Emily reveals the circumstances that shaped her. Stella treated us to two different renditions of the scene. In the first, Emily was hysterically lamenting her life struggle while in the second, as the playwright herself put it, she was strong in the “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade” sense. What struck me was Stella’s own admission of the multiplicity of interpretations that texts can have.

Though based on the same excerpt, the contributions of the two panelists were different. The gist of Deborah’s sharing was that the concerns of women in Emily’s time and the culture that governed their lives were very different from those today. This made it hard for her to see Emily as a contemporary woman. However, I agree with Deborah’s qualification that Emily’s character traits mirrored those common and valued in women today.

Kelly’s reflection was interspersed with her artwork created for the play’s limited print edition, and shared some of the inspirations behind them. I liked “Emily, twilight” best as I felt moved by meanings the picture spoke of. To me, the scalloped edges and the silhouette of Emily were reminiscent of the Queen Elizabeth stamps, fitting of Emily’s regality as matriarch of Emerald hill. The natural manner in which the batik print of the frame encroached into Emily’s silhouette symbolizes her success in upholding all the virtues of a Peranakan woman. Despite the overtones of triumph, Emily’s gaze is resigned and she is dulled in contrast to the colorful background. Perhaps in her preoccupation with being the “very devil of a wife and mother”, Emily has lost herself.

Last to share was Tan Dan Feng, who chose the final scene where Emily enters a dream like sequence which read in a most haunting fashion. Dan Feng then engaged in close analysis to the ending scene posing questions about what happiness meant. Contrary to the other panelists, he dubbed Emily the “last great dinosaur”, and that it was really only her children who exhibited traits of modernity. However, similar to what another member of the audience pointed out, I felt that towards the end of the play, Emily was more modern in her outlook as seen in her advice to her daughter regarding marriage.

This discussion about modernity led into the second part of the dialogue which was opened to the floor. The debate was highly interactive, revolving around what a modern woman would do if she were placed in a similar situation as Emily. In my opinion, this second part was not as meaningful as a lack of a clear definition of what a modern woman was led to confusion in the audience’s contribution. Indeed, the debate started going off topic, and it was only when a thoughtful person decided to ask the playwright for her views did the tensions diffuse. I loved Stella’s conclusion to the debate, which was for us to make our own conclusions about what a modern woman entails, reiterating the multiplicity of meanings and the autonomy of the readers in interpreting literary works.