Tom Lake

“Citizens of New Hampshire could not get enough of Our Town. We felt about the play the way other Americans felt about the Constitution or the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ It spoke to us, made us feel special and seen.”

Lara’s role as Emily in Our Town is the beginning of her acting career, and the beginning of the end of her childhood and innocence. Ann Patchett presents Our Town as ubiquitous in Lara’s life growing up in New Hampshire. Her connection to and the sense of ownership over the play will continue until her realization, several years later, that she will have to leave the role of Emily behind.

“All three girls are in their twenties now, and for all their evolution and ostensible liberation, they have no interest in a story that is not about a handsome, famous man. Still, I am their mother, and they understand that they will have to endure me in order to get to him. I take back my place on the sofa and begin again, knowing full well that the parts they’re waiting to hear are the parts I’m never going to tell them.”

Lara begins her story convinced that her daughters are only interested in Peter Duke. However, as the story continues, they become intrigued with this new perspective on their mother, and are able to fill the gaps in a story that they’ve never gotten the whole of. Here, Laura asserts her control of the story, connecting to the theme of Who Owns Personal History.

“Emily Webb asked questions, told the truth, and knew her mind, while these Emilys bunched up their prairie skirts in their hands and mewled like kittens. Didn’t any of them remember what it was like to be the smart girl? No high school girls had come to try out for the part, […] No one had come to speak for our kind.”

As Lara is watching women audition for the part of Emily, her anger at the way the character is being misrepresented leads her to try out herself. Lara connects with Emily’s intelligence and her youth, seeing the character as a reflection of herself. To Lara, Emily comes to symbolize her lost innocence—when she realizes that she will never play Emily again, she understands that she has grown up.