Engine Summer

I wonder what I would have thought about Dean if I'd read the first book as a kid, and how he fits in with L.M.M. wanting Emily to have "vivid love affairs." (I know she didn't mean a whole lot of making out, but she does seem to have meant being more aware of one's developing sexuality than people liked to admit in those days.) Perhaps the original idea was that talking about an adult's feelings (which could be tacitly assumed to be partly sexual in a way that a young girl's might not have been assumed to be) would get more of the "vivid love affairs" feeling into the book without having Emily do anything "the public" wouldn't have gone for.