Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop) is a fan-favorite Gilmore Girls character who has become even better in hindsight. Gilmore Girls follows the lives of single mom Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham) and her teenage daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) in a coming-of-age story of sorts, which has Rory going from high school to college and Lorelai grow to become a business owner and find love.
Lorelai and Emily’s world is populated by the inhabitants of the small town of Stars Hollow, but also by Emily and Richard Gilmore (Edward Herrmann), Lorelai’s estranged parents. Emily and Lorelai have an especially difficult relationship as they see the world very differently. While Emily is often seen as a kind of comedic relief in the series because her arguments with Lorelai are as funny as they are biting, she is so much more than that. Emily Gilmore deserves to be taken seriously and seen as part of the titular Gilmore Girls who come of age during the show and its revival series.
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Emily Is First Presented As An Unrelenting Snob
...the wealth at her fingertips meant that managing a household came with hosting lavish society events, maintaining proper decorum, and being able to stealthily insult those who might put a toe out of line.
When Emily Gilmore makes her first entrance on Gilmore Girls, it’s when Lorelai goes to see her with a request for help for Rory. It’s clear that visits between Lorelai and her parents are few and far between when Emily snarkily remarks, “Is it Easter already,” at the sight of her daughter. Emily is presented as someone who thinks she is better than everyone around her, but that attitude is one that has been carefully manufactured over time because of her wealthy background and her particular place in society.
The audience does not get to see through her carefully constructed attitude and snobbish behavior right away because Lorelai does not want to see through it. Lorelai is the audience entry point into the show, though it does often move to Rory’s point of view as well. Lorelai is who the audience is meant to side with when new characters are introduced, and that applies to the parents whose home she ran away from at 16 as well.
Emily has lived a life as a wealthy family matriarch. She does not get along with her husband’s mother, who takes over the household whenever she visits. She has lived a life where she was brought up to get married, continue the family name with children, and manage a household. In her case, the wealth at her fingertips meant that managing a household came with hosting lavish society events, maintaining proper decorum, and being able to stealthily insult those who might put a toe out of line.
When Lorelai’s choices fly in the face of all that Emily has known, she cannot see eye-to-eye with her daughter. It takes about two decades after Rory is born for the two of them to really understand one another and end up on even footing, though they might still openly squabble about the small things in their lives.
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Emily Gilmore Demands Respect From The Men In Her Life
Emily Is A Great Example For Lorelai And Rory In This Regard
When Emily discovers that Richard retires from his job without telling her, it exposes the cracks in their relationship.
Though Emily is very much a product of a specific time and view of married relationships, she also knows her worth when it comes to the men in her life. Some might argue that she is haughty, but she also demands respect and to be treated as an equal partner in her marriage to Richard.
When Emily discovers that Richard retires from his job without telling her, it exposes the cracks in their relationship. She realizes that perhaps they are not equal partners after all. She also realizes that she is not entirely sure who she is outside of their relationship. When she and Richard are no longer communicating with one another or ing one another, it’s Emily who initiates their separation and the possibility of divorce.
They eventually find their way back to one another and renew their vows, but it’s Emily who realizes their relationship has to be better, and she demands that instead of simply putting up with the status quo. It’s not just the men in relationship to her that she demands respect either. Part of the reason that Emily does not initially like Luke, or really, most of the men in Lorelai’s life, is because she does not see them as worthy of her daughter or respectful.
Initially, it really seems like the only man who will ever be good enough for Lorelai is Christopher. In Emily’s eyes, Christopher comes from a similar background to Lorelai, has always respected Emily and Richard, and has tried to be part of Lorelai and Rory’s life. She does not see how ill-fitting he is for Lorelai or just how much hurt he has caused. She eventually realizes that error and comes around to the idea of Luke and Lorelai together.
Part of that is due to the way she sees Lorelai and Luke interact when Richard ends up in the hospital. Luke is there and fully ive of both Lorelai and Rory when he does not even have to be. That helps win her over, and though Luke might still be terrified of her in the later episodes of the series, he also respects her, which goes a long way for Emily.
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Emily Gilmore Has A Positive Character Arc
Emily Has One Of The Best Character Arcs In The Show
While the show is inarguably centered around Lorelai and Rory, some of the characters around them actually have better character arcs. Rory especially tends to not learn from her mistakes and cling to the same beliefs throughout the series. Emily, however, grows from her experiences, though some of that growth might be subtle in the original series.
When Gilmore Girls begins, nearly every line of Emily’s toward Lorelai is biting and even caustic. It’s through a growing relationship with Rory that she begins to soften. She does things like try to set Lorelai up with men she believes would help make her daughter’s life better and devote a room in the mansion to all of Rory’s favorite things so she has a home away from home if she needs it.
Emily, at her core, wants what is best for her family. She just does not see that she does not actually know what is best for them right away. She starts to see just what she has missed out on when she attends Rory’s sixteenth birthday party in the first season but gets a much better look when she meets the owner of the Independence Inn where Rory and Lorelai lived while Lorelai worked on the housekeeping staff in season 2. Emily starts to realize then that being inflexible and stuck in her own ways is causing her to miss out on the lives of the people she loves most.
By the end of the series, Emily has softened and Lorelai is meeting her halfway, allowing them to continue their Friday-night dinners without the dinner being a result of of Lorelai paying her parents back for Rory’s tuition, That, however, is not where she experiences the most growth. She actually experiences the most growth, or at least the most growth visible to the audience, in the revival series Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life.
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Emily Gilmore Is Able To Reinvent Herself
She Learns Who She Is Without Her Husband
While grieving, she is also spreading her wings.
One of Emily Gilmore’s biggest crises in Gilmore Girls is that she is not sure who she really is outside of her marriage. That’s because so much of her adult life has been built around hosting parties where she is presented as Richard’s wife, whether that is to his work colleagues or to of high society. She stresses out about every little detail of these events and lashes out at others around her, and while it seems like she enjoys that aspect of her life at the start of the series, that is not entirely true.
Her separation from Richard in Gilmore Girls allows her to explore life away from her husband, but she does not take on any new hobbies or jobs or make new friends outside of their place in society. Instead, that comes much later when she reappears in the revival series.
It is in Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life that Emily is able to find herself. She is grieving the loss of her husband since Edward Herrmann, the actor who played Richard, had ed away and could not reprise his role. While grieving, she is also spreading her wings. She cries when she decides to go on a date. She moves from her big house in Hartford to Nantucket. She learns what she loves and what she does not.
Emily ends up leading tours at a whaling museum, relaxing on the coast, and maintaining a relationship with her daughter who she had been at odds with for so long. She did not completely become someone new, but she became a more open and relaxed version of the Emily Gilmore the audience had met in the pilot episode of the original series. She remains one of the most acerbic characters in Gilmore Girls, but one who finds her happiness instead of living her life on the of a society she feels the need to dress down.
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Gilmore Girls
9/10- Release Date
- 2000 - 2007-00-00
- Network
- The WB
- Writers
- Amy Sherman-Palladino
WHERE TO WATCH
StreamingBUYIn the fictional town of Star's Hollow, single mother Lorelai Gilmore raises her high-achieving teenage daughter Rory. Mother and daughter rely on each other throughout their own life changes, romantic entanglements, and friendships.
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
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Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
8/10- Release Date
- 2016 - 2016-00-00
- Showrunner
- Amy Sherman-Palladino
- Directors
- Amy Sherman-Palladino, Daniel Palladino
WHERE TO WATCH
StreamingBUYActing as a follow-up to the original series, Gilmore Girls, A Year In The Life is a comedy-drama series. Having completed her stint on the Obama campaign trail, Rory now finds herself as a freelance journalist with an inconsistent life. Meanwhile, Lorelei finds herself lost in life before her marriage to Luke. This four-part mini-series follows the titular mother-daughter duo as they continue to navigate their mother-daughter relationship in Star's Hollow.
- Writers
- Amy Sherman-Palladino, Daniel Palladino
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
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