The Blue Castle
(a review of The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery)

Lucy Maud Montgomery is best remembered for her beloved Anne novels. It seems that a world of people fell in love with the freckle-faced, red-headed girl who grew up into a poised, loving wife and mother. Then there was the beautiful, sulky and almost selfish Emily with her faery streak of poetry in her soul. These heroines were so easy to love. Who could fail to love Anne with her beautiful eyes, delightful spirit and boundless enthusiasm? Who could help but be drawn to the fascinatingly beautiful and exotic Emily?
It's harder to love a dowdy old maid, thin, sallow-skinned and down-trodden. It is easier to feel pity and perplexity at a nonenity of a 29 year old spinster who doesn't seem to have accomplished anything in a life of misery and loneliness. Nonetheless, Valancy Stirling has come to be one of my most dear LM Montgomery 'heroines'. True, she is not a heroine in the accepted sense of the word. Valancy is not like Anne, she does not conquer her world - charming everyone with her spirit and talent. She is not an Emily with her unearthly talent for fascinating men and writing poetry. Valancy is sublimely ordinary with commonplace dreams and a heart of gold.
There is none of the sweetness in the Blue Castle that pervades Anne of Green Gables. The Anne series is deliciously sugary and ingenu in its rendering. The Blue Castle by contrast is an exercise in general satire. The satire borders on the sarcastic at times when Montgomery is gently mocking Valancy's cruel, decidedly stupid relatives. Furthermore, the novel even touches upon issues of alcoholism and unmarried mothers.
The Blue Castle is divided into four parts. The first part is the beginning of the book where the reader finds Valancy alone in her room, miserable on the eve of her twenty ninth birthday. The reason for her misery rapidly becomes apparent. She is a twenty nine year old spinster in the community of Deerwood where the 'unmarried are simply those who have failed to catch a man'. LM Montgomery describes Valancy's isolation beautifully. It isn't merely an absence of friends or sympathetic family - it is the absolute lack of any one who is on her intellectual or fanciful level of thinking or conversation. There is no one with whom Valancy is able to converse freely, and no one who is in the slightest interested in talking to the Stirling Old Maid.
Social and familial pressures have combined to make Valancy feel unloved, unbeautiful and without worth. Her mother is a hypocritical, harsh woman with no leavening humour or humility. Her relatives have elevated themselves to local aristocracy - certain of their piety, godliness and status.
The downtrodden Valancy has but two joys in her life - one is her imaginary world of the 'Blue Castle' in which she is beautiful, adored and powerful and the other are the books of John Foster, a mysterious man who writes about the beauty and wonder of Canada's wilderness. There is something pathetic about these two joys, for both of them are secret. Were her family to become aware of them, they would have certainly been forbidden to them.
'Valancy was allowed to read them under protest, for it was only too evident that she enjoyed them too much. It was permissible, even laudable, to read to improve your mind and your religion, but a book that was enjoyable was dangerous.'
Modern women might wonder and be slightly outraged not only at society's treatment of Valancy Stirling, but also her uncomplaining acceptance of it. I think in reading the book, the reader comes to sympathise and understand Valancy's plight. This book has nothing to do with the subjugation or the empancipation of Women. It has everything to do with the self-esteem and struggle for love of one woman.
Valancy's first substantial act of defiance is to see a doctor in secret to discover the reasons for recurring heart pains. Her family are bound in tradition to see their own doctor:
'None of the Stirlings ever consulted a doctor without holding a family council and getting Uncle James' approval. Then, they went to Dr Ambrose Marsh of Port Lawrence, who had married Second Cousin Adelaide Stirling.'
Valancy's family also have a blind faith in the liniments of a mysterious 'Dr Redfern' who appears to be something akin to a quack inventing pills, tonics and liniments by the dozen.
It is this visit to the doctor that liberates Valancy from her miserable existence. The doctor's letter tells her that she has a serious heart illness and will be dead within a year. After the initial shock and despair, the promise of death ironically gives Valancy the first taste of life that she has ever known, thus introducing the reader to the 'second part' of the book.
'She made a discovery that surprised her; she, who had been afraid of almost everything in life, was not afraid of death. It did not seem in the least terrible to her. And she need not now be afraid of anything else. Why had she been afraid of things? because of life....Valancy felt a curious sense of freedom.'
With nothing to lose, and nothing experienced, Valancy is given the courage to face down her family and appall them with the spirit and humour which they had never known she possessed. What makes it even more fascinating is that even she was unaware of the disrespectful and irreverence sense of humour which has always been lurking beneath the surface of her prim, dowdy exterior.
Valancy's first unfaltering steps into standing up to her family are hysterically funny, as she refuses to suffer the hypocrisy of the family. There is Uncle Benjamin's with his decidedly unfunny jibes, her mother's cruel contempt, Aunt Isabel with her cutting insults:
'Aunt Isabel prided herself on saying what she thought, but didn't like it so well when other people said what they thought to her.'
and Aunt Wellington -
'Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would.'
Most importantly for Valancy's own inner beauty, she is for the first time able to see past her cousin Olive's exquisite exterior to the empty, soulless shell that she truly is. For all her life, Valancy has been the Ugly Duckling next to Olive's brilliance, charm and appeal. She has always lost out to Olive's schemes, plans and wants. It has never occurred to anyone in the clan to consider what Valancy may have wanted.
The delightfully funny situation is further exacerbated by her family's appalled reaction to the new Valancy. Shaking up their complacency, they are convinced that Valancy has gone 'dotty' and lost her wits. They are genuinely grief-stricken, genuinely non-plussed at the situation and most definitely distressed by the situation.
Taking her own destiny into her own hands, Valancy goes to help Cecily Gay, Deerwood's tragic 'fallen woman' who committed the sin of having a child out of wedlock. After the child's death, the delicate Cecily's own health failed and she is fading out of life herself.
While nursing Cecily, Valancy is brought into regular contact with Deerwood's black sheep. All number of nefarious misdeeds and evil actions have been attributed to the insouciant Barney Snaith whose only 'crime' seems to have been a refusal to be integrated into Deerwood's stifling society. This social solecism is sufficient to damn the man to be the perpetuator of all number of crimes. An escaped convict, a defaulting bank clerk, a murder in hiding, an infidel, a counterfeiter, a forger and a seducer of innocent women. Rumoured to live on a little island in the Canadian wilderness with his cats, he is altogether too disreputable and odd to be acknowledged by Deerwood's upper crust.
Valancy is fascinated by him, enchanted by his stories, drawn by his intriguing smiles and unusual features. It is inevitable in a way that she should fall in love with him. Some might say that it was the pathetic, blind love of an old maid towards the first man who had ever showed her kindliness, but I like to think that Barney Snaith who was so misunderstood and shunned himself was a kindred spirit who was the first man to care to explore the hidden smiles and dreams of Valancy Stirling.
Upon Cecily's death, Valancy's clan fully expect her to return to her place in their home, and yet she takes yet another step which puts her beyond the pale. She asks Barney Snaith to marry her. After his initial astonishment, he agrees after she has told him of her heart condition and her desire to know happiness and freedom before she dies. Barney's feelings for Valancy at this stage are little more than pity at her situation, admiration at her courage and determination and mild interest in the contraditions which manifest themselves in this old-maidish little creature.
They are married on the condition that he never refers to her heart condition and that she never goes into his lean-to which is his own private sanctum. Flippantly she tells him that so long as the dead wives in his Bluebeard's Chamber are really dead, she doesn't mind and he informs her that they are dead as doornails.
Now the third part of the book begins. From this point onwards, Valancy embarks on her own private voyage of self-discovery. In discovering the beauty of the Muskoka's beauty and silence, she herself is liberated and discovers previously unknown qualities. Montgomery never descends into the cliche of the Ugly Duckling miraculously metamorphasising into a beautiful swan. Valancy is not beautiful and will never be beautiful, but she has her own allure which is completely different from the accepted seductiveness of her cousin Olive.
It is not only Valancy we come to know. Barney emerges as a wondering man who is bemused by the sudden treasure which has been given to him. Rather than being saddled with a burden, he discovers that he has a wife, friend and companion whose capacity for wonder and beauty equals and perhaps surpasses even his own. Despite his somewhat scruffy exterior, Snaith is a visionary man, erudite and surprisingly idealistic in his fancies and quotes and Valancy is perfectly contented with him.
Though their existence is simple, neither of them being in possession of much money, the life described is joyous to the point of being idyllic. Valancy's family are naturally appalled by her marriage and have agreed to all pretend that she is dead - a fiction which is constantly disturbed by Valancy's glowingly happy face when she goes about town with her disreputable husband.

I don't want to spoil the ending, which is the fourth part of the book, by going into detail about what happens at the book's conclusion. It would perhaps be better to explore the reasons that Montgomery may have written such a book as this. I constantly wonder why it is so incredibly different to her other novels. Snaith is like no other hero in a Montgomery novel and Valancy is certainly like no other heroine. Nonetheless, their relationship is a solid, beautiful real one which owes nothing to flights of fancies or moonlight madness. Their friendship is apparent to all the world and I believe that Valancy is one of the most mature and lovable heroines ever created by LM Montgomery.

The Blue Castle was written by L. M. Montgomery in 1926 and each time I read it, I reflect that it is a pity that The Blue Castle still remains one of LM Montgomery's most obscure novels. What is very encouraging though is that when I first created this page, this was the only site out there that even discussed The Blue Castle and now there are several! See the links below.

Blue Castle Links

I'm delighted to say that for those of you who have had a hard time buying the book, you can download it here courtesy of Project Gutenburg. Enjoy!!

Valancy of the Blue Castle - Excellent page

And Then There's Maud By Deborah @ Marigold

Valancy and her Blue Castle

Valancy & the Blue Castle. I love this site, the writer says: "It bothered me that this book was so overlooked because I think there is something very special about it."

Bala's Museum Muskoka

Your Blue Castle

The Blue Castle at Epiphany's Lair

Blue Castle review by a 14 year old girl named Kristen

What's a Mistawis?

Carey's review of The Blue Castle

Fabulous Encyclopedia of People & Places in the Blue Castle

Sininen Linna, Blue Castle

ChickLit: Paperjam - last paragraph of the page is interesting. Beware the Evil PopUp thought.

 

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