One of the strangest discoveries I’ve made since I started blogging is just how many people adore The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery. For years, I’ve discarded The Blue Castle as one of Montgomery’s ‘other’ novels. Like everything Montgomery wrote, I’ve read it a few times and mentally classed it somewhere above the endless volumes of repetitive short stories but far, far below the more memorable Anne and Emily books – on par with the forgettable Kilmeny of the Orchard, really. But with both Eva and Rachel counting themselves as fans, I knew I had to reread it again as an adult and give it another chance.
The Blue Castle is the story of twenty-nine year old spinster Valancy Stirling, who has spent her entire life living under her family’s thumb in ruralOntario until, after visiting the doctor after experiencing chest pains, she receives word that she has only a year to live. Her unexpected death sentence gives Valancy the confidence to rebel against her family. She shocks them all by talking back, standing up for herself, and finally moving out to go and care for an ill neighbour, the daughter of the town drunk who herself had been ostracized for bearing an illegitimate child. From there, Valancy’s acts of rebellion only increase, culminating in her proposing marriage to Barney Snaith, another unconventional local, hoping to grasp at least some happiness in her remaining months. Living with him on his Muskoka island, she finally finds her dream home, theBlueCastle she spent all those long, lonely years building up in her head.
To be completely honest, I opened this half hoping to fall in love with it, half hoping to find it exactly as I remembered. My actual reaction to it fell somewhere in between. The first part of the novel where we are introduced to Valancy, learn of her diagnosis and witness her rebellion is quite wonderful. Sharp and funny, it is entertaining and ageless, some ofMontgomery’s best work. But it also vividly captures Valancy’s sense of captivity and isolation, the smallness of her life and her world:
Reality pressed on her too hardly, barking at her heels like a maddening little dog. She was twenty-nine, lonely, undesired, ill-favoured – the only homely girl in a handsome clan, with no past and no future. As far as she could look back, life was drab and colourless, with not one single crimson or purple spot anywhere. As far as she could look forward it seemed certain to be just the same until she was nothing but a solitary, little withered leaf clinging to a wintry bough. The moment when a woman realises that she has nothing to live for – neither love, duty, purpose nor hope – holds for her the bitterness of death.
And then she marries Barney (who was clearly John Foster so why even bother to pretend otherwise for so much of the novel and, yes, he really should be ashamed of those awful descriptive passages and edicts) and moves into her Blue Castle and that is where the book looses me. Blissful happy endings are fine, to be encouraged even, but devoting so much time to domestic details (and in, it must be said, a rather sappy manner – Barney’s pet name for Valancy is ‘Moonlight’, need I really say more?) rather does away with any sympathy I might once have felt for the couple. Things become a little too formulaic, too much like one of the magazine stories a teenaged Anne or Emily might have written. For a book that had been so promisingly original at the beginning, it was a let-down.
Rereading this definitely gave me a greater appreciation for it, particularly now that I’m of an age where I can identify with Valancy’s situation at the beginning of the novel, but it certainly has not become one of my true favourites. Worth recommending, without a doubt, but not about to join in my annual rereading cycle of some of Montgomery’s other works. I must also admit that I had to borrow this from the library since my own childhood copy is languishing in storage. The cover illustration (not pictured here – I couldn’t find it anywhere online) was particularly vile, portraying Valancy as a sort-of undernourished, puckish ingenue. Oh the indignity of it! It did have some entertaining illustrations within the book though, which, in retrospect, I should have probably photographed to share with you all before I returned it to the library. Sorry for that oversight!
The Captive Reader 
One of my favourites, right through. LMM was so inexorably bound by the conventionality of being a minister’s wife (“those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make ministers’ wives”) that this book was a major release for her emotionally. LMM could say what she really thought and felt only in her journals, but she let Valancy break free and say what she really thought right out loud. And to heck with the relatives and the church people.
I’ve never read any LMM *but* the Anne books, but like you I’ve been struck by how often this book shows up in blogs. I’m keeping an eye out for it but I haven’t gone so far as to request a library copy or look for one on-line. (And the “Moonlight” thing gives me pause.)
Oh no! I’m sad you didn’t love this! I think it’s a wonderful book about the potential we all have within us to face our fears and achieve our dreams.
Yes it is a little twee in places but so are all of Montgomery’s books. They’re very of their period in that sense but I am willing to overlook those details and get at the core message which is really inspiring, I think. And daring, for a novel of the time, and considering the social status of spinsters/dependent women. To strike out on your own and defy your family was an incredibly subversive and potentially self destructive act, and having Valancy do that is actually rather radical in a lot of ways.
>>>yes, he really should be ashamed of those awful descriptive passages and edicts
OH GOD YES. I love this book the best of any of Montgomery’s books but GOD, he should be mortified by those passages. (To be fair, he seems to be. But I thought the book should have implied that John Foster’s books were terrible, because seriously, I thought they were terrible.)
I’m sorry you didn’t love this better! I absolutely adore it. I read it when I was a good bit younger so the silliness in Barney and Valancy’s relationship doesn’t bother me, and furthermore I like it so much every time she thumbs her nose at her rotten family.
I love love love this book and have read it endless times. In fact, I love all of LMM’s output and over the last couple of years have read her journals which make for amazing and heartbreaking reading. She can say what she likes in her books but read her journals and oh my goodness me, if you don’t shed a tear I shall be surprised
i have to disagree, i love the book and i actually love it more for the fairy tale wish fulfilling quality of it. montgomery could’ve done it more realistically and cynically but she chose to write something all cute and uplifting. i also think there’s some comments about society and human nature that are very interesting.
I’ve always thought that the millionaire bit was an overkill. It would have been enough for Barney to be John Foster. No need for the Redfern’s story.
I agree with you that it is a bit overly descriptive in places, but I do love this book for reasons I can’t fully explain. Perhaps it is the way it makes fun of human nature (I read it sometime around the time I read Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town and they seemed to mesh well read close together), or the way the medical portion of it seems to rely on quackery (a shock of joy will cure you…..really?? She must have had hysteria……), or maybe I just like having a heroine with gumption (even if it did require believing she was dying). Really the whole John Foster thing seems like he was catering to bored repressed housewives…..
What struck me most in this book is the beauty of the nature descriptions, not Foster’s, Montgomery’s. She knows what she describes, and I think its a rare, intimate celebration of Ontario wild.
This is a great book for me and it’s on my wish list to do an audio version of the book as soon as it’s in the public domain. How do you guys pronounce Valancy? Val-an-see or Va-lan-see or some other way?
John Fosters little quotes were honestly some of my favorite parts of the book!! I reread them countlessly! I suppose I’m too much like Valancy haha!
I thought the quotes from John Foster’s books were absolutely beautiful.
Remember—“The Blue Castle” was published in 1926. Many books about nature and spirituality were written exactly like that in the 1920’s. Also, I don’t think there’s a sexier literary hero than Barney Snaith. This truly is my favorite novel. The cover of the book doesn’t matter. And it’s available on Kindle and iBooks now, too.