Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books:
The Blue Castle – by L.M. Montgomery.
OH, how I love this novel. OH GOD. It’s one of my escapes, a true fairy-romance that I find transportive … If I ever find myself stuck, or feeling sorry for myself, or like a spinster (ha! let’s retire that word, please) – all I need to do is pick up this magical novel. I find it intensely pleasurable to read – and in a weird way, this is my favorite thing that Lucy Maud has ever written. It is singular. It is its own thing. She never wrote another book like it. It feels like an exorcism … and it also feels like it transported her. I love the Emily books – but they don’t do for me what Blue Castle does – it’s just a different experience. I really want this to come out right – because I think Lucy Maud does some of her best writing in this book, and I don’t want to make the book sound trivial. In Blue Castle, we have some of her funniest writing, her most intensely gorgeous nature writing, her most brilliant characterizations … but for me, personally, this book works the way watching, say, Notting Hill does. Or … Kate & Leopold. I’m listing these romantic comedies that I absolutely LOVE … movies that have the ability to really put a little hope in my heart, a little … pep-talk “hang in there, Sheila, hang in there” … There are many movies that work on me on that primal level, the level that aches for a mate, that doesn’t want to give up, that wants to hope … and for me Blue Castle works on that level.
It makes me feel like a teenager. A lovesick teenager.
The story is simple. And also cliched. But the beauty of it is not in the plot points … but in HOW we get to the end of the story, the people we meet, the twists and turns … It’s almost archetypal, like a folk tale – if that makes any sense.
Valancy Stirling (her family calls her “Doss” and she despises the name – but they won’t stop) is an unhappy 29 year old woman – unmarried, seriously on the shelf, as it were … and completely dominated by her thoroughly unpleasant family. God, has Lucy Maud ever created such a bunch of relentless ignorant boring nincompoops in her writing career? She’s merciless (and yet in a very funny way – I laugh out loud reading about these terrible people). Usually “bad” characters have SOME redeeming qualities in Lucy Maud’s world. It’s rare the truly bad seed. Miss Browning in Emily of New Moon comes to mind – she is truly a nasty human being, and she balances out the more humanistic approach to other “villains”. Because you know what? Some people really ARE just assholes. But in Blue Castle, Lucy Maud takes the gloves off and turns her viciousness on people like Valancy’s horrendous family. They are prudish, thin-lipped with decency and decorum … and look at any sign of individuality (especially in Valancy) as the sign of the coming apocalypse. The book takes place in the 1920s, obviously – because there are mentions of bobbed hair (also seen by her family as harbingers of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) and jalopies and stuff like that – but Valancy’s stick-up-the-ass family clings to the Victorian ways. Valancy has zero freedom when the book opens. She doesn’t have a job. She has to do everything her mother says, or else she will get the silent treatment, and Valancy has never before questioned the supremacy of her mother. Valancy is completely cowed by her family. She is who they say she is. She was always a plain little girl, never fit in, couldn’t dance, had no social graces, was a dreamy odd-looking girl … and was always compared unfavorably to her golden-haired smooth-mannered cousin Olive. Valancy could never win the Olive vs. Valancy battle – so she gave up. Valancy is, admittedly, quite a self-pitying thing when the book opens. She feels victimized by everything. And she has no sense of agency in her own destiny. She is victimized by her mother. She is victimized by her entire ridiculous judgmental family. She is single – and she feels victimized by this circumstance. She cannot imagine her way out of this kind of life. She is stuck. Big time. But she doesn’t even see that she is stuck. According to Valancy, this is just her “lot” in life. This is the hand she has been dealt.
Until …
She goes to the doctor (sneaking to the doctor SHE wants to go to, as opposed to going to the family doctor – who will then, naturally, gossip about her physical ailments to her whole family) to ask him about these shortness of breath “attacks” that she has. He examines her. And then tells her, via letter, that she is dying, she has some heart condition, and she only has a year to live. The letter is very blunt and perfunctory – but it is the catalyst. It is what, ironically, sets Valancy free.
She has a horrible night of the soul … realizing that her life is going to end … and suddenly she realizes how much she has wasted her life. All she has experienced (from parents, peers, men) has been rejection. She has had a second-hand life. Olive gets the beaux. Olive gets the pretty dresses. And Valancy sits on the sidelines. She has had ZERO first-hand experiences in her life. She has spent her entire time on the planet in a quivery state of fear and anxiety – fear of annoying her mother, fear of what people will say, fear of rejection …. And after that one “night of the soul” – Valancy literally throws out her old self, which was a lie anyway, erected to please her prudish ignorant mother, and begins to act like herself.
And it goes off like an atom bomb through the Stirling family.
Even small things – like Valancy not laughing at her uncle’s stupid jokes … It was always Valancy’s role to laugh, obligingly – but she stops. Because she doesn’t think the jokes are funny, and she actually thinks her uncle is kind of a stupid man who has never been particularly nice to her. Enough with conventions.
But the changes go deeper than internal ones … Valancy starts taking some huge risks. She walks away from her family – without looking back – and goes out to live with Abel Gay and his daughter – Abel Gay is a drunken reprobate (and yet somehow a very likable character too) who spends his nights carousing and drinking and whoring (presumably) – and he needs help with his frail daughter, who had a baby out of wedlock – and is now dying (the daughter). So Valancy offers her services as a nursemaid – and goes out to live with these people who have been completely rejected and judged by society. And once she is in the bosom of these rejects, these supposed “losers” (who, naturally, are not that at all – they are warmer, more real, more “moral” than the nasty-minded Christians back home who have only JUDGED anjd shunned them – typical.) … Valancy really starts to blossom.
It’s a great story.
I’m going to do a bunch of excerpts, just because I love this book so much.
First excerpt is from the first chapter – where we meet the cast of characters – Valancy’s horrible family.
Excerpt from The Blue Castle – by L.M. Montgomery.
She was glad it was raining – or rather, she was drearily satisfied that it was raining. There would be no picnic that day. This annual picnic, whereby Aunt and Uncle Wellington – one always thought of them in that succession – inevitably celebrated their engagement at a picnic thirty years before, had been, of late years, a veritable nightmare to Valancy. By an impish coincidence it was the same day as her birthday and, after she had passed twenty-five, nobody let her forget it.
Much as she hated going to the picnic, it would never have occurred to her to rebel against it. There seemed to be nothing of the revolutionary in her nature. And she knew exactly what every one would say to her at the picnic. Uncle Wellington, whom she disliked and despised, even though he had fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration, “marrying money,” would say to her in a pig’s whisper, “Not thinking of getting married yet, my dear?” and then go off into the bellow of laughter with which he invariably concluded his dull remarks. Aunt Wellington, of whom Valancy stood in abject awe, would tell her about Olive’s new chiffon dress and Cecil’s last devoted letter. Valancy would have to look as pleased and interested as if the dress and letter had been hers or else Aunt Wellington would be offended. And Valancy had long ago decided that she would rather offend God than Aunt Wellington, because God might forgive her but Aunt Wellington never would.
Aunt Alberta, enormously fat, with an amiable habit of always referring to her husband as “he”, as if he were the only male creature in the world, who could never forget that she had been a great beauty in her youth, would condole with Valancy on her sallow skin —
“I don’t know why all the girls of today are so sunburned. When I was a girl my skin was roses and cream. I was counted the prettiest girl in Canada, my dear.”
Perhaps Uncle Herbert wouldn’t say anything – or perhaps he would remark jocularly, “How fat you’re getting, Doss!” And then everybody would laugh over the excessively humorous idea of poor, scrawny little Doss getting fat.
Handsome, solemn Uncle James, whom Valancy disliked but respected because he was reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan oracle – brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection – would probably remark with the owl-like sarcasm that had won him his reputation, “I suppose you’re busy with your hope-chest these days?”
And Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself.
“What is the difference between Doss and a mouse?”
“The mouse wishes to harm the cheese and Doss wishes to charm the he’s.”
Valancy had heard him ask that riddle fifty times and every time she wanted to throw something at him. But she never did. In the first place, the Stirlings simply did not throw things; in the second place, Uncle Benjamin was a wealthy and childless old widower and Valancy had been brought up in the fear and admonition of his money. If she offended him he would cut her out of his will – supposing she were in it. Valancy did not want to be cut out of Uncle Benjamin’s will. She had been poor all her life and knew the galling bitterness of it. So she endured his riddles and even smiled tortured little smiles over him.
Aunt Isabel, downright and disagreeable as an east wind, would criticize her in some way – Valancy could not predict just how, for Aunt Isabel never repeated a criticism – she found something new with which to jab you every time. 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. Valancy never said what she thought.
Cousin Georgiana – named after her great-great-grandmother, who had been named after George the Fourth – would recount dolorously the names of all relatives and friends who had died since the last picnic and wonder “which of us will be the first to go next.”
Oppressively competent, Aunt Mildred would talk endlessly of her husband and her odious prodigies of babies to Valancy, because Valancy would be the only one she could find to put up with it. For the same reason, Cousin Gladys – really First Cousin Gladys once removed, according to the strict way in which the Stirlings tabulated relationship – a tall, thin lady who admitted she had a sensitive disposition, would describe minutely the tortures of her neuritis. And Olive, the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything Valancy had not – beauty, popularity, love – would show off her beauty and presume on her popularity and flaunt her diamond insignia of love in Valancy’s dazzled envious eyes.
There would be none of all this today. And there would be no packing up of teaspoons. The packing up was always left for Valancy and Cousin Stickles. And once, six years ago, a silver teaspoon from Aunt Wellington’s wedding set had been lost. Valancy never heard the last of that silver teaspoon. Its ghost appeared Banquo-like at every subsequent family feast.
Oh, yes, Valancy knew exactly what the picnic would be like and she blessed the rain that had saved her from it. There would be no picnic this year. If Aunt Wellington could not celebrate on the sacred day itself she would have no celebration at all. Thank whatever gods there were for that.
Wow. Lucy Maud is neither sparing nor circumspect in her description of the clan.
Nice touch, too, calling them Stirling. They’re clearly tarnished through and through.
Nightfly – I love the detail about the woman who always refers to her husband as “he” – as though there could not be another male creature on the planet. Hahahaha Man, I’ve known people like that!
YAY YAY YAY!!!
Sheila, I have been waiting with bated breath for you to get to BLUE CASTLE! I just adore this story, it makes me feel all warm inside. :)
Gypsy – hahahahaha I kind of got out of the Book Excerpt mode, didn’t I?? But now I’m back!
And i know … isn’t this book just MAGIC?
No offense to Gilbert Blythe, but I think Barney is her best male love interest. I love Barney.
True. As great as Gilbert is, he buys into conventionality, and BOY does he let Anne boss him around!!
Barney would never stand for that. Plus, Barney’s got MYSTERY…ooooohh! :)
Yeah – Barney’s wild. I love that about him – and I love how he’s honest with her. “I don’t love you, but you are a bit of a dear” – or whatever he says to her. It’s an awesome love story, it raelly is.
YAY! My favorite! I always felt a bit guilty for loving this book better than the Emily ones, as this is an unabashed fairy tale… but that’s why I like it!
charlene – me too.
Like – Valancy’s liberation from her family is … it’s a great Cinderella story. It’s SO satisfying when she breaks free from them. And that house on the island – I mean, I just want to live there!!
I loved this book. I was even moved to write a poem about it, back in the day. I’ll have to find it again and see if it holds up to a re-read.
I’m almost afraid to re-read it – afraid it won’t hold up!
Love that you read it too – I’ve found a lot of LM Montgomery fans who haven’t even heard of it, strangely enough.
Oh, I love this one so much! This and Rilla are my favorites, but I’m much more like Valancy than Rilla. Like you, I find this a hopeful book to read when I’m in despair about my many spinster-ish qualities. I’m so excited that you’re posting multiple excerpts. This book deserves it!
The Books: “A Tangled Web” (L.M. Montgomery)
Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt series … Almost done with Lucy Maud! I’m skipping the rest of the short stories … well, for now, anyway. Thank you, Melissa, for encouraging me in this direction. Ha! But I couldn’t…