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Valancy Stirling is twenty-nine years old. She has never been married, nor has she ever been in love. She lives with her quite judgmental mother and aunt, who constantly harp on her to get on with her life. An old maid by current societal standards, Valancy seeks reprieve from her current state in the form of reading books that take her to the Blue Castle, a place where all of her dreams and wishes come true. When her life takes a turn for the worse, she comes to terms with the person she wants to be and rebels against her family to fight for her own version of the Blue Castle.… (more)
allisongryski: This is by no means an obvious recommendation. However, the quality of writing and something of the heroines' characters is similar. The heroines of these two books are both under-appreciated members of their families, who are thought beyond any chance of marriage. They are both forced by circumstance to find courage that they didn't know they possessed and they are rewarded with eventual happiness.… (more)
humouress: 'Blue Castle' and 'Journey to the River Sea' have the same sense of wonderment and discovery at exploring the wilderness around the protagonist in the company of someone else who has made an effort to live in harmony with nature.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery is one of those backlist classic books I’ve meant to read for years. I’ve loved the Anne of Green Gables book series since I was a young girl, but I haven’t read many of her other books. I read this mostly from an actual paperback book.
I think The Blue Castle is as good a classic romance as a Jane Austen book, though it takes place about a hundred years later. It’s one of the few adult novels that L.M. Montgomery wrote.
This book has social commentary, humor, tears, romance, and a wonderfully written cast of characters. Plus cats! This is a cat-friendly book. The chapters are short. There are 45 chapters in this book that’s about 250 pages long. If you’re looking for short chapters, this book has them.
"Fear is the original sin," wrote John Foster. "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something. It is a cold, slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading."
The beginning of the book is slower with lots of social commentary and introductions to Valancy’s family and her expected societal limitations. The social and religious commentary alone was riveting.
In many ways, I’m glad I read this book for the first time as an adult married woman and mother. I think I appreciated the nuance more than I would have ten years ago. I thought and talked about The Blue Castle intensely for days after I finished reading it.
The last 25% of the book is packed with reveals and emotional excitement.
More thoughts under spoiler tags. I thought that the rose bush Valancy “attacked” at the beginning of the book would be blooming at the end, and it was.
I cried big tears at Cissy Gay’s story of her baby’s death, then for her own death a few pages later.
The only problem with this romance is that Barney Snaith is perhaps the worst name for a romantic lead I’ve ever heard.
I’m interested in how much detail is on the page compared to what we’re supposed to understand is going on off-page. In my experience, intimacy is rarely mentioned in a book like this. A “respectable” book published in 1926.
To “make love” means romantic speech or “sweet nothings” and seems to have no “bedroom” implications. I’ve read this in “older” books before, but it was especially noticeable here that this was still accurate. On the drive home after they get married, Valancy says she doesn’t “want him to make love” to her, and suggests that she just wants him to talk to her like usual. Then as soon as they get to the island, they have their first kiss. I think we are to understand from this first kiss, that they have an intimate physical relationship.
But I wanted you to talk. I don't want you to make love to me, but I want you to act like an ordinary human being.
Barney lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her first kiss. "Welcome home, dear," Barney was saying.
And a bit later, this line.
And that little kissable dent just between your collar bones.
That sounds quite intimate to me. Interestingly, none of the “marriage of convenience” style tropes such as sleeping apart happened. That’s not where the romance is. A sweet and wonderful relationship is described for them, from companionship to implied physical intimacy. The conflict comes from the unknowns in his past as well as her assumed quickly approaching death.
All this, and still Valancy does not believe he loves her. She truly thinks he’s just been pitying and humoring her. This is frustrating to the reader but is not unbelievable given her emotionally abusive upbringing.
Wow this was so unexpectedly good. Firstly, Valancy is such a great protagonist and her journey to independence was so heartwarming to experience. Of course, Barney was a highlight and the plot twists (multiple) were well done even if I figured a couple out. A big standout was Montgomery's sincere, expressive, and unexpectedly humorous writing which painted the Canadian wilderness so beautifully and made her characters so endearing. I am looking forward to rereading this in the future. ( )
If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling's whole life would have been entirely different. She would have gone with the rest of her clan to Aunt wellington'd engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.
Quotations
...fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.
Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was - the possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of an unbreakable diamond.
The new moons always looked down through it (the oriel window), the lower pine boughs swayed about the top of it, and all through the nights the soft, dim silver of the lake dreamed through it.
In a corner a nice, tall, lazy old clock ticked - the right kind of a clock. One that did not hurry the hours away but ticked them off deliberately. It was the jolliest looking old clock. A fat, corpulent clock with a great, round man's face painted on it, the hands stretching out of its nose and the hours encircling it like a halo.
...they ate out on the verandah that almost overhung the lake... Supper was the meal that Valency loved best. The faint laughter of winds was always about them and the colours of Mistawis, imperial and spiritual, under the changing clouds, were something that cannot be expressed in mere words. Shadows, too. Clustering in the pines until a wind shook them out and pursued them over Mistawis. They lay all day along the shores, threaded by ferns and wild blossoms. they stole around the headlands in the glow of the sunset, until twilight wove them all into one great web of dusk.
(about the suggestion of owning a large house) "No. It's too elegant. I would have to carry it with me everywhere I went. On my back like a snail. It would own me - possess me, body and soul. I like a house I can love and cuddle and boss. Just like ours here."
All the tintings of winter woods are extremely delicate and elusive. When the brief afternoon wanes and the sun just touches the tops of the hills, there seems to be all over the woods an abundance, not of colour, but of the spirit of colour.
"No, no. I don't want to forget Barney. I'd rather be miserable in heaven remembering him than happy forgetting him."
lakes drunken with moonshine
Last words
But, despite the delights before her--'the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome'--lure of the ageless Nile--glamour of the Riviera--mosque and palace and minaret--she knew perfectly well that no spot or palace or home in the world could ever possess the sorcery of her Blue Castle.
Valancy Stirling is twenty-nine years old. She has never been married, nor has she ever been in love. She lives with her quite judgmental mother and aunt, who constantly harp on her to get on with her life. An old maid by current societal standards, Valancy seeks reprieve from her current state in the form of reading books that take her to the Blue Castle, a place where all of her dreams and wishes come true. When her life takes a turn for the worse, she comes to terms with the person she wants to be and rebels against her family to fight for her own version of the Blue Castle.
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From the back cover: At twenty-nine Valancy had never been in love, and it seemed romance had passed her by. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she found her only consolations in the "forbidden" books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle. Then a letter arrived from Dr. Trent -- and Valancy decided to throw caution to the winds. For the first time in her life Valancy did and said exactly what she wanted. Soon she discovered a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.
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I think The Blue Castle is as good a classic romance as a Jane Austen book, though it takes place about a hundred years later. It’s one of the few adult novels that L.M. Montgomery wrote.
This book has social commentary, humor, tears, romance, and a wonderfully written cast of characters. Plus cats! This is a cat-friendly book. The chapters are short. There are 45 chapters in this book that’s about 250 pages long. If you’re looking for short chapters, this book has them.
The beginning of the book is slower with lots of social commentary and introductions to Valancy’s family and her expected societal limitations. The social and religious commentary alone was riveting.
In many ways, I’m glad I read this book for the first time as an adult married woman and mother. I think I appreciated the nuance more than I would have ten years ago. I thought and talked about The Blue Castle intensely for days after I finished reading it.
The last 25% of the book is packed with reveals and emotional excitement.
More thoughts under spoiler tags.
I thought that the rose bush Valancy “attacked” at the beginning of the book would be blooming at the end, and it was.
I cried big tears at Cissy Gay’s story of her baby’s death, then for her own death a few pages later.
The only problem with this romance is that Barney Snaith is perhaps the worst name for a romantic lead I’ve ever heard.
I’m interested in how much detail is on the page compared to what we’re supposed to understand is going on off-page. In my experience, intimacy is rarely mentioned in a book like this. A “respectable” book published in 1926.
To “make love” means romantic speech or “sweet nothings” and seems to have no “bedroom” implications. I’ve read this in “older” books before, but it was especially noticeable here that this was still accurate. On the drive home after they get married, Valancy says she doesn’t “want him to make love” to her, and suggests that she just wants him to talk to her like usual. Then as soon as they get to the island, they have their first kiss. I think we are to understand from this first kiss, that they have an intimate physical relationship.
And a bit later, this line.
That sounds quite intimate to me. Interestingly, none of the “marriage of convenience” style tropes such as sleeping apart happened. That’s not where the romance is. A sweet and wonderful relationship is described for them, from companionship to implied physical intimacy. The conflict comes from the unknowns in his past as well as her assumed quickly approaching death.
All this, and still Valancy does not believe he loves her. She truly thinks he’s just been pitying and humoring her. This is frustrating to the reader but is not unbelievable given her emotionally abusive upbringing.
Thankfully, they sort it all out in the end.
The hypocrisy of her family! Ugh!
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