The Blue Castle

This book was something of a roller coaster to start because I hadn’t paid any attention to the synopsis and for several chapters I...honestly thought Maud Montgomery was gonna give me a tragedy.

I am a fool, obviously.

Once I found my footing I adored this book. Just everything about it. Funny and bittersweet and cozy and romantic. Everything about it except that the love interest is named Barney. I can’t forgive him for that.

I really think this book could have been shorter but the ending was so sweet that it made up for the lag. 4 stars!

she opened Magic of Wings. Her eyes fell on the paragraph that changed her life. “Fear is the original sin,” wrote John Foster. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone 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.”

2023 reread:

The Blue Castle was somehow even more delightful on a reread. This time, it strikes me as much more lighthearted and humorous, especially in the beginning. I think I took it a bit too seriously on my first reading—yes, some bits in the beginning are still dreadfully sad, but I see now that Montgomery is really playing up how ridiculous Valancy’s family is. (I also didn’t feel compelled to try and pin down every character name as it’s clear there are really only a handful of important family members; the rest are there mainly to add flavor, so it’s not a problem at all if they all run together.) As a result, the somewhat outlandish plot twists and coincidences feel much less out-of-place, without losing any of the emotional pull that initially drew me in. And, of course, the nature writing is as beautiful as ever. An enduring favorite.

Some more quotes:

“You were very selfish,” said her mother coldly, when Valancy told her about it at night. That was the first and last time Valancy had ever taken any of her troubles to her mother.

“I’ve had nothing but a secondhand existence,” decided Valancy. “All the great emotions of life have passed me by. I’ve never even had a grief. And have I ever really loved anybody?

Cats. It sounded quite alluring to Valancy, in the plural. She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies.

But what’s the use of going to church when it’s all settled by predestination?

It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.

“John Foster says,” quoted Valancy, “ ‘If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you’ll never be and you need not waste time in trying.’ ”

“You see—I’ve never had any real life,” she said. “I’ve just—breathed.

The stars smouldered in the horizon mists through the old oriel.

December. Early snows and Orion. The pale fires of the Milky Way. It was really winter now—wonderful, cold, starry winter.

Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour—the purest vintage of winter’s wine. Nights with their fire of stars.

Then they had an evening of reading and talk. They talked about everything in this world and a good many things in other worlds.

2022 review:

Valancy had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women—herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night.

The Blue Castle is a fairytale romance that feels contrived, overly sentimental, and (generally) not especially well-written. But I guess you can’t help who you love, because I

love this book.

Montgomery did not write a particularly nuanced cast of characters. In the first chapters, she flings handfuls of them at the reader—all unrelentingly, unbelievably horrible, more or less in the exact same way, and almost impossible to keep straight. Perhaps a person might be unfortunate enough to have one or two of these people as family, but the whole clan? Moreover, the narrative has an annoying habit of jumping to the perspective of these odious people whenever they’re present rather than focusing on Valancy, making the beginning of the book a bit of a miserable read. Valancy, by the way, is essentially perfect: kind, compassionate, self-sacrificing, and trusting to a fault (at least,

I think it’s a fault that

Valancy doesn’t care that her husband may be a criminal

, but it doesn’t seem that Montgomery thinks so).

With each chapter, the novel becomes even more over-the-top and soapy. It’s studded with the most unbelievable coincidences—perhaps the worst, thematically speaking, being

how easy it was for Valancy to find true love

—and each revelation is more ridiculous and far-fetched than the last. By the end,

everything is wrapped up in as neat a bow as could be imagined: Valancy is now so beautiful that famous artists beg to paint her, richer than her family could ever have hoped for, happily married to a doting husband, and fit as a fiddle with a long, glamorous life of travel and adventure ahead

.

The prose is fine, with an old-fashioned charm, but Montgomery isn’t a particularly great stylist: her writing often feels overly melodramatic and waxes purple in places, while being exceptionally plain and utilitarian in others. The passages that I highlighted—and I highlighted a

lot—stood out to me because they rang true, and generally not because they’re especially beautiful or clever. It’s not bad, just middle-of-the-road…with the exception of the nature writing. The nature writing is

fantastic. There’s a series of chapters in the middle of the book that show the passage of time by describing the changes that each month brings to Mistawis, and it’s absolutely beautiful, perfectly evoking the atmosphere of each changing season. And there's a sentence about the "lemon-hued twilight air" that is just divine.

With all of the above in mind, I probably shouldn’t have liked

The Blue Castle…yet I loved it. I loved Valancy as a character and watching her (albeit sudden) transformation and growth. I loved the fantasy of it all, ridiculous and sensational as it was. I loved the fairy tale metaphors and imagery, the idea of the imaginary Blue Castle (I really wish we’d spent more time experiencing it through Valancy’s imagination, much the way we see Eleanor reimagining her life in Shirley Jackson’s fantastic

The Haunting of Hill House), and the way the idea of a “Blue Castle” had taken on new meaning by the end. I loved the way the novel made me

feel—and feel deeply. I loved the over-the-top romance of

everything, setting included. I loved the true surprise that was

Valancy’s proposal

, and the later expected but oh-so-satisfying

declaration of love from Barney

. And I loved the themes: about fear, and learning to disregard what other people think, and living life to the fullest, and finding beauty, and experiencing joy and sorrow in equal measure, and deciding to be honest about what you want and then

making it happen.

This novel has flaws, that’s certain, but I do think it holds literary value. The commentary on bucking societal expectations and withholding judgment based on appearances (literally and figuratively) must have been fairly progressive for its time. And characters like Valancy—prim, proper, lonely wallflowers—rarely appear as sympathetic heroines.

I (briefly) looked into Montgomery’s personal life, and one moment stood out, a brief but intense romance in which both were engaged to other people; Montgomery broke off the affair due to pressure from friends and family that he was her inferior. (He died shortly thereafter. Montgomery did eventually marry, but it seems out of practicality.) I’m not the first person to wonder whether

The Blue Castle is Montgomery wishing she’d thrown caution and societal expectations to the wind and gone after the man she truly loved…

Some favorite passages:

If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different.

But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet—never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.

Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her.

Valancy never persisted.

Valancy, so cowed and subdued and overridden and snubbed in real life, was wont to let herself go rather splendidly in her daydreams.

She was twenty-nine, lonely, undesired, ill-favored—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 colorless, 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 realizes that she has nothing to live for—neither love, duty, purpose nor hope—holds for her the bitterness of death. “And I just have to go on living because I can’t stop. I may have to live eighty years,” thought Valancy, in a kind of panic. “We’re all horribly long-lived.

Apart from her eyes she was neither pretty nor ugly—just insignificant-looking, she concluded bitterly.

But then, there were so many things Valancy never dared do. All her life she had been afraid of something, she thought bitterly.

Fear—fear—fear—she could never escape from it.

She was one of the people whom life always passes by. There was no altering that fact.

Oh, if I could only have a house of my own—ever so poor, so tiny—but my own!

“I’m going to be honest with myself anyhow,” she thought savagely. “Uncle Benjamin’s riddles hurt me because they are true. I do want to be married. I want a house of my own—I want a husband of my own—I want sweet, little fat babies of my own—”

Her eyes fell on the paragraph that changed her life. “Fear is the original sin,” wrote John Foster. “Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that someone 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.”

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.

But though she was not afraid of death she was not indifferent to it. She found that she resented it; it was not fair that she should have to die when she had never lived. Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by—not because she had no future but because she had no past.

“All the great emotions of life have passed me by. I’ve never even had a grief.

The shackles had been stricken off her soul.

She ceased to feel anything except that she was part of a comet rushing gloriously through the night of space.

She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new. She was no longer unimportant, little old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear. Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was—this 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 the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this.

She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure!

The lights were beginning to twinkle out like stars in the clear, lemon-hued twilight air.

“‘Who could endure life if it were not for the hope of death?’” murmured Valancy softly—it was of course a quotation from some book of John Foster’s.

“I thought I’d run down and ask if there was anything I could do for you,” said Barney. Valancy took it with a canter.“Yes, there is something you can do for me,” she said, evenly and distinctly. “Will you marry me?”

I haven’t long to live—perhaps only a few months—a few weeks. I want to live them.

“Will you marry me as I stand?” demanded Barney. A passing car, full of tourists, honked loudly—it seemed derisively. Valancy looked at him. Blue homespun shirt, nondescript hat, muddy overalls. Unshaved! “Yes,” she said. Barney put his hands over the gate and took her little cold ones gently in his. “Valancy,” he said, trying to speak lightly, “of course I’m not in love with you—never thought of such a thing as being in love. But, do you know, I’ve always thought you were a bit of a dear.”

She herself was thinking of the way she had once planned to be married—away back in her early teens when such a thing had not seemed impossible. White silk and tulle veil and orange-blossoms; no bridesmaid. But one flower girl, in a frock of cream shadow lace over pale pink, with a wreath of flowers in her hair, carrying a basket of roses and lilies-of-the-valley. And the groom, a noble-looking creature, irreproachably clad in whatever the fashion of the day decreed. Valancy lifted her eyes and saw herself and Barney in the little slanting, distorting mirror over the mantelpiece. She in her odd, unbridal green hat and dress. Barney in shirt and overalls. But it was Barney. That was all that mattered.

Valancy looked—and looked—and looked again. There was a diaphanous lilac mist on the lake, shrouding the island. Through it the two enormous pine-trees that clasped hands over Barney’s shack loomed out like dark turrets. Behind them was a sky still rose-hued in the afterlight, and a pale young moon. Valancy shivered like a tree the wind stirs suddenly. Something seemed to sweep over her soul. “My Blue Castle!” she said. “Oh, my Blue Castle!” They got into the canoe and paddled out to it. They left behind the realm of everyday and things known and landed on a realm of mystery and enchantment where anything might happen—anything might be true.

“Look at my rosebush! Why, it’s blooming!” It was. Covered with blossoms. Great, crimson, velvety blossoms. Fragrant. Glowing. Wonderful. “My cutting it to pieces must have done it good,” said Valancy, laughing.

“Isn’t it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up?” queried Valancy. “Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.”

Before them lay Mistawis, like a scene out of some fairy tale of old time.

“There is no such thing as freedom on earth,” he said. “Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. You think you are free now because you’ve escaped from a peculiarly unbearable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me—that’s a bondage.” “Who said or wrote that ‘the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is?’” asked Valancy dreamily, clinging to his arm as they climbed up the rock steps. “Ah, now you have it,” said Barney. “That’s all the freedom we can hope for—the freedom to choose our prison.

She had forgotten all the old humiliating things that used to come up against her in the night—the injustices and the disappointments.

Holmes speaks of grief “staining backward” through the pages of life; but Valancy found her happiness had stained backward likewise and flooded with rose-color her whole previous drab existence. She found it hard to believe that she had ever been lonely and unhappy and afraid.

Also, you remember your face as it was in the days when your soul was not allowed to shine through it.

Thirty seconds can be very long sometimes. Long enough to work a miracle or a revolution.

The green cascade of “Wandering Jew” still tumbled out of the old granite saucepan on the window-stand.

It’s always been a hard thing for me to tell things, Valancy—anything that went deep. And most things went deep with me.

“Love you! Girl, you’re in the very core of my heart. I hold you there like a jewel. Didn’t I promise you I’d never tell you a lie? Love you! I love you with all there is of me to love. Heart, soul, brain. Every fiber of body and spirit thrilling to the sweetness of you. There’s nobody in the world for me but you, Valancy.”

But, despite the delights before her—“the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome”—lure of the ageless Nile—glamor 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.