The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery was first published in 1926. By 1920 Montgomery had tired of writing about Anne of Green Gables and started writing various other series and stand alone books.
I loved The Blue Castle. The main character is Valancy Stirling a 29 year old woman who has never been valued by her family. Valancy committed the terrible sin of being born female instead of the boy her mother wanted, so being a disappointment to her mother from the beginning Valancy becomes the family whipping girl, valued and loved by nobody. Her father had died when she was a baby and her mother is an overbearing tyrant who won’t even allow her daughter to have a minute of time to herself. When Valancy goes to her spartan bedroom to fetch something her mother and aunt are shouting at her to come downstairs again, she must be darning and mending all day if possible, unless she’s in town running errands (messages) for the extended family. She has no nice clothes and one of her aunts has decreed that she must wear her hair in a particular old fashioned pompadour style which does nothing for her looks. The one thing she is happy about is her name – Valancy, but the family insist in calling her Doss. Apart from being born a girl she has also failed to get a husband, unlike her pretty cousin Olive who is the family golden girl.
To begin with I was quite sure that the Stirlings must be a Presbyterian family, everything about them is miserable and harsh. So I was surprised when they were described as being Anglican, I suspect that that was to avoid any trouble from the Presbyterians as Montgomery was married to a Presbyterian minister. The setting is of course Canada.
Valancy has no life at all and the only time she is allowed any time to herself is at bedtime, so she has built a fantasy life for herself in her dream home called The Blue Castle, it’s her imaginary home in Spain and it’s the only bit of joy she has in life. ‘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 them all, for whose glance men died.’
For quite a wee while Valancy had been worried that her heart was behaving oddly and it was getting worse. She plucks up courage to go to a local doctor about it, not the doctor that her family normally uses. The prognosis that she eventually gets from him spurs her on to begin to live her life for herself, much to the horror of her family who think that she has gone mad when she begins to answer her mother back instead of meekly doing everything she is told.
Being true to herself turns her whole life around, which was quite predictable but for me anyway there was an unexpected twist. I’m now looking forward to reading some more of Montgomery’s non Anne of Green Gables books.
It seems that Montgomery herself had a sad life, suffering from bouts of depression and having a husband who was also suffering from mental health problems. Her Blue Castle must have been the books that she wrote, taking herself out of the difficult situation and escaping from her duties as a minister’s wife. I suspect that most of you have already read this book but in case you haven’t and you want to give it a go you can read it here.
Not for the first time I find myself being quite thankful for the rigid discipline of Scottish Presbyterianism because it does have a wonderful effect on the imagination of those who have had it inflicted upon them. Without it we wouldn’t have had Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Winnie the Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, George MacDonald’s books and many more children’s classic tales as well as Anne of Green Gables of course.