In a nutshell, Valancy talks back, scoffs in the face of small-town hypocrisy, and stages a marvelous rebellion against stuffy family stricture. She associates with the town low-lifes, cuts her hair, buys herself some flattering shoes, goes on dates with a mysterious woodsman who may, or may not hide an unsavory past. Valancy has, at most, months to live.Īs the Christian myth teaches us: in death, there is life – and life is what Valancy sets out to embrace. Instead, it leads her to a visit with the local doctor and the news that the painful pressure she feels in her chest is a fatal heart condition. The “rain” saves Valancy from the picnic, where she would have remained as wall-flowery as an obscure spinster can. Incipient in The Blue Castle‘s opening line is the suggestion that Valancy’s life “would have been different” by staying exactly as it was, dominated and derided by family. Valancy is simultaneously cowed, dismissed, pitied, and exploited. Valancy is a 29-year-old mousy spinster, a Miss Bates without the supportive community or tolerant mother, living in her contemptuous family’s shadow and reminded daily she is her supercilious mother’s cross to bear. Its opening line encompasses what happens to a life at the crossroads of arbitrariness and opportunity, circumstance and freedom. Thus opens Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Blue Castle, a novel that should be as beloved to Montgomery readers as Anne of Green Gables. “If it had not rained on a certain May morning, Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been different.”
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