A Dying Young Woman Finally Starts to Live in L. M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle

Anne of Green Gables is one of my favorite books, so I’ve curled up with several of L. M. Montgomery’s books over the years, but until I stumbled upon a review of it a couple months ago, I’d never heard of The Blue Castle. I was surprised to see several people laud it as Montgomery’s best, and I decided I would need to read it for myself.

Valancy Stirling is in some ways like Anne Shirley, the irrepressible orphan for whom Montgomery is best known. Although Valancy grows up with a mother and many close relatives, her childhood is quite as miserable as Anne’s pre-Green Gables days, and it stretches out into her adulthood. Like Anne, she delights in nature and literature, and both of these passions are frowned upon. Whenever she can, she retreats into her imagination, where she resides in a magnificent blue castle and sends gallant knights on dangerous missions. But while Anne is a spitfire, Valancy goes about her days sullen and silent, meekly obedient to her stern, self-centered mother. She sees life as something to endure, not enjoy. Moreover, she has never had anyone look at her the way faithful beau Gilbert looked at Anne from the moment they first met.

Valancy lives her life in a state of fearful subservience, and she has no reason to believe that anything will ever change. But then, on her 29th birthday, she goes to the doctor and receives a startling diagnosis. She has a heart condition and can expect to live no longer than another year. Suddenly, all of the terror that gripped her previously relinquishes its hold on her. Why fear offending relatives who she will only need to put up with for another few months? The knowledge of her impending death liberates her, and she decides to make up for nearly three decades of mere dreary existence. For the first time, she intends to really live.

I’m in the midst of reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and I found Valancy’s disposition quite comparable to that of the Anne in that book. Like Anne Elliot, she is quiet and obedient as the book begins. One parent is dead, while the other is tyrannical at worst and silly at best. In family gatherings, she tends to fade into the background, aside from tolerating the inevitable jabs about her spinsterhood. Montgomery has never seemed so Austenish to me as in this book, where she systematically skewers each of Valancy’s aunts, uncles and cousins, thereby slyly commenting on the ills of society in general. The Stirlings are really quite a ridiculous, hypocritical lot, from Uncle Benjamin, who fancies himself a comedian with his steady stream of stale riddles, to Cousin Olive, who is classically beautiful and has lorded her superiority over Valancy all her life.

I found myself laughing whenever Montgomery let us peek in on the Stirlings and see their reactions to Valancy’s unexpected behavior. This is a very funny book. At the same time, I was a little concerned because at first, it seems that all Valancy’s new lease on life does is give her license to be snarky. While it’s funny to watch her cut her relatives down to size like an early 20th-century Simon Cowell, and while most of them deserve it, I hoped that Montgomery wasn’t suggesting that the greatest pleasure life can afford is the freedom to insult others openly.

Thankfully, there is more, and as the months tick by and Valancy’s resentment subsides, she takes less visceral pleasure in shocking her relatives. There are deeper joys to be found, like the satisfaction of doing a useful job well or of providing companionship for a friend in need. And there is romance too, with an intriguing man whom most of society has overlooked, and here Montgomery provides one of the best descriptions of what it is like to fall in love that I have ever read. As Valancy distances herself from the chains of her childhood, she at last begins to find in her waking life some of the vibrance she thought reserved only for her dream world.

The Blue Castle is a rather strange novel that is by turns wickedly funny and achingly melancholy. It contains some of Montgomery’s most vivid, insightful writing, and the urgency of Valancy’s situation propels the plot forward. I’m not sure if any Montgomery book can quite trump Anne of Green Gables for me, but as someone Valancy’s age with some similar qualities – though fortunately a much better set of relatives – I certainly was drawn into the narrative. In fact, I could hardly put the book down. If you know and love Anne Shirley but have yet to meet Valancy Stirling, perhaps the time has come to acquaint yourself.