bluecastle | 28 Books -- Day 1

The Blue Castle by Lucy Maude Montgomery (1926)

"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's 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."

Given my LJ username I thought I should start with this one... my favorite book. I love all of L.M. Montgomery's books, but this one, her first attempt at an adult novel, speaks to me in so many ways.

And adult it is ... for it includes alcoholism, the repression of women, poverty, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and a bit oddly, the evils of patent medicines ... but it is also a sweet love story that works on several levels, and more interestingly, the story of the struggle to find your true self.

And it's so cinematic. I always thought it would make a great "Merchant-Ivory" film. The starched repression of the small gingerbread-encrusted Victorian village ... the honest poverty Valancy finds when she takes her first job ... the mysterious Canadian woods ... the deep green loveliness of the remote island Valancy calls home at last...and the opulent fantasy of her dream castle in Spain.

If you've ever felt lonely and ignored, or if you sometimes have the feeling that you're not really in control of your life... than Valancy Jane Stirling is someone you ought to get to know...

"Valancy was neither jealous nor selfish. It was only that she wanted a dust-pile of her own--small or big mattered not ... the bell rang -- the girls trooped into school and had forgotten the whole affair before they reached their seats. Valancy never forgot it. To this day she resented it in her secret soul. But was it not symbolical of her life?

"I've never been able to have my own dust-pile," thought Valancy.

...

"I've been trying to please other people all my life and failed," she said. "After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again. I've breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life. What a luxury it will be to tell the truth! I may not be able to do much that I want to do but I won't do another thing that I don't want to do. Mother can pout for weeks--I shan't worry over it. 'Despair is a free man--hope is a slave.'"

Valancy got up and dressed, with a deepening of that curious sense of freedom. When she had finished with her hair she opened the window and hurled the jar of potpourri over into the next lot. It smashed gloriously against the schoolgirl complexion on the old carriage-shop.

"I'm sick of fragrance of dead things," said Valancy."

While I think everyone should own a copy of this book, you can read this online at Project Gutenberg Australia (full text): http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200951h.html

additional info at: http://books.google.com/books?id=yGoxgtO0HNoC&dq=%22the+blue+castle%22+l+m+montgomery&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

For some info on the locales written about in the book:

http://www.lmm-anne.net/archives/2008/geography/the-geography-of-the-blue-castle.html