Tag: L.M. Montgomery

The Blue Castle Chapters 23 to 44

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading12 Comments

I am going to be honest with my blog readers — I forgot to write the last blog post for our read along!

My husband was having horrible jaw pain, had to go to the ER (which he never does!)  and will need oral surgery so my mind just blanked on the fact I was supposed to write a final post about the last chapters of the book!

But on with the show.

These are my favorite chapters.

The chapters where all the sweet and subtle romance happens.

There are also some slower chapters for me in this part of the book, but I believe those slower chapters are meant to build up a picture for us of the love growing between Barney and Valancy.

It’s in these chapters where Valancy asks Barney to marry her after Cissy passes away.

She confesses to him about her heart condition and tells him she simply wants to experience some living before she dies.

She wants to live with him on his island and spend time with him and then she will  be dead and gone and he can move on with his life.

Barney agrees, and we aren’t sure if it is because he loves her or he feels sorry for her.

She isn’t either but she is amazed when they travel to his little island across the water, and she realizes his home, amongst the trees and nature, is how she pictured her blue castle.

Valancy loves Barney.

She loves his idiosyncrasies and the way he loves nature and how he cares about the animals, such as his cats.

When they first get married, he makes her promise that she will not go into his little shed out back and she says she doesn’t care about his shed or what he does in there, even if he has a dead wife hanging on the wall. Lucy Maud’s sense of humor  was so odd and quirky and I’m here for it.


They carry on life, scandalizing Valancy’s family who goes apoplectic when they learn Valancy has married a rumored womanizer and criminal.

Valancy likes to read and quote John Foster to Barney as they walk in the woods and he always rolls  his eyes and ask how she can read such silliness.

Gradually Valancy begins to look and feel better. She’s full of joy and her physical appearance is showing it. The dark circles have disappeared and she’s putting on healthy weight.

The chest pains and dizzy spells she used to have have just about disappeared.

Life is wonderful and then something crazy happens.

She and Barney are on their way back from town and are crossing the train tracks when her shoe gets stuck in the track. Before they know it, a train if barreling down on her.

Barney tries to get her loose but she tells him to leave her. She was going to die anyhow but he has a future.

Barney refuses and is able to get her loose and drag her to safety.

Afterwards Valancy realizes that if anything should have caused her weakened heart to fail, it should have been that near death experience.

She is mystified and horrified.

She worries Barney will think she somehow manipulated him into marriage, that she really isn’t dying. She believes this is how Barney feels when he becomes distant and announces he will be leaving for a while.

Cue the misunderstanding trope, which I often hate in modern romances, but which works well here.

It’s at this point that I was hoping what I thought might happen all along — that Valancy will find out that she isn’t really dying.

How exciting it was when Dr. Trent finds out he sent the wrong letter and how realistic for me, someone with chronic illness, to see a doctor screw up a diagnosis or send the wrong letter. Apparently, this whole thing of some/many doctors being inept isn’t a new thing. Unlike some doctors of today, though, Dr. Trent apologizes profusely.

Valancy is happy she isn’t dying, for the most part, but realizes how much she enjoyed life when she thought she didn’t have a lot of it left.

Her world has been turned upside yet again, but her day isn’t over yet.

She’s about to find out who Barney Snaith really is for an old man is waiting by the river when she arrives home, looking for a way to the island.

Valancy soon learns this man is Barney’s father, Mr. Redfern the man who founded the company that produces the elixirs her family always tried to make her take when they decided she was ill. Barney isn’t a poor man who just loves walking through the woods with her and listening to trees blow in the wind. He’s the son of a millionaire. He hasn’t talked to his father in years, but he still has wealthy connections.

There is this whole hilarious part where during her conversation with Mr. Redfern, Valancy would think of one of the advertising phrases for the elixir.

“Dr. Redfern took out a yellow handkerchief, removed his hat, and mopped his brow. He was very bald and Valancy’s imp whispered, “Why be bald? Why lose your manly beauty? Try Redfern’s Hair Vigor. It keeps you young.”

Dr. Redfern tells her that Barney was engaged once but then ran off and now Valancy thinks he would probably rather be married to the woman he used to be engaged to.

I could relate to Valancy feeling overwhelmed at this point. She’s just been told she isn’t dying, she finds out her husband is the son of one of the richest men in Canada, she’s worried her husband thinks she manipulated him— everything is completely messed up.

I truly felt her sadness and despair.

After Mr. Redfern leaves, telling her he’s shocked that Barney couldn’t even tell him he had a wife, even though they haven’t spoken in almost five years, Valancy decides she needs to leave because she feels like Barney definitely only married her because he thought she was going to die.

She wants to write a farewell letter to Barney but can’t find a pencil so goes into the shed she was never supposed to go in and learns that Barney is really John Foster! All those beautiful things that John Foster wrote are really coming from Barney! He was derisive about John Foster because he didn’t want her to know who he was in case she liked him only because he was the writer she loved so much.

If you’ve read the book, then you might have been like me and yelling at the page because you just feel in your gut this is not why Barney left.  Maybe he was trying to process things but I just felt that he was not leaving Valancy.

It was so hard to see Valancy go back to her depressing life with her mother and aunts and uncles.

I was just praying that Barney would come back to rescue her and when he did, I was so thrilled! The way he tells her that he wasn’t running away from her, and how he realized the day she almost died on the train tracks how much he loved her is just so special and lovely.

“But I didn’t realize what you actually meant to me till that moment at the switch. Then it came like a lightning flash. I knew I couldn’t live without you — that if I couldn’t live without you — that if I couldn’t pull you loose in time I’d have to die with you. I admit it bowled me over — knocked me silly. I couldn’t get my bearings for a while.”

What really upset him was that he knew he loved her, but he also knew she was going to die, and it drove him mad with sadness.

He tells her how his previous fiancé only wanted him for his money and when he first met Valancy he needed to know she wanted him for him, not his money.

Sure, he felt sorry for her at first when he married her, but then he fell hard for her.

“You made me believe again in the reality of friendship and love,” he says. “The world seemed good again just because you were in it honey. I’d have been willing to go on forever just as we were. I knew that, the night I came home and saw my homelight shining out from the island for the first time and knew you were there waiting for me. After being homeless all my life it was beautiful to have a home. To come home hungry at night and know there was a good supper and a cheery fire — and you.”

*sniff*

I mean, seriously…I just love this whole section. No, I don’t like some romances as much as other genres, but this romance is just so sweet.

I love when she says he shouldn’t love her and he says, “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 is nobody in the world for me but you Valancy!”

Valancy doesn’t believe him for a bit, and I just wanted to reach inside the book and shake her a bit and yell, “Girl! Wake up!! He really loves you!”

I don’t know about you but I was a little disappointed when they decide to travel the world instead of stay on their island, or at Valancy’s blue castle. I’m glad they plan to stay there for summers but I don’t like the idea that the two of them may become jaded by the world without nature to ground them. I guess that is why they decided to keep the little island and plan to return to it as often as they can.

This bring us to the end of our read along of The Blue Castle.

What did you think of the book as a whole and especially the ending?

Introduction: Read The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery with me. First a Little History.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings16 Comments

I am re-reading The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery and decided I would write some blog posts for anyone who wants to read along with me. I originally was going to write these posts only in February, but I they will stretch into March as well now. One, I am behind on reading the book and two, that means I am behind on writing the blog posts I wanted to write for this read-along.

There will be spoilers in the chapter review posts posts so you are warned.

My plan was to password protect any of the posts with spoilers, but readers were having a hard time commenting so I removed the password protection. Scroll past them at your own risk if you have not read the book yet and want to.

If you don’t have time to read the book this month, don’t worry. These posts will be up for you to look at anytime.

A little history of our author

For this first post, I’m going to give a little background on our author and the book.

Here is a description of the book from Goodreads for those unfamiliar with it:

An unforgettable story of courage and romance. Will Valancy Stirling ever escape her strict family and find true love?

Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the “forbidden” books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle–a place where all her dreams come true, and she can be who she truly wants to be. After getting shocking news from the doctor, she rebels against her family and discovers a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.

The book is considered to be one of a few books written for adults by L.M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables and a series of books about Anne, which are considered children’s books. They are very long children’s books, I do have to say though, and I can’t imagine today’s kids reading all of the books in the series because the ones after Anne are very wordy. Good, but wordy. And old-fashioned wordy at that too.

I am going to put a disclaimer in here for anyone who tries The Blue Castle for the first time. The first ten chapters are a bit repetitive with how depressed and oppressed our main character is. I urge you to not give up because slowly you are going to notice subtle changes in Valancy that are going to become not-so-subtle changes and eventually all-out rebellious changes that will forever change her life. In other words, the book picks up by chapter 11, and the chapters are short. Fear not!

Okay, now back to a bit of history about our author.

Many of you probably already know that L.M. stands for Lucy Maud.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in 1874 in New London, Canada. It was called Clifton, Canada at that time.

She had a sad beginning with her mother dying from tuberculosis when Lucy Maud was almost two. Her father left her in the care of her mother’s parents, Alexander and Lucy Maud Wooner Macneill of Cavendish and then moved to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and remarried. He never returned for his daughter, who was called Maud after she moved in with her grandparents since her grandmother’s name was also Lucy.

Reading about her early life helped me better understand why Lucy Maud was able to write Anne Shirley’s story so well. No, Lucy Maud was not adopted in the strict sense of the word. She had parents and she lived with family after her mom passed and her father left, but an orphan spirit remained within her.

Lucy Maud was an only child living with her 50-something grandparents so her imagination, nature, books, and writing became her friends.

She started keeping a journal and writing poetry at the age of nine. She became more serious about her journal writing at the age of 14.

She completed her early education at a one-room school near her grandparents’ home, spending only one year with her father and his new wife in Prince Albert.

It was while in Prince Albert that she had her first published piece, a poem called On Cape LeForce, appear in a Prince Edward Island newspaper.

Lucy Maud eventually earned a teaching degree and taught school for three years, six months of those on Prince Edward Island, before she returned to Cavendish to care for her grandmother after her grandfather died. Sound familiar at all, Anne fans?

Lucy Maud remained with her grandmother for the next thirteen years, with the only break being a nine-month period in 1901-1902 when she worked as a proof-reader for The Daily Echo in Halifax. She wrote many of her popular works while living with her grandmother but first wrote stories or articles for various magazines and publications, working her way up until she was earning $500 a year, which was a hefty sum back then.

She wrote her first and most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables in 1905 but it was not published until 1908 due to it repeatedly being rejected by publishers who had no idea it would become such a beloved novel and, in the future, a cultural phenomenon. It would also bring a great deal of tourism to Prince Edward Island, where the book took place and where Lucy Maud lived for the first half of her life.

Source: Canadian Geographic

When her grandmother died, Lucy Maud married Rev. Ewan McDonald, who she’d actually been secretly engaged to since 1906.

I wish I could say her marriage was a good one but in truth it was not very happy and Lucy herself wrote in her journal sometime after the wedding, “When it was all over and I found myself sitting there by my husband’s side … I felt a sudden horrible onrush of rebellion and despair. I wanted to be free!”

Lucy definitely wanted to be free years later when she and her husband both struggled with their mental health. Her with depression and him with “manic-depressive insanity” (now known as bi-polar) which he was diagnosed with after World War I.

Rev. Macdonald

Mental illness was considered shameful at the time, so Lucy hid her and her husband’s condition. Sometimes she wrote his sermons so he could read them in church and if he was incapable of even reading them, she told everyone he’d had to go out of town..

After I found all this out, I realized one reason she wrote a book about a woman trying to break free of her mundane and difficult life after she was married was because she desperately wanted to escape her real life. She essentially said so in a 1925 journal entry.

“I have enjoyed writing it very much. It seemed a refuge from the cares and worries of my real world.” (Feb. 8, 1925)

When she finished it, she wrote, “I am sorry it is done. It has been for several months a daily escape from a world of intolerable realities.” (Mar. 10, 1925)

Marriage did bring at least something good to Lucy Maud.

Children. She had two sons (Chester Cameron in July 1912 and Ewan Stuart in October 1915 with a stillborn birth (Hugh Alexander, in August 1914 ) in between. Being a mom what she had always wanted and she wrote in her journal that motherhood “pays for all.”

She did not, however, enjoy being the wife of a minister, preferring to write in her locked front parlor, to visiting with the people of the town they moved to, pulling her from her beloved Prince Edward Island.

“To all I try to be courteously tactful and considerate, and most of them I like superficially,” she wrote in her journal, “but the gates of my soul are barred against them. They do not have the key.”

While many readers of Lucy Maud’s work would call the first Anne book (yes, there is a series of eight books featuring Anne or her family) the best she’s written, Lucy Maud herself favored Emily of New Moon because the story of a young girl trying to be a published writer when her family was so scandalized at the idea, mirrored Lucy Maud’s own life so closely.

Lucy Maud had an Aunt Emily, but she most likely based mean Aunt Elizabeth in Emily of New Moon on her Aunt Emily, many scholars say.

A cousin, the daughter of Aunt Emily, said her mother once tossed down a copy of A Tangled Web, another “adult” book by Lucy Maud, and said, “I’m ashamed to know her!”

While it’s never been made clear why Emily didn’t like her niece’s writing, some Lucy Maud scholars think it is because Emily longed to be a writer herself but couldn’t because of society’s constraints.

If you would like to read more about Lucy Maud’s life, by the way, you can pick up her memoir, The Alpine Path, which I hope to pick up someday or The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio, considered to be the definitive biography of her life.  I also hope to read that one too. Much of what we know now about Lucy Maud came from her memoir and her own diaries, which Rubio used as the sources for her book.

“Forty years after Montgomery’s death, her inner life was finally revealed through her personal diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, private correspondence and original manuscripts, all donated to the University of Guelph by her youngest son, Stuart,” Rosemary Counter wrote for Canadian Geographic in 2024. “Through them, Rubio and the close-knit community of Anne scholars would dive well beyond her books and deep into the mind of their author. For nearly a century, by design, if you knew Anne, you knew Montgomery. But all that was about to change.”

Lucy Maud suffered with anxiety at night. She often paced her floors, unclenching and clenching her hands.

She was known to take a cocktail of various drugs to help her anxiety and depression, and in 1942, after sending her manuscript, The Blythes are Quoted, off to her publisher, she took one of those cocktails, lay down, and never woke up again. She was 67.

As far as anyone in the family knew, her death was a total accident.

A couple of years ago, though, a news story came out with information from Lucy’s granddaughter, who wanted the public to know that even though the story had always been that Lucy accidentally overdosed, the family had lied out of embarrassment. There had actually been a note written by Lucy that may or may not have been a suicide note.

“May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand.” 

Her son, Stuart, pocketed the note to protect her reputation, but 60-years-later Stuart’s daughter, Kate Macdonald Butler, wanted anyone suffering from mental illness to know they were not alone and could reach out for help, something Lucy Maud felt she couldn’t do.

Lucy Maud and The Blue Castle

According to Rubio, Lucy Maud was always considered a children’s book author, so when she published The Blue Castle, people were a bit thrown off.

“Its mature subject got it banned for children in a number of places” Rubio said. “While she was censored for mentioning an unwed mother (who dies, no less), young writers like [Morley] Callaghan were earning praise for sympathetic treatment of down-and-outers and prostitutes.”

Despite the backlash, The Blue Castle was a success. She wrotein her journal on Jan.22, 1927 that she received a letter from her publisher, Mr. Stokes, saying that “they have done so well with it that he wants me to write another similar to it as soon as possible.”

Some readers say A Tangled Web was that “similar book.”

Sometime in the 1990s, The Blue Castle became popular again and it has been on the reading lists of many classic book readers ever since.

If you would like to read my impressions of chapters 1 to 10 you can click this link and you will be brought to a password protected post. If you have read the book and want to discuss it with me the password is simply the word BLUE.

Sources:

https://lmmontgomery.ca/about/l-m-montgomery/

This article is fascinating:

https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/life-after-death-the-real-lucy-maud-montgomery/

https://lmmontgomery.ca/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lm-montgomery-anne-green-gables-life-180981839/

Anne Shirley quotes and loving it when my daughter “gets” a character I “get”

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings3 Comments

I love it when someone besides me understands a literary character who I love and it’s even better when that someone is my seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

I’ve mentioned before on my blog that Little Miss has been making me read the Little House on the Prairie books again and I’m not really enjoying reading them again because, well, they are a bit tedious at times and Ma drives me bonkers (she’s so rude and well, racist, at times. I still don’t think the whole series is racist, however, and I definitely think children should read them or have them read to them to learn more about life in the 1800s). I’ll write about Ma and her idiosyncrasies in a future post.

Recently I had convinced Little Miss to let me read Anne of Green Gables before bed instead, but sadly she seemed unable to fall asleep while I was reading that book, mainly because, as she said, “It wakes my brain up too much.”

I read the dialogue in the voices of the characters when I read to her, and I’ve watched the Anne of Green Gables movie (Canadian version only) so many times that I was really getting into it. I made Anne a little bit too hyper, but that’s how she is. Little Miss told me that she was too into the story to fall asleep and asked me to go back to Little House because it was “boring enough for me to fall asleep to.”

Earlier this week I had simply had had enough of Ma and told Little Miss I could read Anne but dull it down a little.

“I can make it boring,” I told her. “Make Anne sound boring. Less bouncy.”

She gasped. “No! You can’t do that!  You have to read it with Anne’s bouncy voice because Anne’s bouncy voice is what makes Anne, Anne!”

Oh gosh! She gets it! Anne’s personality is what makes Anne Anne and that’s really the point of the books, but especially the first one. The theme is that Anne is dramatic and silly and swoony and, well, wonderful, and Little Miss gets it!

I’ve really enjoyed reading the Anne series these last couple of months. It’s been comfort reading for me. While reading, I have written down or snapped photos on my phone of several quotes I have enjoyed the most. I thought I’d share some of my favorites here for you today.

“Marilla felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Anne the childish classic, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” But she had, as I have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor–which is simply another name for a sense of the fitness of things; and it suddenly occurred to her that simple little prayer, sacred to the white-robed childhood lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God’s love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love.”―  Anne of Green Gables

“Having adventures comes natural to some people”, said Anne serenely. “You just have a gift for them or you haven’t.” Anne of Avonlea

“Oh, here we are at the bridge. I’m going to shut my eyes tight. I’m always afraid going over bridges. I can’t help imagining that perhaps, just as we get to the middle, they’ll crumple up like a jackknife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we’re getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge did crumple up I’d want to see it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn’t it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There, we’re over. Now I’ll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.”
―  Anne of Green Gables

“Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,” declared Anne. “I’m quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads.” — Anne of Green Gables

“Oh, Marilla, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Anne. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Lynde says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.” – Anne of Green Gables

“Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.” – Anne of Avonlea

“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” – Anne of Avonlea

“Yes, it’s beautiful,’ said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne’s uplifted face, ‘but wouldn’t it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?” – Anne of Avonlea

“When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part is glorious as long as it lasts…it’s like soaring through a sunset. I think it almost pays for the thud.” – Anne of Avonlea

“Whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed…that nothing ever came up to your expectations. Well, perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don’t always come up to your expectations either…they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.” -Anne of Avonlea

“It takes all sorts of people to make a world, as I’ve often heard, but I think there are some who could be spared,” — Anne of Avonlea

“There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves–so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.” — Anne of the Island

“I am afraid to speak or move for the fear all this wonderful beauty will vanish just like a broken silence.” — Anne of the Island

“That’s one of the things we learn as we grow older — how to forgive. It comes easier at forty than it did at twenty.” — Anne of the Island

“People told her she hadn’t changed much, in a tone which hinted they were surprised and a little disappointed she hadn’t.” — Anne of the Island

“There is a book of Revelation in everyone’s life, as there is in the Bible.” — Anne of the Island

“Never write a line you’d be ashamed to read at your own funeral.” — Anne of the Island

“I’m going home to an old country farmhouse, once green, rather faded now, set among leafless apple orchards. There is a brook below and a December fir wood beyond, where I’ve heard harps swept by the fingers of rain and wind. There is a pond nearby that will be gray and brooding now. There will be two oldish ladies in the house, one tall and thin, one short and fat; and there will be two twins, one a perfect model, the other what Mrs. Lynde calls a ‘holy terror.’ There will be a little room upstairs over the porch, where old dreams hang thick, and a big, fat, glorious feather bed which will almost seem the height of luxury after a boardinghouse mattress. How do you like my picture, Phil?”

“It seems a very dull one,” said Phil, with a grimace.

“Oh, but I’ve left out the transforming thing,” said Anne softly. “There’ll be love there, Phil—faithful, tender love, such as I’ll never find anywhere else in the world—love that’s waiting for me. That makes my picture a masterpiece, doesn’t it, even if the colors are not very brilliant?”

Phil silently got up, tossed her box of chocolates away, went up to Anne, and put her arms about her. “Anne, I wish I was like you,” she said soberly.” — Anne of the Island