My friend Naomi and I are hosting a readalong for The Blue Castle this month (see my post from last spring, “An Invitation to Read The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery’s Rainbow Valleys: The Ontario Years, 1911-1942, edited by Rita Bode and Lesley D. The novel is silent, at best, on higher education for women” (“‘A Gift for Friendship’: Revolutionary Friendship in Anne of the Island and The Blue Castle,” in L.M. Robinson writes that “The only ambition has is tied up in her Blue Castle in Spain, a reference to her constant daydreams of riches and lovers which enable her to tolerate desperate daily conditions in her ugly home with her ugly room and her unloving relatives. Valancy is ambitious about finding love-she despairs that “no man has ever desired her” (Chapter 1)-but while she is a reader, she’s never had any professional ambitions. Valancy may be modern in this, and ambitious about taking control of her life, but in other ways she is far less ambitious than some of Montgomery’s other heroines, such as Anne Shirley and Emily Starr, both of whom are ambitious about their education and professional accomplishments as well as about personal happiness. Montgomery (2008), “She opts not to languish, but to live her own life, a mark of her modernity.” As Elizabeth Waterston writes in Magic Island: The Fictions of L.M. Appearances can go hang.” “Go hang!” her mother repeats in astonishment (Chapter 15).įaced with the news that she has just one year to live, Valancy chooses to shape the story of her life, instead of continuing to allow her mother and other relatives to control everything.

Her mother reports that she’s said “I’ve been keeping up appearances all my life.

Her heroine rejects the colourless, conventional life she’s been leading and decides to speak the truth and pursue independence. Montgomery in her 1926 novel The Blue Castle (Chapter 17). “Valancy was in the midst of realities after a lifetime of unrealities,” writes L.M.

The blue castle