The Blue Castle: a novel
L. M. Montgomery
The Blue Castle: a novel
FictionRomanceClassicsYoung Adult
53 chapters·7h 53m listening
4.31from 62,433 ratingson Goodreads
"The Blue Castle: a novel by L. M. Montgomery" is a novel published in 1926. Twenty-nine-year-old Valancy Stirling has spent her entire life suffocated by her controlling family's expectations. When she receives a shocking medical diagnosis, she decides to finally break free and live on her own terms. She scandalizes her relatives by speaking her mind, moving out, and eventually proposing marriage to the mysterious and supposedly disreputable Barney Snaith. Together they build a new life on a remote island—but secrets still linger.
Contains spoilers for the entire book
- Themes
- Atmosphere
About the book
Published in 1926, The Blue Castle is the story of Valancy Stirling, twenty-nine and unmarried in the small Ontario town of Deerwood, who has spent her life obeying a domineering mother and a judgemental extended family. Her only escape has been an imaginary Blue Castle in Spain, until a letter from a doctor makes her decide to stop being afraid. L. M. Montgomery set this novel, one of the few she wrote for adults, in the lakes and forests of the Muskoka region rather than on Prince Edward Island. With sharp comedy at the expense of the Stirling clan and real tenderness for its heroine, it is a story of rebellion, independence and late-blooming romance with the mysterious Barney Snaith.
Characters
Valancy Stirling — Protagonist
A timid young woman whose unexpected medical news prompts her to challenge her family's rules.
Barney Snaith — Outsider
A solitary man with a scandalous local reputation and a deep attachment to the woods.
Cecily (Cissy) Gay — Valancy's friend
An ailing young woman whom respectable society has rejected, and whom Valancy chooses to help.
Roaring Abel Gay — Cissy's father
An outspoken carpenter whose unconventional household offers Valancy an escape from propriety.
Mrs. Frederick Stirling — Valancy's mother
A domineering parent whose concern for appearances confines her daughter's life.
Olive Stirling — Valancy's cousin
The admired family beauty against whom Valancy has long been unfavorably measured.
About the author
L. M. Montgomery (1874–1942) was a Canadian novelist from Prince Edward Island, raised by strict grandparents after her mother died and her father left her behind. She wrote Anne of Green Gables in the evenings while keeping house for her grandmother and running the local post office out of the kitchen — which is how she posted the manuscript and how, five times, she received it back. She put it in a hatbox for two years before trying once more. She published more than twenty books, most of them set on the island, and kept journals for fifty years that are now read as a work in their own right.