Valancy Stirling and The King of Anything

The problem with writing a post about L. M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle is that it's almost impossible to find the quotes I want without re-reading the entire book. And I do have other things to do today!

When last we looked in at Valancy Stirling she was living in her fantasies, dreaming of her blue castle. She has now, however, reached the (for her time) extremely spinsterish age of 29, and has resigned herself to the fact that she will never know happiness in real life.

And then she learns she is dying.

"Valancy did not sleep that night. She lay awake all through the long dark, hours--thinking--thinking. She made a discovery that surprised her: she, who had been afraid of almost everything in life, was not afraid of death. It did not seem in the least terrible to her. And she need not now be afraid of anything else. Why had she been afraid of things? Because of life. Afraid of Uncle Benjamin because of the menace of poverty in old age. But now she would never be old--neglected--tolerated. Afraid of being an old maid all her life. But now she would not be an old maid very long. Afraid of offending her mother and her clan because she had to live with and among them and couldn't live peaceably if she didn't give in to them. But now she hadn't. Valancy felt a curious freedom."

Learning that she only has a year to live, Valancy decides to make some changes in her life.

"I've been trying to please other people all my life and failed," [Valancy] 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.'"

Or as Sara Bareilles said in King of Anything:

All my life I’ve tried
To make everybody happy
While I just hurt and hide
Waiting for someone to tell me
It’s my turn to decide

And with that decision, the best part of The Blue Castle - Valancy's rebellion - starts. I love King of Anything as the theme for this portion of the book, because it suits so well the attitude Valancy develops. Valancy's family aren't bad people, just stupid, prisoners of their own sense of propriety, so certain that they know what is best that they never take a look past their prejudices. They've worked all her life to similarly imprison Valancy, and all these years she's meekly consented to their domination. Now, though, she is doing what she wants to do. The rest of the family reacts with horror and shock - and she doesn't care.

Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?


Book: The Blue Castle, L. M. Montgomery
Music: King of Anything, Sara Bareilles

The Blue Castle

Valancy Stirling has never done anything in her entire life. She has always been the good daughter, dutiful, quiet, meek and obedient. She doesn't do anything else. At the slightest sign of defiance she knows she will be jumped on by her entire family for stepping out of her assigned role and she is too afraid to risk that.

But Valancy is not entirely obedient. There is a tiny spark of rebellion lurking in her heart, a place that she retreats to at night when she is alone, where she is the chatelaine of a beautiful blue castle.

"Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women--herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died."

The Blue Castle, L. M. Montgomery

I have my own Blue Castle. I don't visit there very often anymore, but when I was a teenager, I would spend hours there every night, before falling asleep in the middle of some adventure. It wasn't the same as Valancy's castle - my adventures were more likely to take place in vast wilderness areas (being pursued by Ringwraiths as Frodo, Sam and I raced to Mount Doom), or on alien planets (searching for Forerunners with Eeet). My interior landscape, though, was as real to me as was Valancy's to her.

There were times when my imaginings were as real to me as the physical world around - and times when they seemed far more real. On occasion I would look up from a book, or imaginary adventure, and have to blink a few times before bringing the real world into focus, so to speak. For those few seconds it seemed as if I was looking through a foggy window into another world; the dream world I'd been in was the real world, and the world in front of my eyes was the fantasy.

When I first heard On My Own, from Les Miserables, I found myself nodding at the familiarity. Like Valancy, like me, like many of us, Eponine sometimes climbs so deeply inside her own head that she can feel everything she's imagining as if it is real.

"Sometimes I walk alone at night
When everybody else is sleeping 
I think of him and then I'm happy
With the company I'm keeping
The city goes to bed
And I can live inside my head.

On my own
Pretending he's beside me
All alone, I walk with him till morning
Without him
I feel his arms around me
And when I lose my way I close my eyes
And he has found me"


Book: The Blue Castle, Lucy Maud Montgomery
Music:  On My Own, Les Miserables