#the blue castle spoilers

[amarguerite]

I've always wondered whether Barney put his real name on the marriage license, and if he put Barney Snaith, what that means for the validity of their marriage.

Oooh excellent question! I’m really not sure about the answer to this one. I’d assume he’d have to put down his real name for legal purposes but I couldn’t tell you if that’s actually true. Tagging this with the book club— hopefully someone there will know!

[thesweetnessofspring]

Some thoughts about that John Foster excerpt from Chapter Three. Huge spoilers for The Blue Castle under the cut.

I've kind of mostly took the Foster excerpts sprinkled in the book as LMM flexing her prose a bit, but in the name of this slow read and taking the time to analyze, the first passage of Foster's that we read actually foreshadows Barney and his relationship with Valancy really well!

“The woods are so human,” wrote John Foster, “that to know them one must live with them. As Valancy goes to marry Barney and live with him, she comes to truly know him like Foster writes about the woods and the opposite is also true: he comes to know her when they marry and live together. An occasional saunter through them, keeping to the well-trodden paths, will never admit us to their intimacy. If we wish to be friends we must seek them out and win them by frequent, reverent visits at all hours; by morning, by noon, and by night; and at all seasons, in spring, in summer, in autumn, in winter. Otherwise we can never really know them and any pretence we may make to the contrary will never impose on them. This is exactly what happens with Valancy and Barney. They first begins to know one another once she moves in with Cecily and Abel, then they stay together through the other seasons. Others, like Barney's ex-fiance, sauntered through and he's learned to be on guard. It is Valancy taking the time and seeking him out that builds their relationship. Also, Valancy's family never bothered to truly get to know her and instead put their ideas of her into the "family tradition". They have their own effective way of keeping aliens at a distance and shutting their hearts to mere casual sightseers. Barney/Foster is clearly projecting himself onto the woods here after what he went through being Red Fern's heir; even Valancy was too afraid of letting herself be known to others because of her family. It is of no use to seek the woods from any motive except sheer love of them; they will find us out at once and hide all their sweet, old-world secrets from us. Again, Valancy seeks out Barney for her "sheer love" of him and he hides his secrets from her. But if they know we come to them because we love them they will be very kind to us and give us such treasures of beauty and delight as are not bought or sold in any market-place. For the woods, when they give at all, give unstintedly and hold nothing back from their true worshippers. Barney again being the woods here in his relationship to Valancy! The gifts and treasures he brings to her and even comes to the point where he will go to his father so he can get the best treatment he can when he thinks Valancy's life is still in danger. And her gifts to him are the complete acceptance of who he is and sacrificing her happiness to set him free when she realizes the error that was made regarding her heart. We must go to them lovingly, humbly, patiently, watchfully, and we shall learn what poignant loveliness lurks in the wild places and silent intervals, lying under starshine and sunset, what cadences of unearthly music are harped on aged pine boughs or crooned in copses of fir, what delicate savours exhale from mosses and ferns in sunny corners or on damp brooklands, what dreams and myths and legends of an older time haunt them. This part of the passage just so reminds me of how ethereal Valancy comes to be described as, and the time that it took for both of them to learn about one another in the wilds of Muskoka. Then the immortal heart of the woods will beat against ours and its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own forever, so that no matter where we go or how widely we wander we shall yet be drawn back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship. And this part wraps it all up! This is Valancy and Barney at the end, their hearts beating together, their brief separation and coming back together again when they realize that they're both in love with each other. And their journey out into the world, but that they will always come back to their Blue Castle.

[alwayschasingrainbows]

While reading about poor Margaret Penhallow, a terrifying thought occurred to me...

If Valancy hadn't found out about her supposed illness and hadn't married Barney, she probably would have ended up just like Margaret; a poor relative, perhaps golden-child-Olive's unpaid help.

She would have to take care of her cousin's children, as well as to clean and cook for the family, without receiving a single word of thanks in return.

My heart breaks for Margaret...

[muse-write]

I have feelings of very deep loathing for Mrs. Frederick Stirling. Each chapter makes me dislike her even more. She’s an awful, hateful woman and Valancy deserves to have had a loving mother who didn’t tell a seven-year she was selfish for protecting her own pile of dirt. I am screaming crying throwing up i will throw hands with this woman

[rayless-reblogs]

This is a fascinating question and I thought a lot about it. I don't think it's Anne and Gilbert -- school rivalries still exist, getting with the wrong person in college still exists, and being too proud to unbend and rethink your old prejudices still exists. In fact, I think Anne and Gilbert might take longer in the modern era. Once Anne smashed a slate -- I'm sorry, a tablet? -- over young Gilbert's head, the modern education system would have been far more proactive than whatever was happening in the 1870s/1880s. "Carrots" would have seen herself suspended, or maybe even expelled, and John Blythe wouldn't have been too keen on her socializing with Gilbert. Her breaking a slate over a fellow student's head was seen as bad behavior but something that could be ignored after a single punishment in-canon; nowadays, it might have prompted Marilla to send Anne back into the foster system. (Another fair question -- would it have been harder for Anne to have been switched in for a boy in the first place, thus preventing her from coming to Avonlea?)

It's not impossible that Anne and Gilbert would have become friends, then a couple, but I don't think it would have happened any faster.

As for Emily and Teddy, morbid and possessive parents still exist, personal misunderstandings still exist, and your lifelong crush marrying your best friend doesn't normally happen, but nothing in the modern era prevents it. I suppose the game-changer here could have been Mrs Kent being able to get thorough plastic surgery (much less available in the late 1890s) that could have allowed her to reintegrate into society and ease up on Teddy. It's also possible that having the instant communication of smartphones could have helped Emily and Teddy sort out their misunderstandings and hurt feelings faster. (Though Teddy texting "u up?" rather than whistling past her window is a lot less poetic.) But I don't know, would plastic surgery really fix the Mrs Kent of Teddy's childhood, or would she be just as controlling as ever? Emily and Teddy still stayed apart despite their ability to correspond by letter, and would quicker correspondence fix that? There's also the fact that Teddy shows he can't get over Emily by constantly painting her hands, and he becomes famous for the hands in his portraits, and how many famous portrait artists are there in 2024?

I don't think they're getting together any faster nowadays.

Which leaves Barney and Valancy. I'm going to define "getting together" in their case as them living together on Mistawis, not declaring their love at the end of the book. Of the three couples, I think these two might have a shot of getting together significantly faster if only because women have a lot more freedom to act autonomously now than they did in the 1920s. In the 1920s, it wasn't inevitable that the unmarried Valancy would still be living at home at 29, but it also wasn't unusual, and I think the lingering cultural expectation of "old maids" remaining at home to be unpaid labor and hope for a husband probably contributed a lot to Valancy's inertia. So millennial Valancy might have gotten out and gotten a job much earlier, which could have brought her into Barney's orbit much earlier. They could have already been together by the time she started to have chest pains, and modern technology could have saved the doctor from giving her the wrong diagnosis, so they wouldn't have had the stress of her imminent death. (But no story, of course.) So I'm going to go with Barney and Valancy.

But it's far from a sure thing. With greater mobility, Valancy could have left her home town entirely, only returning for holidays (maybe), greatly diminishing her chances of even hearing about Barney. As for him, what's his family business in 2024? We don't really do cure-all pills any more, and when we do, I think the general public views them with a lot more scorn and criticism. If Mr Redfern is pushing dubious supplements, Barney might still have disowned himself, but the family riches might have been a less-than-welcome element at the end of the novel. Also, what happens to John Foster? Poetic nature nonfiction is not selling in 2024, so it's much less likely to be stocked in libraries. Does Barney have a YouTube channel where he hikes and monologues, but never shows his face or uses his real voice? He's Valancy's favorite niche blogger, maybe?

I'm getting off track. It's a great question, and, honestly, I don't think there's a "right" answer.

submitted by 👤anonymous

[wasabi-gumdrop]

Kabru has a secret admirer in the castle!

[fergitmenaught]

gender in blue eye samurai. seki being a mother to akemi. mizu, her mother, And mikio all being compared to the bride in the story in ep 5. ringo and all his traits that are typically associated with womanhood, cooking and nurturing and caring for mizu. mizu being the bride, the ronin, the phoenix, and the onryo—man woman other and beast. mizu watching two men kiss and thinking of taigen, and thinking of having sex with her husband for the first time when akemi whispers to her. mizu playing the role of a woman for the first time in her life during her marriage and the devastation when she realizes she did it wrong by letting too much of herself show. ccan anyone hear me hello

[the-moral-of-the-rose]

Another crossover...?

"Mr. Judson Parker is going to rent all the road fence of his farm to a patent medicine company to paint advertisements on.”[...] Anne was so worried that she didn’t sleep until nearly morning, and then she dreamed that the trustees had put a fence around the school and painted “Try Purple Pills” all over it."

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery

Could it be... the beginning of Doctor Redfern's business, maybe?

"patent medicine is a proprietary medicine made and marketed under a patent and available without prescription." (Google definition). In The Blue Castle we are told that was the kind of medicine Dr. Redfern sold: "A girl friend of hers was asking her how she could stomach Doc. Redfern’s son and the patent-medicine background."

The "medicine advertisement" accident took place when Anne was seventeen, so around 1882. According to my own, very individual (although perhaps faulted) calculation, Barney Redfern (later: Barney Snaith) was born in 1877. (I explained why I think so in this post:

https://www.tumblr.com/the-moral-of-the-rose/745943769703202816/if-anybody-wanted-to-write-a-crossover-between?source=share

So, he'd be about five at this time.

And as far as we know: "I don’t remember Mother. Haven’t even a picture of her. She died when I was two years old. She was fifteen years younger than Father—a little school teacher. When she died Dad moved into Montreal and formed a company to sell his hair tonic. He’d dreamed the prescription one night, it seems. Well, it caught on. Money began to flow in. Dad invented—or dreamed—the other things, too—Pills, Bitters, Liniment and so on. He was a millionaire by the time I was ten, with a house so big a small chap like myself always felt lost in it."

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery

So, Dr. Redfern's company existed during the time Anne of Avonlea took place! He was on his way to earn his first million! So, perhaps it was Barney's dad's advertisement that A. V. I. S. was so upset about!

[akallabeth-joie]

More thoughts on Olive's dead fiance

Olive is 28ish when the novel opens (a year behind Valancy, who turns 29 in the first chapter).

The book was published in 1926 (written 1924-5 I assume, can't find evidence) and the clothing and hairstyle changes it mentions suggest it is set nebulously in the early 1920s. Trying to pin this further, but my suspicion is that we talking around 1922 or 1923.

Valancy and Olive where therefore born sometime between 1891-1897 and 1892-1898. (I suspect closer to the middle of these ranges, see above.)

Olive's first fiance, Will Desmond, dies when she's about 20. [Engaged at 18, done with 2 years of mourning by 23 when she's engaged again.]

Will probably died c.1916. With the variability of when the present story is and whether Olive lost him at 19, 20, or 21, there's a range of possible years (max 1911-1919), which includes all of Canada's participation in WWI and the bulk of the global Influenza pandemic. 

I know we've had some 'did the great war happen in The Blue Castle universe or did Montgomery write an  AU without it' discourse, but I think this is another angle to consider alongside Valancy's lack of suitors and Barney's whole past.

[thesweetnessofspring]

SPOILERS FOR THE BLUE CASTLE!!!!!

“Are you sure nothing can be done for you?”

I'm pretty sure that Barney was willing to dip into his Redfern money for Valancy at this point if it was a financial matter keeping her from getting well. Even if he'd never develop romantic feelings for Valancy and saw her like he saw Cissy, he's still the kind of person who wouldn't hold back helping someone he cared about.

[muse-write]

The Blue Castle is making me yearn for the mountains. LM Montgomery has such a way with decribing nature.

[alwayschasingrainbows]

Ethel Traverse's engagement aesthetic.

She was like a diamond; beautiful, bright, shimmering, astonishing. And for the time being, I almost forgot... almost forgot that diamonds, aside from their undeniable beauty, are also cold, hard and sharp enough to cut glass.

"She was very beautiful. And I loved her. Oh, yes, I loved her. I won’t deny it or belittle it now. It was a lonely, romantic boy’s first passionate love, and it was very real. And I thought she loved me. I was fool enough to think that. I was wildly happy when she promised to marry me. For a few months. Then—I found out she didn’t."

(The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery)

The idea inspired by the fic by @no-where-new-hero.

[dandelionsandderivatives]

Blue Castle spoilers under the cut!

I am absolutely DYING over the number of people posting things like "aww, he spent 15 whole dollars on her Christmas present! He must love her!"

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

"Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour—the purest vintage of winter’s wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings—torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Icy-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats seemed cosier than ever."

I love winter, and this passage captures perfectly why. Winter is pretty and clean and sparkly and you can breathe easily and it's like the whole world is holding its breath when it wakes up covered in snow.

Anyway it's 100 degrees where I live right now and we've been choking on smoke for days. Let me have my winter escapism!

Someone help me out -- what are John Foster's books about? They're musings on nature, clearly, but I don't at all have a clear picture of what they actually are. I'm curious if it's just a genre that I'm unfamiliar with or if LMM wrote into them what she needed Valancy to hear and didn't think much further on it. I keep wanting them to be basically travel books -- a more sincere Bill Bryson type thing, except focused on nature instead of people -- but we learn more about John Foster later in the book and I don't know that that reading makes sense. The other thing that would make sense for them to be are, like, foraging guides with lots of extra fluff. Like those really pretty recipe books that you buy for the pictures and the stories more than the recipes themselves. But Valancy doesn't do any pulling out of her books to check something she saw in the woods, or recognizing a new plant based on Foster's description -- we learn specifically that Barney teaches her woodscraft and there's no indication that she has an existing knowledge base beyond just having lived in the area.

I guess they could be, like, very fancied up diaries? The passage Valancy quotes at Barney sort of sounds like Foster is talking about a specific day, so perhaps they're accounts of his life, either real or fictional? (Now I'm thinking about My Side of the Mountain and imagining John Foster with a hawk. Do with that image what you will.)

It doesn't super matter, but I keep trying and failing to imagine them and I'm curious what other people think.

[the-moral-of-the-rose]

I was always wondering what made Teddy Kent come back at by the end of Emily's Quest. So, I wrote some of my ideas (there are more of them, but my posts are always far too long, so I didn't include all of them here):

Headcanons for Teddy Kent's return by the end of Emily's Quest:

Beware; here comes crossover time: Doctor Redfern saw the portrait of Valancy made by Allan Tierney and was very impressed. He decided that he must have a portrait of his own darling wife made by an artist. Allan Tierney lived in New York and wouldn't travel to Montreal even for a millionaire, but... luckily, there was another - young and very talented - artist right under his nose. What's more, after the scandalous wedding-that-wasn't, Frederick Kent became even more fashionable than before. So, Doc. Burnley decided to commission Teddy to make a portrait of late Mrs. Redfern. Teddy met Valancy and Barney, who were spending winter in Montreal and - for the first time in his life - saw an example of happy and healthy love. (If we look at his memories... his mother's love was toxic and destructive. He was certain that Emily didn't care about him enough to even write him a letter explaining that she valued his friendship, even if she couldn't love him. Ilse left him hurt and ashamed. Perry completely forgot about their old friendship. Teddy had every right to not believe in love or friendship - just as Barney had). Maybe watching Valancy and Barney together and listening to their story (two lonely and unhappy people finding one another), made him realize that love was possible even for him? Or maybe Valancy's story of letting go of fear and people-pleasing inspired him to change his own life? (Again, perhaps it is just my impression, but I feel that there is a subtle similarity between Valancy Stirling and Teddy Kent. And between Barney and Teddy, too).

Perry Miller wrote to him, or the two of them accidentaly met (for example, in Montreal). Or, Perry came to Teddy's house to give him the sapphire ring back. In all cases, Perry explained that even though he was very happy with Ilse, he was sorry they had put Teddy in an uncomfortable situation during the wedding (a bit OOC, I know). Anyway, Perry would say something to break the ice (like "Do you remember when we used to play Midsummer-night's Dream as children? It seems that Emily, Ilse and I were playing it into our adult lives" and Teddy would answer bitterly "You should have counted me as well"). Or - Perry would say something else that made Teddy realize that he shouldn't have tried to build a life with anyone else than Emily.

He noticed a different example of a healthy love; an elderly couple walking hand in hand in the park; newlyweds, smiling to each other; happy parents with young children. And it made him want something similar.

He read one of Emily's stories or poems (or even novels) and something in them reminded him of Emily-of-old-days. He understood that she hadn't really changed at all and that, under the cold and seemingly unfeeling surface there still was Emily he had fallen in love with. Or perhaps, he had been moved by the plot of one of her stories or a line of her poem - it made him see that something was lacking in her (or his) life.

He reread the old letters Emily had written to him in the first year after he left Blair Water, before they became cold and distant with one another and recognized that he missed her dreadfully.

He looked at one of his portraits and noticed that he kept on painting Emily's soul, eyes, smile etc. into everything.

His mother had said something to him before she died. Not about the letter, of course (it is clear he had no idea about this), but perhaps something like "I was wrong about her", or similarly puzzling. Or just Emily's name. Although it sounds very ooc, I must say...

After his mother died, he was looking through her belongings to decide what he ought to have kept or given away and he found his father's things. There might have been something that inspired him to try again, like an old motto/engraving, his parents' picture (taken right after their wedding, when they were still happy and young), a book with handwritten notes in it (something like "Always do what you are scared of"), etc.

He found an old sketch of Emily that he had made in his early youth - and understood how much he missed her.

He looked at Vega of The Lyre during one night and realized that he couldn't go on like this anymore, thinking of what-might-have-been. Or maybe it reminded him of the old promise he and Emily had made.

During a party, he heard a song that made him remember Emily (for example: "I'm always chasing rainbows" - pun unintended, "After The Ball Is Over").

He went to Paris and looked at The Smiling Girl and it made him remember that summer in which he had believed Emily loved him.

He went to Paris and understood that all his memories of the city were unhappy (Emily's illness and her engagement to Dean) and that, in fact, he wanted to show the Paris to Emily and make new, happy memories.

He met one of his old schoolmates from Shrewsbury or Blair Water and they off-handedly mentioned Emily's name.

Another example of an uncanny bond between Emily and Teddy (he had a dream in which he heard her voice or saw her, or something similar).

Something simple: he saw a rainbow and remembered that they had been chasing rainbows together once (again, pun unintended).

One day he just decided enough was enough and he had to try again once more.