I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
Give yourself the treat before you start. I'm serious. And ideally during the task and afterwards too.
Executive dysfunction comes from a lack of available dopamine. Common advice is wrong. You need to provide your own dopamine before you can start. Otherwise you're trying to run your car on empty.
"But what if I still don't do it" well you already weren't getting it done anyway. Now you have a little treat. Try again later.
You deserve kindness and care even when you aren't being productive.
(Also read How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis)
I give my students a LOT of techniques for starting writing when it feels overwhelming or daunting, but one of them is exactly this: dopamine load BEFOREHAND. It may sound weird to people on tumblr dot com, but a lot of people seriously struggle with executive dysfunction when it comes to writing literally anything, to the extent that it can cause such symptoms as panic, depression, and AI chatbot use.
I usually suggest this technique as a "Reverse Pomodoro." In the original Pomodoro, you work for 25 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes (the times vary, but that's the essential ratio). People with executive dysfunction often find this insurmountable, and they get even more frustrated, and then the task seems even more difficult. So instead, flip those times.
FIRST, spend 25 minutes doing something energizing and engaging that you like to do. Not scrolling social media passively, not watching tv, not napping. Try something like colouring, doing yoga, running/walking around the block, talking about your favourite tv show with someone in real time, playing with the dog or cat, making and eating a lovely sandwich, hula hooping, something active. Having a little treat absolutely falls in this category!
(on the subject of little treats: refusing yourself food until you do work is for fucking Puritans and you can be kinder to yourself)
Then, after 25 minutes (or however long it takes to eat the sandwich or finish the yoga routine, it doesn't have to be exact), spend 5 minutes writing (or doing whatever you're struggling to start). Most people can coax themselves into doing something they find difficult for five minutes, if they have already filled up the joy/energy/engagement bucket. You can put a timer on for the 5 minutes if you want, or if you find that annoying, just work for as long as you like.
The other key is: don't push yourself to keep going when you're frustrated or tired—that will just reinforce the negative belief that you already have, which tells you that this task is painful to do, and needs to be avoided. If you've commonly had to force yourself to do this kind of task, that's likely part of why you think of it as painful and have trouble starting it now. Also, you should just, at a basic level, try not to put yourself in pain for the sake of productivity. So just do it till the good feelings run out. Then start hula hooping or colouring again for another 25 minutes. When the tank's refilled, try another 5 minutes of work, if you can. Adjust times to taste.
Not every technique works for everyone, but I've seen this one work for many students who are genuinely and seriously disabled by executive dysfunction. And many people find themselves getting more and more excited and engaged in the "difficult" task—because the good feelings from the hula hooping carry over, and because they're suddenly able to do the task without feeling pain, and feel accomplishment without feeling pain.
I’m actually wondering this time whether Barney’s anger is feigned:
Barney looked at her.
“So you don’t believe me—yet?”
“I—can’t.”
“Oh—damn!” said Barney violently.
Valancy looked up startled. She had never seen this Barney. Scowling! Eyes black with anger. Sneering lips. Dead-white face.
“You don’t want to believe it,” said Barney in the silk-smooth voice of ultimate rage. “You’re tired of me. You want to get out of it—free from me. You’re ashamed of the Pills and the Liniment, just as she was. Your Stirling pride can’t stomach them. It was all right as long as you thought you hadn’t long to live. A good lark—you could put up with me. But a lifetime with old Doc Redfern’s son is a different thing. Oh, I understand—perfectly. I’ve been very dense—but I understand, at last.”
Valancy stood up. She stared into his furious face. Then—she suddenly laughed.
“You darling!” she said. “You do mean it! You do really love me! You wouldn’t be so enraged if you didn’t.”
Barney stared at her for a moment. Then he caught her in his arms with the little low laugh of the triumphant lover.
It’s the “yet” that’s getting me, and the rapidity of the shift in and out of anger. The “yet” doesn’t suggest he’s given up, it suggests he’s changing tacks for how to convince her – and it works! And he is immediately triumphant – not relieved, triumphant. He tried something different and it works!
I know it takes away from the scene if his anger is an act, but that’s how it feels to me.
But I had one friend—or thought I had. A clever, bookish chap—a bit of a writer. That was a bond between us—I had some secret aspirations along that line. He was older than I was—I looked up to him and worshipped him. For a year I was happier than I’d ever been. Then—a burlesque sketch came out in the college magazine—a mordant thing, ridiculing Dad’s remedies. The names were changed, of course, but everybody knew what and who was meant. Oh, it was clever—damnably so—and witty. McGill rocked with laughter over it. I found out he had written it.
Not to put down platonic bonds and how those breakups can rock you as bad or worse than romantic ones, but the reading of Barney as queer and in love with this friend who betrayed him (maybe not realizing the kinds of feelings he had for the other man)...it definitely IS intriguing. Especially when contextualizing it with his anger when Valancy still can't believe that he's in love with her.
Ok I am ashamed I hadn’t thought of this reading before, but I kind of love it? I always read this as LLM’s fixation on kindred spirit friendships getting flipped and subverted - Barney wants what Anne and Diana had in AoGG, but he’s a man and furthermore, he’s a rich man in Canada‘s most prestigious college so there is a lot to get in the way of making that kind of connection. The people around him don’t care as much about being their authentic selves as finding a position in society, and that position necessarily have to be higher than someone.
But early 20th century is full of the kind of Brideshead Revisited intense male friendships that toe the line between romantic and platonic in a way that’s kind of fascinating to me- and I do think that liminal weirdness really fits with Barney and his position in society and how he feels, especially, about his position in society. Like… He can’t even have a friend? He feels that there’s something weird and clingy and inherently wrong with him that forbids him from making sincere friendships even? Even though what he wants is perhaps a little bit different from what everyone around him would call friendship - but he doesn’t have the vocabulary or our kind of contemporary knowledge of sexuality to understand what he wants specifically let alone why he wants it.
Plus, I think it kind of fits with how his relationship with Valancy progresses. Its friendship for him at first and then its love— and the relationship with her heals both the friendship breakup and the romantic breakup.
Thinking about the "the beams of our house are cedar and the rafters fir," and what I love about that line. I tend to read Barney as a bit less in love here; I think he likes Valancy very much, and is grateful to her for how she treated Cissy, but he wouldn't necessarily have proposed marriage to her if she hadn't asked him first.
But the talk on the trip back to the island shows that he's willing to go all-in for her; he's not just "being a brother," as she said. He's welcoming her into his life and home completely, and, having agreed to marry her, he's committing. I think it works as a nudge to the reader, but it's also a character moment for Barney; it tells us that he's taking Valancy's love for him seriously.
For new readers who weren’t raised as churchy as I was (good for you btw!) “the beams of our house are cedar and the rafters fir” is a line from Song of Solomon, a book in the Bible that is straight up porn. For real it’s just a very horny poem featuring graphic descriptions of oral sex and penetrative sex and a naked couple etc etc etc. It’s lowkey WILD for Barney to be quoting it here imo.
It is the sex book of the Bible, but it's also the "idealized romantic/marital love" book! Different sects of Christianity (and, I think, Judaism, though I'm not as familiar) disagree on what interpretations you can put on Song of Solomon, but it's pretty widely agreed that it's a depiction of what romantic/sexual love is supposed* to look like. It doesn't jump out at me as an odd quote, because, even today, it's not unusual to see quotes from Song of Solomon on wedding invitations ("My beloved is mine, and I am his**;" "many waters cannot quench love;" etc.).
Emily quotes it, in Emily of New Moon, when she tells Aunt Elizabeth that her father's God is "clear as the moon, fair as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners –" that specific verse is describing the woman in the song, but it's not unheard-of to read the book as describing Christ's relationship with the Church, and plenty of hymns pull from it. (I think we talked about "over the hills where spices grow" in a previous book club?) "His Banner over Me is Love" is one of those hymns that shows up in a lot of hymn-books and mostly consists of quotes from Song of Solomon. P. G. Wodehouse has a story about a cat that opens with a very light-hearted reference to the opening verses.
So, yes, if you didn't grow up with this context: there are implications, but this is still something you could say in public without shocking people too much. And it drives home that Barney sees this relationship as a good thing. You wouldn't reference this book of the Bible in connection with, say, a toxic relationship you were trying to get out of.
*disclaimer that I can't speak for all of Christianity, and, not being Jewish, I certainly can't speak for all of Judaism. Carry on.
**I've heard my mother use this quote when talking about my father.
Up until now, this novel was semi-realistic. Sure, some things worked out but they worked out because Valancy was brave. And there was Cissy’s tragic story. With this sentence, we are entering into the Fairy Tale Wish-Fulfillment Land. Everything will be okay.
This has been the biggest criticism of this book. That it loses its edge once they go to Barney’s island. I am personally absolutely fine with it. The book is named “The Blue Castle” and it telegraphs in every possible way to you that it is a fairy tale.
I would like to be more critical of this book but I simply am not. It is not flawless, I know that intellectually, but what it is doing here completely works for me. World literature is filled with books about women being punished for wanting too much. Even in more positive narratives there usually is a trade-off. Which is fine btw. Life does not always work out, and stories are meant to challenge us. But I like that there is one story I read where there are no caveats, she gets everything - including the cats.
I don’t think this book is “naive” about the world either. The possibility of danger is acknowledged. I think even its final chapter is more emotionally nuanced than one might initially think. Montgomery gave Valancy everything she wanted defiantly, not naively.
"Montgomery gave Valancy everything she wanted defiantly, not naively."
I love this line, and I think it gets to heart of what makes The Blue Castle one of my favorite books, and my favorite romance story. Yes, the world is dangerous and sometimes terrible, and being a woman in it puts you at a severe disadvantage, but damn it, this story is going to be a happy one!
Yes, this book is pure wish-fulfillment, but how many male power fantasies exist out there in Literary Land? Why can't we have a gentle romance in which the woman is not punished for wanting love and happiness, and in which she gets all she ever dreamed of? Why can't we celebrate love and nature and beauty and kindness? With The Blue Castle, Montgomery expressly said that we can, and that holding to the good and gentle and lovely things of the world does not make us any weaker or less intelligent than those who choose to focus on the grittier aspects of life.
The best thing about The Blue Castle, which I think makes it more like a fairy tale than any other "fairy tale retelling" I've ever had to read, is that it understands the destructive power of the real world--which often comes down to sheer human cruelty and malice. People shun Cissy, first her lover and then the Deerwood community. People create rumors about Barney instead of attempting to befriend and understand him (until Valancy). And yes, other destructive powers like poverty and prudity certainly make their lives worse--but Cissy's life is immediately made better once Valancy comes to nurse her. Valancy's life is made better when she serves where she's loved and wanted. Barney's life is made better when he meets a woman who has kinship with him.
The reason why Valancy's fairy tale transformation doesn't come cheaply is that we've seen all the real world problems she's fought to get here. And then the real world will come back out to cause more problems later. But I honestly can't think of another romance-heavy book that balances desire with true hard work in such a convincing way that yeah, you really can't be that critical about it without coming off sounding like a dick.
What kind of owl laughs?—I guess maybe laughter applies to the bubbling hitch in their "who's" sometimes.
So the part about love.
"She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear."
For all its romance, the phrasing here emphasizes all the harsh realities of the sentiment. Love as social capital, as escape from poverty. Love as the snare that creates a woman as she exists in the world; love as what binds a person with womanhood, binds her to a man.
At the same time, though, I can't help but think about Courtly Love Undressed by E. Jane Burns, which cites "Throwing Like a Girl" by Iris Marion Young in its third chapter. The ideas I'm bringing up are moreso Young's, but the Burns book was my real introduction to the politics of heterosexual romance, even if the book itself is tied up (sewed up?) in the laughably nonsequitur topic of French courtly love song in the High Middle Ages. It treats on the many ways women, fictional and real, utilize clothing—gifting it, sewing it, donning it—as ways to move into a the position of "amorous subject" rather than fetishized object or mirror for a man's desire. And I think about that a lot. I think about becoming a subject that experiences the world rather than an object to whom things happen.
Becoming a subject is empowering, but it is also humiliating, as is described in tales of courtly love. Male suitors are wretched. They are often described (or describe themselves) as trapped or wounded by their female lover who spurns them. But the woman remains disadvantaged by her lack of interiority: often she wounds or kills her amors by doing nothing at all but be beautiful.
(Obviously this isn't always the case, or else Courtly Love Undressed wouldn't exist lol)
I'm sure there are nuances to this. But I am starting to fashion myself as an "amorous subject" these days, as someone who experiences all this humiliation, but also as someone who experiences the pride of unselfish feeling, the real delight of living in a body. The joy of being a woman looking away from herself.
I want more than anything else to be loved and desired—but—isn't loving and desiring so much more fun, so much more fulfilling and exciting? It's hard work but it makes me feel like a person. It makes me feel real. And love is a complicated, political thing. Loving and otherwise feeling doesn't exist in a vacuum for anyone, and especially for women. But that subject position can be one facet of it, right?
#blue castle book club#the blue castle#oooh this is so interesting#valency like many other women#has been fashioned by her family and society into an object#and what is worse#a useless object no one wants#but she makes herself into a SUBJECT#she is the main actor of her own life#and suddenly it is not about#being acted upon#but acting#that is so interesting and really reshapes how I’m thinking about this early dynamic#I used to think it was realistic but kind of sad#Like Valencey was so unused to romance and had such low self-esteem/ self-worth#It simply didn’t occur to her that Barney could desire her#Let alone love her#Like there’s a point later on where she’s delighted that he even enjoys her company#But I think it’s actually critical that the focus is on what SHE wants#and not how she is wanted#Because her wanting is the driving force of the novel#the emphasis needs to be on her wanting and her desire#it’s how and why she reclaims her life and gives it meaning#Barney’s feelings are actually irrelevant to the larger point being made here about how opening herself up to wanting and love#is a radical act in and of itself for Valencey#and that’s an incredibly important thing to focus on in terms of her character growth (via @amarguerite)
What kind of owl laughs?—I guess maybe laughter applies to the bubbling hitch in their "who's" sometimes.
So the part about love.
"She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear."
For all its romance, the phrasing here emphasizes all the harsh realities of the sentiment. Love as social capital, as escape from poverty. Love as the snare that creates a woman as she exists in the world; love as what binds a person with womanhood, binds her to a man.
At the same time, though, I can't help but think about Courtly Love Undressed by E. Jane Burns, which cites "Throwing Like a Girl" by Iris Marion Young in its third chapter. The ideas I'm bringing up are moreso Young's, but the Burns book was my real introduction to the politics of heterosexual romance, even if the book itself is tied up (sewed up?) in the laughably nonsequitur topic of French courtly love song in the High Middle Ages. It treats on the many ways women, fictional and real, utilize clothing—gifting it, sewing it, donning it—as ways to move into a the position of "amorous subject" rather than fetishized object or mirror for a man's desire. And I think about that a lot. I think about becoming a subject that experiences the world rather than an object to whom things happen.
Becoming a subject is empowering, but it is also humiliating, as is described in tales of courtly love. Male suitors are wretched. They are often described (or describe themselves) as trapped or wounded by their female lover who spurns them. But the woman remains disadvantaged by her lack of interiority: often she wounds or kills her amors by doing nothing at all but be beautiful.
(Obviously this isn't always the case, or else Courtly Love Undressed wouldn't exist lol)
I'm sure there are nuances to this. But I am starting to fashion myself as an "amorous subject" these days, as someone who experiences all this humiliation, but also as someone who experiences the pride of unselfish feeling, the real delight of living in a body. The joy of being a woman looking away from herself.
I want more than anything else to be loved and desired—but—isn't loving and desiring so much more fun, so much more fulfilling and exciting? It's hard work but it makes me feel like a person. It makes me feel real. And love is a complicated, political thing. Loving and otherwise feeling doesn't exist in a vacuum for anyone, and especially for women. But that subject position can be one facet of it, right?
#blue castle book club#the blue castle#oooh this is so interesting#valency like many other women#has been fashioned by her family and society into an object#and what is worse#a useless object no one wants#but she makes herself into a SUBJECT#she is the main actor of her own life#and suddenly it is not about#being acted upon#but acting#that is so interesting and really reshapes how I’m thinking about this early dynamic#I used to think it was realistic but kind of sad#Like Valencey was so unused to romance and had such low self-esteem/ self-worth#It simply didn’t occur to her that Barney could desire her#Let alone love her#Like there’s a point later on where she’s delighted that he even enjoys her company#But I think it’s actually critical that the focus is on what SHE wants#and not how she is wanted#Because her wanting is the driving force of the novel#the emphasis needs to be on her wanting and her desire#it’s how and why she reclaims her life and gives it meaning#Barney’s feelings are actually irrelevant to the larger point being made here about how opening herself up to wanting and love#is a radical act in and of itself for Valencey#and that’s an incredibly important thing to focus on in terms of her character growth (via @amarguerite)
Thinking about The Blue Castle and that specific genre of literary fiction that's like "it's not fantasy because the magic is all Imaginary and the main character has to give it up and learn to live in the Real World" and how The Blue Castle actually understands the point of imagination. The point of imagination isn't that Valancy wants a castle, it's that Valancy wants a better life for herself, and needs a way to imagine that. I mean, I know this website is full of people who understand the Emotional Support Daydream, but I have read a depressing number of stories (particularly children's books) where the goal is to make the character abandon the daydream so they can improve their real life or as part of "growing up," rather than help the character improve their life so they can have a healthy relationship with their imagination rather than maladaptive daydreams. Because people actually do need to maintain an imagination ecosystem in order to be okay.
Here's some of the notes, starting with the things multiple people brought up:
SHRIMP COCKTAIL:
banahbanah: #flashback to that one fic where Peter Parker frets about drinking shrimp cocktail because of the alcohol
generaldeliciousness: adding: what a prawn/shrimp cocktail is
#why is your character turning it down because they're under 21 #do you think prawn cocktail is a cocktail #this lives in my brain rent-free constantly #the rest of the fic was so normal #and good enough that i'll still re-read it #but bro
And then many, MANY, people wondering if this was actually authour mistake, since Peter really would do this!
POMEGRANATES:
zhajhassa: #haha where's that post that was like someone describing someone eating a pomegranate but they ate it like an apple
thornhands: #once someone wrote persephone biting into a whole Pomegranate #had to stop and stare at a wall for a minute
sungsingsanguine: I once saw someone very confidently write about a character eating slices of pomegranate.
FRUIT TREES:
zagreuses-toast: #given a very endearing glimpse into a writers blindspots by seeing them describe someone sitting under a ''pineapple tree''
salatrash: I remember something about picking watermelons... OF A FUCKING TREE
baander: #cranberry trees
DOUGH/BATTER:
maycelium: #I'm a chef so I'm really used to people not accurately describing how to cook food #But I was surprisingly flabbergasted when someone was writing making a cake and was kneading it. Which uh #Not necessary for cake. It was interesting for sure but just bizarre
livebloggingmydescentintomadness: #the one that drove me nuts was when a character set aside a batch of PASTA DOUGH 'to rise' #pasta doesn't have yeast!! #it does need to REST but it will never RISE #you do not want an airy crumb on your noodles
lovesodeepandwideandwell: #THE ONE WHERE THEY MADE COOKIES BY LADLING BATTER INTO A TRAY
Some other topics:
ANIMALS:
catenarwhal: #mandatory 'how cows produce milk' mention#i'll never recover from that one I fear
piromantic: #one time i saw someone fake their way through describing how spiders behave
pluto-lichen: horses
misskittypotter: #stardew valley faking its way through what fresh fish smell like
pa-pa-plasma: #saw someone faking their way through knowing what a seal is once #i still am fucked up over that one to this day. they just straight up did not know #& they were NOT good at guessing it either like it was clear they had never googled that animal ever #& was only just now realizing via answering questions from anons that seals are not!! what they assumed. initially
SEX:
dykevandyke: #what a prostate is #and where it is located #as in. external.
dreamyeyedrose: #I remember back in the ff.net days reading an Ichigo/Renji fic where the writer assumed the penises go inside each other #and I was like “I mean I don't know how it works for sure I don't have one but idk if that's how it works”
SOME OTHER FOOD STUFF:
thetrekkiehasthephonebox: #add another one to the list bloggers#this character is cooking a salad
shosta: #still baffled about the published work that didn't know food could freeze
sun-dari: #once i read a fic where the author didn't understand cinnamon
alto-tenure: #read something recently where the author was just. blatantly wrong about spices
dramatic-dolphin: #i saw someone try to fake their way through what ramen is once. like 14 years ago.#but i remember.#i was very confused about ramen for a few months. they were writing it so authoritatively.
the-celery-stalks-at-midnight: #i will never ever forget someone putting leftover fries in the microwave to reheat them and setting the timer for five minutes
typeghost: #this sparked a memory of a hannibal fic where the author had to fake their way through writing about gravy
draculin: #the one fanfic where the author knows about coffee only as a concept wrote a character as a coffee drinker#was very interesting#I don't remember the fandom or the plot but I was mesmerized by the coffee actions and choices
11235811235811: #there's a lot of faking their way thru congee in the svsss fandom i'll also note
fishali3n: #read one where the person clearly didnt know what tofu is
emmy-everafter: #in the aftermath of shadow and bone s2 i saw a lot of people pretending to know what stroopwafels are #babes they are more like cookies than breakfast waffles #like yes there is a waffle pattern but you're not gonna cut into a stack of them with syrup and sugar#🤣🤣🤣
NON-FOOD STUFF:
red-umbrella-811: Shoutout to Dame Agatha Christie for faking her way through what a wrench is in a very popular published work.
bluebeetle: #once saw someone have a character put an entire phone book in their pocket
nonametis: #- sex talk in languages other than english #<- or just the petnames in a different language other than English
sadisticpony: #the fanfiction i saw this week where op DIDNT KNOW HOW AUTOMATIC DOORS WORKED #and that they arent in peoples homes!!! of course. also opening the automatic door for someone is unironically very funny but its not #its not like. grabbing the door handle to let someone in. helpppp
danmeichael: #reminds me of the fic with the figure drawing class where the character started with the feet. #i love you feet first figure drawing author
meowmix1100blr: #me watching this one fic absolutely obliterate what the board of directors does
vexedhexes: #one time i read an architect character making a doorway bigger by building a bigger door #what a beautiful world. #OH. also gravity falls fic where they go 'oh piedmont is in california so its warm all year round'
leveragehunters: #characters going to a beer garden #And it's literally a garden outside the pub#It was a very cute mistake
fitofpique: #yes! #grown men do not get blind drunk off two beers #but i am possibly guilty of the hypothermia one #assuming it does not make you very horny?
dadvans-likes: #always thinking abt the soup kitchen fic #the entire setting of the fic was 'soup kitchen' #and i very quickly realized #the author did not know what a soup kitchen was #and they thought that soup kitchens only served soup #fic
msmargaretmurry: #i love fanfiction #once read a fic where the characters played 20 questions #but the author seemed to not know how to play 20 questions and was just kind of winging it........ #immaculate
shakespeareaddict: #Look I know not all of us are hockey experts #But it takes about ten seconds of research or any attention paid to the show to realize #That the Stanley cup playoffs are not in fucking September
baejax-the-great: #the funniest one i saw #was someone faking what church is like #like 1. they really didn't have to write an entire church experience for their fic #and 2. they had clearly never even watched a show where people went to church #it was bonkers weird
twosunson: #things ive seen authors faking #knowing how to unclog a drain #knowing. literally any history #knowing what ketamine looks like (apparently- oregano) #(you know who you are)
waterhorseyblues-ao3: #beltane being celebrated in winter #wales being portrayed as a completely separated land from england (i wish) #characters getting up after weeks of bedrest like that dosnt completely fuck you up
violetfairydust: #i once read a fic where the flight time from london to seattle was 3 hours
purekesseltrash: One time, in a fic set specifically in Des Moines, IA, two of the characters casually drove 20 minutes to the ocean. The memory continues to delight me. I want to know where that author thought that Iowa was.
The Blue Castle is like a fairy tale because he questions Valancy three times throughout the story:
Will you marry me as I stand?
Would you like a house like that (a millionaire’s huge house)?
Would you be any happier now if you had a million dollars?
Knowing his full past now, I get it. He doesn't quite believe that this fairy tale is real. Surely this isn't good enough for Valancy if there was a better option, if she only knew.
But no, she chose him as he is right now; she proposed to him. She didn’t settle for their little home. She loves it! She calls it her Blue Castle, her lifelong dream come true. She prefers this to a bigger house or millions of dollars. This is the rich life to her. And he can hardly believe it.
“You nice little thing,” [he said] suddenly. “Oh, you nice little thing! Sometimes I feel you’re too nice to be real—that I’m just dreaming you.”
i don't know what lm montgomery put in barney snaith but he is by far my favorite male love interest, like she really said "here's this unkempt hobo with a shady past who is also well read and thoughtful and bitter who is not much of a talker and yet somehow has disney princess vibes, the girlies will go wild for him" and you know what? we did
ok my theory here is that it's because lm montgomery has constructed a male love interest who has actively rejected the toxic masculinity he's grown up in, and finds a different kind of way to be a man that's both empathetic and non-threatening... and crucially he still feels like a real and flawed person, meaningfully shaped by his family, his past, and his life experiences.
that's a difficult thing to do and rally rare to find in contemporary fiction!
so like, even though there are jokes about bluebeard, and objectively marrying a stranger you've only really talked to for like, what, a month? two months? and been on one maybe date with to see a movie-- barney never comes across as a threat. he has actively made himself into 'not a threat' over the course of his ramblings. he doesn't want to conquer the landscape in the 19th century/ early 20th century model of a man-- he's outright rejected the capitalistic extraction of resources way of thinking that he grew up in, and spends all his time in Deerwood trying to understand nature, coexist with it peacefully, and teach others through his writings how to understand it and respect it. the way Barney talks and conducts himself, and the kindness with which he continually and pointedly treats the pariah Cissy Gay, shows that he's never going to kick someone when they're down, especially not a woman who is dying and in a dependent position.
you still get that still popular romance/romantasy trope where only the heroine can heal the misunderstood sensitive special man's broken heart, but the way barney treats a broken heart isn't like... taking revenge on society or delving into dark romance violence. he's gonna fuck off to the woods and write an essay about wildflowers and then go home to feed himself and his two cats in a show of personal competence that r/AmItheAsshole posts have convinced me is extremely rare in people assigned male at birth
"She had been told that her maternal grandfather, old Amos Wansbarra, had chosen the name for her."
Let's pause ruminate over my theory for where the name Wansbarra comes from. As far as I can tell, it's entirely a made-up name for The Blue Castle. While it's possible to play around with etymologies, it's unlikely that LM Montgomery did, and the effort yields nothing fruitful.
So I believe that Wansbarra is a phonetic(ish) rendering of something more like Waynesboro, Wansborough, or Waynesbury. This kind of spelling shift happens when one generation (or more) is illiterate -- or at least blissfully unconcerned with spelling.
In that case, what is Valancy a phonetic(ish) rendering of?
Valencia. It's got to be Valencia. The "blue castle" that exists in her head is thus "a castle in Spain" (a fantasy, per Merriam-Webster) in the additional sense that it exists in the head of someone named after a place in Spain.
So this is a theory that had crossed my mind as well, but in the Original Manuscript's introduction it theorizes that Montgomery got Valancy from the Canadian poet Isabella Valancy Crawford.
Perhaps it's a bit of a nod to Spain as well, but for myself I do buy the Isabella Valancy Crawford theory as the main inspiration for her name.
I buy that LMM was inspired by Isabella Valancy Crawford (although, who or what was she named for, in turn?), but I don't particularly think that old Amos Wasbarra would have been especially familiar with poets, or at least not necessarily, so diagetically she could still have been named after a slightly misremembered Valencia.
The chapters where Valancy goes full IDGAF and snarks at her family are my favourite ones in The Blue Castle. It’s absolutely hilarious to see her go off on them. And it highlights an amazing irony – for 29 years Valancy’s peen picked at over and over for a few tiny childhood incidents, precisely because she’s always so compliant and so little trouble. If ahe steps out of lime even a little she gets pushed back into it. But when she steps out of line a lot – there’s so many things her family can’t pick just one. Any one of her comments by itself would be something her family would jump on her for and pick at endlessly, but all of them together make any individual one pale in comparison to the whole.
The ‘difficult’ people in the Stirling family get catered to; the compliant ones get browbeaten and sat on. As soon as Valancy becomes ‘difficult’ her family start taking her wishes and reactions into consideration, because there’s now a cost to not doing so.
Some of Valancy’s greatest hits:
“Won’t you try to remember you’re a lady?” she pleaded.
“Oh, if there were only any hope of being able to forget it!” said Valancy wearily.
Mrs. Frederick felt that she had not deserved this from Providence.
And:
“Doss,” he chuckled, “what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?”
“One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless,” said Valancy. “You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed.”
Ooh, that’s cutting!
“Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.
“Just a little below the Catholic church,” said Aunt Alberta.
At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?
“Is that a vital part?” asked Valancy.
“What do you mean?” said bewildered Aunt Alberta, and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.”
Innuendo! She’s making innuendo! Pretty tame, but it’s such a change from all the previous chapters!
“Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.
“Doss, you are horribly thin,” she said. “You are all corners. Do you ever try to fatten up a little?”
“No.” Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. “But I can tell you where you’ll find a beauty parlor in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins.”
She’s not being any ruder to them than they are to her!
“Oh, but you know we’re all dead,” said Valancy, “the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren’t—yet. That is the only difference.”
Basically laying out the reason behind her behaviour change, though they don’t know it!
“Don’t worry about my stomach, old dear,” said Valancy. “It is all right. I’m going to keep right on eating. It’s so seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal.”
It was the first time any one had been called “old dear” in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick’s opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet.
It’s so mean, and her mother deserves it!
“If you mean,” said Valancy passionately, “that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay’s child, he isn’t. It’s a wicked lie.”
In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys’ thimble party, they discovered that she had got—SOMETHING—in her head at school. Lice in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.
Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had believed—or pretended to believe—that Valancy still supposed that children were found in parsley beds.
“Hush—hush!” implored Cousin Stickles.
“I don’t mean to hush,” said Valancy perversely. “I’ve hush—hushed all my life. I’ll scream if I want to. Don’t make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith.”
This feels like a turning point – when Valancy’s rebellion turns from anger on her own behalf to anger on someone else’s, and sets up her going to care for Cecily. It starts with her being willing to be frank and unembarassed about the truth.
“When I was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters, Doss,” said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.
“But I’m not a young girl,” retorted Valancy, uncrushed. “Aren’t you always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless gossips. Can’t you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She’s dying. Whatever she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. You needn’t take a hand, too. ”
The justaposition of “crushingly” and “uncrushed” is so great. Valancy’s realized her family are tedious and loveless and undeserving of her fear, but this is where it turns to a moral opposition and moral condemnation of their cruelty and judgement.
“Doss,” said Uncle James heavily, “the Ten Commandments are fairly up to date still—especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?”
“No,” said Valancy, “but I thought you had—especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating.”
It’s a great rebuttal, and the one of the core themes of the book – the difference between being polite and being good. Valancy is being impolite for the first time in her life, and she is liberated to be good for the first time, because for the first time she can take a stand. (The fifth commandment is honouring one’s parents; the ninth is a prohibition against slander, which is what Valancy’s family have been doing.)
“One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle,” said Valancy. “Is that why you think him so villainous?”
Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.
“How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?” asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.
“Yes, how?” demanded Aunt Wellington.
“I’ve seen him twice and I looked at him closely,” said Valancy composedly. “I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw.”
“There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature’s past life,” said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. “But he can hardly be guilty of everything he’s accused of, you know.”
The ‘difficult’ people in the Stirling family get catered to; the compliant ones get browbeaten and sat on. As soon as Valancy becomes ‘difficult’ her family start taking her wishes and reactions into consideration, because there’s now a cost to not doing so.
This is such a good point from @warrioreowynofrohan! She has forced them to actually take her feelings into account, because now there is a cost if they don't, because she refuses to be downtrodden anymore.
Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.
This is such a good point from @warrioreowynofrohan! She has forced them to actually take her feelings into account, because now there is a cost if they don't, because she refuses to be downtrodden anymore.
Mrs. Frederick resented the hair but decided it was wisest to say nothing on the eve of the party. It was so important that Valancy should be kept in good humour, if possible, until it was over. Mrs. Frederick did not reflect that this was the first time in her life that she had thought it necessary to consider Valancy’s humours. But then Valancy had never been “queer” before.
