Clavisa's Tumblr

here since 2012. mostly lurking these days.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

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.)

[abigailspinach]

This chapter is so great

Also Valancy is down bad for Barney

“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.”

[melodypowers65]

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.

Such a good passage!

[oatmealnebraska]

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.

[clavisa]

I know "queer" didn't mean that yet, but I think Valancy *is* doing "queer as in fuck you" in this part of the book.

[enki2]

[ordinarytalk]

Recovering from autistic burnout as a high-masking adult:

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

If you want to recover, you need to relearn your whole body. And get over your idea of "normal" and just wear the damn sunglasses and put on the headphones. If people stare, fuck em. You're disabled and they can deal with that.

[nerdery-and-shenanigans]

THIS! THIS! THIS!

[feyd-meowtha]

[smallerplaces]

"Pompadours had long gone out of fashion, but they had been in when Valancy first put her hair up"

Pompadours were an Edwardian style that lingered into the 1910s but had entirely gone out of fashion by the early 1920s. Here's a likely sort of small pompadour from the Dover reprint of the 1915 Gimbel's catalog.

I liked these modest pompadours for Valancy because they don't require much in the way of pads, hairpieces, or styling time. If The Blue Castle is set some time between 1921 and 1925, then 29-year-old Valancy would have started putting her hair up between 1908 and 1912, when pompadours were still "in."

Valancy had hankered to do her hair pulled low on her forehead, with puffs above the ears, as Olive was wearing hers. 

Olive likely isn't wearing the bob that's now popularly associated with the 1920s, as only about 25% of fashionable big-city women had adopted the bob by 1925. There's another popular style that gave the front fluffiness of a bob, with a bun hidden in back. These are from the Dover Everyday Fashions of the Twenties book.

These young women have hair pulled low on their foreheads, puffs over their ears, and hints of a bun in back to take up the excess length. Olive is fashionable, but she's not taking it to the point of being daring.

Valancy took off and hung up in the closet her nightdress of coarse, unbleached cotton, with high neck and long, tight sleeves. She put on undergarments of a similar nature, a dress of brown gingham, thick, black stockings and rubber-heeled boots.

It is highly likely that Valancy's family is keeping her in dresses that are out of style, for their own notions of economy, practicality, and virtue. While the pure brown-gingham ugliness of that dress is clear regardless of context, it probably resembles the third dress from the left (also from the 1915 Gimbel's catalog).

That dress probably seems cuter to us today than it would to someone in roughly 1922. By the early 1920s, that natural waist and flared skirt was severely out of style. Fashionable Olive would have dressed more like the young women at far right in each of these catalog images. Shorter sleeves, lower waists, lighter fabric with more flow, straighter silhouette.

If this were a Louisa May Alcott story, we'd be trudging toward Valancy's learning to accept brown gingham as serviceable and appropriate. But Lucy Maud Montgomery famously let Anne of Green Gables have her puffed sleeves, so I'm hoping Valancy will get something more like these dresses.

chapter two

[wildhoneyvalancy]

“The Girl With Flowers” (1856) by József Borsos

This girl in this Hungarian painting is a good fit for Valancy in my opinion.

[thesweetnessofspring]

I've seen a little bit of questioning over the categorization of TBC, so let me share a journal entry from Montgomery as found in the introduction to The Blue Castle: the Original Manuscript, emphasis mine:

On Wednesday [February 4] I finished a novel, The Blue Castle—a little comedy for adults.

So while TBC may be shelved as YA, Montgomery wrote it with an adult audience in mind.

[blekitnyzamek]

It was definitely not wrote for children, even if people were seeing Maud as children literature author only! Entry from biography Lucy Maud Montgomery. The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio says:

This novel was certainly not written for children. It was even banned from some church libraries. First, it has an unwed mother in it, but, worse, when Roaring Abel skewers religious hypocrisy, he is so funny that readers cannot help laughing. Apparently, no one saw that this novel was close to being Maud’s own spiritual autobiography, a spillover mid-life crisis. It is ironic that at the same time Maud was choosing older heroines and mature themes for her novels, she was being demoted to the children’s shelves of bookstores and libraries by changing literary styles and other forces. This novel was the first to be banned in some libraries.

And that one:

Frustrated by what was happening to her [Maud's] own reputation through the latter 1920s, she began to grumble privately about being demoted to “only a children’s author.” She had written The Blue Castle in 1926, intending it to be a story for adults. Instead, it was often treated as a children’s book and, as a result, its mature content got it banned for children in a number of places. While she was censored for mentioning an unwed mother (who dies, no less), young writers like Callaghan were earning praise for sympathetic treatment of down-and-outers and prostitutes. It did seem unfair. The only consolation was that, despite the fact that it shocked her Sunday School readers, The Blue Castle sold well, and her publishers wanted more of the same.

There is also this piece from the Hamilton Spectator (still from biography):

When asked her [Maud's] opinion of the modern “teenage girl”—the ultra modern young person who smoked and went everywhere unchaperoned, and who contrasted rather sadly with Anne of Green Gables, Mrs. McDonald defended the modern young girl. … Speaking of the too popular sex novel of the present day which the young girls read, Mrs. McDonald admitted that it was not until the other day that she had read Flaming Youth, the most flagrant of the fast sexy novels. She had been disgusted by it, for it neither pointed a moral, nor had it any excuse for its existence, like some of the really great sex novels, such as Tolstoy wrote.

And right after that Rubio writes:

Some days later, Maud wrote again in her journals how much she was enjoying writing The Blue Castle. It touched on taboo themes: she gave an unmarried mother a brief but sympathetic treatment in it, depicting her as an innocent, gullible, and psychologically needy young woman who got pregnant out of innocence. The main heroine fantasizes wildly about the perfect lover.

So I think we can be ceartain that Valarney fucked, Maud wanted to be scandalicious ✨

There is also this part:

Anne’s House of Dreams had removed a zombie-like husband from a passionate young woman’s life. Reversing this situation, The Blue Castle produced a romantic lover for its unhappy, lonely heroine. The Blue Castle was drawn from deep in Maud’s reservoir of imaginative wishes. Ewan’s apparent “madness” and murderous dreams certainly heated up her febrile imagination. She could not help wondering what her life would have been like had she married a man who was a confident, intellectually stimulating, responsive partner, a composite of the best qualities of men like Ewan, John Stirling, John Mustard, and Edwin Smith.

Also: POLAND MENTIONED 🦅🦅🦅🇵🇱

The Blue Castle sold very well in its day, from England to North America to Australia in English, and in other languages as well. It has stayed in print. Its plot took on political overtones when it was made into a musical comedy in Poland in 1982, and well over a decade later that show was still a box office success there.

[As far as I know it opened for the first time in 1978 in Łódź BUT Mary Rubio was in Poland in 1984 invited by Barbara Wachowicz, author of the libretto of the musical. Date can comes from fact that in 1982 musical opened in/transfered to Kraków, where she saw it.]

And that one:

For its era, The Blue Castle was quite an explicit book in its extremely subtle representation of sexual repression and then sexual satisfaction, helping it get excluded from some church libraries.

[I copy-paste them from ebook, so I don't know number of pages of all this citations, sorry]

@batrachised

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

"are you gonna take those pills the rest of your life?" you mean my molecules? why surely you wouldn't deprive me of my molecules. they are shaped exactly just so, you see. my molecules

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

do you know how hard someone had to work to make my molecules into their molecule shapes??

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

they invented a new shape of molecule just for me and you want me to what, not absorb it???

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

reblog to remind somebody about their molecules

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

people who shape molecules at their jobs found this post and they're in the notes being happy to be appreciated. go take your fucking molecules

[romanceyourdemons]

watching game of thrones and this was considered a historically accurate portrayal of steppe nomads??? the faux leather strapless crops and faux leather yoga pants?????

[romanceyourdemons]

one thing this show clearly doesn’t get, which a lot of modern portrayals of premodern times don’t seem to get, is that in a preindustrial society where literally everything is handmade, people preferred (and prefer!) to take a little longer to make things beautiful. if you’re personally spinning and weaving and stitching every inch your new coat, you might as well take an extra afternoon to dye the fibers a really lovely yellow with some onion scraps, and spend a little longer to embroider on a nice pattern. if you’re personally carving every angle of every chair in your house, you may as well slow down and carve them with a beautiful and culturally significant design, especially if you know your great-grandchildren will be sitting in them. in a hyperconsumerist industrial society it’s expected that you just buy what you can afford and settle for however beautiful or ugly the thing happens to be, but it wasn’t always that way. the vast majority of people in the premodern world—men and women, rich and poor—were hobbyist artists, and they dressed in and sat on and slept under and smoked with and ate out of their and their ancestors’ canvases every day

[theriverbeyond]

i think "turning into a pumpkin" is my new favorite way to articulate the state of things when I am at a function and very overstimulated and it feels like my brain is melting. it's like no i can't be a person anymore i have to leave i'm turning into the pumpkin. the time is up yeah i gotta go. yeah see u later. pumpkin time.

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

ppl are so annoying “you can’t paint ur bedroom pink you’re an adult” i did not spend my entire life waiting to grow up and control my life to paint my bedroom beige

[hojolove]

I had a sales woman in furniture store try and tell me not to buy a hot bubblegum pink loveseat because she wanted me to “think about the future”

Bitch, I am thinking about the future. I already got a hot bubblegum pink couch at home and now I need a loveseat to go with it.

[madgastronomer]

when I first bought my house, I announced my decision to paint my bedroom purple. I had wanted a purple bedroom for thirty damn years, you fucking bet I was gonna have one now. My friends decided, for some reason, that I meant what one of them referred to as “14 year old girl purple” (through what’s wrong with the colors a 14 year old girl chooses, I don’t know, even if they’re not what I want as an adult). They didn’t believe me until they saw the color on the actual wall, even thought they helped me pick out paints. My mother, meanwhile, decided to get worried that if I painted my bedroom a “dark purple”, it would be “depressing”. As if, with an entire house to live in, I would spend all my time in the bedroom, which I wanted to be dark because I would be sleeping in there. In the damn dark.

I had like one, maybe two friends who were all like FUCK YEAH YOU PAINT IT WHATEVER COLOR YOU WANT, PURPLE BEDROOMS ARE AWESOME.

But when they actualy saw the finished bedroom, every single one of them was like, “Oh yeah, that’s really pretty.” (Well, the ones who supported me from the beginning were more like WOOHOO.)

And the moral of the story is: Fuck ‘em, please yourself. Either they’ll come around, or you can safely ignore every question of taste they opine about for the rest of time.

[themintycupcake]

This applies to other adulting activities, too. When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to have a wedding cake made of doughnuts. When I got older, I figured that I would be “mature” about it and get a traditional cake, which the older adults approved of. Now that I’m 25 and facing the possibility of actual marriage in the near future, I’m just like “marriage is a social construct but it comes with tax & insurance benefits, so just give me that goddamn doughnut cake.” If they don’t like it then they don’t have to come to my wedding.

[aridotdash]

https://xkcd.com/150/

[undanewneon]

I would like you all to view my office. I’m thirty and my rainbow room is awesome, people can fight me

[spuffybot]

I’m thirty and my first big furniture purchase was a custom coffin shaped coffee table that opens up and is lined with purple crushed velvet. I would have loved it at 13 and I love it now. Growing up doesn’t mean you have to abandon what makes you happy.

[idareu2bme]

GROWING UP DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO ABANDON WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

[the-haiku-bot]

GROWING UP DOESN’T

MEAN YOU HAVE TO ABANDON

WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[shadesofmauve]

I have told this story before, and I will tell it again, because I am An Old now and repeating stories forever is our prerogative:

When I bought my house, the kitchen was multiple shades of dingy white. It was dismal, but it was now mine! So went to the hardware store for paint (well, several trips, painted swatches on panel, etc — I’m very picky. But this was the final, ‘real’ trip). It was a busy day in the paint section. There were at least five people behind me in line.

Now, remember, latex paint is slightly lighter and brighter when wet than it is when dry. And I’d decided to paint my kitchen candy-apple red. The hardware store employee took my gallon off the Paint Jiggler and cracked it open to put a dab on the top, revealing the most incredibly deep pink, and behind me I hear the entire line of people say,

“Oh my god.”

…in perfect chorus.

I did not realize up until that moment that shocking a crowd of strangers with my paint color choices was a life goal, but at that moment I felt an absolutely overwhelming sense of achievement.

[marlynnofmany]

This is the door to my garage. It used to be white. Live your best life.

Mischief the cat says “Who goes there?”

Every visiting friend says “This is so cool.”

If you’re looking for an excuse to do some decorating that will make your soul sing, this entire thread is your sign to do it and don’t look back!

[the-haiku-bot]

This is the door to

my garage. It used to be

white. Live your best life.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[chennnington]

I’m 35. I have been told my place looks like maybe a LP fan lives there.

Not sure what they mean.

[dykepuffs]

When I first moved into my place, I painted the spare room, that eventually became my office, lime green, the kind of lime green that glows down the corridor when I open the door - The colour was only available as an “accent colour” in the section of paints intended for children’s playrooms, and in the shop I got a lot of “Oh your son will love this!” And from people I knew I got a lot of “Oh well, you’re 21 now, you’re basically a teenager, this is a terrible idea, you’ll hate it and need to pull out all the furniture to repaint it.” And I have to report that I am now in my forties and my office still looks like this, and it makes me smile every time I see it.

[marzipanandminutiae]

this is such a modern idea, too

not decorating trends; those have always existed. but the idea that color and decoration is inherently childish

this is the dining room at the Eustis Estate in Milton, Massachusetts, from 1878 (where I used to work, briefly). the walls are TEXTURED MICA SHIMMER on a green background. Adult Space For Adults!

A jewelry shop in Paris c. 1901. kids can’t buy jewelry!

who can forget the classic 1950s colorful bathroom? I’m not a huge fan, but still! adult space! bright colors; decorative designs!

meanwhile “you’re immature if you like Art Nouveau” is a hot take I’ve really, seriously seen on this webbed site (only once, thank the gods). I don’t know who started this, but I’m going to kill them

[taraljc]

I think a lot of it stems from the ubiquitous Waterhouse prints that were sold on college campuses for 20 years. like why would I get a free pass if it were Monet instead Western culture is stupid. The entire point of being an adult is breakfast for dinner and cake for breakfast and dying with the most toys.

[catgirlralsei]

instantly decided to reblog when i got to GROWING UP DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO ABANDON WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

[beatrice-otter]

The examples of decorated homes above are both either modern or upper class, which makes it easy to dismiss because “sure the rich people have beautiful homes” and “sure, modern middle-class people have lots of color in their homes.”

So here’s two examples of traditional Norwegian farmhouse interiors. You know. The kinds of places peasants live in.

This type of painting is called “rosemaling” and today you usually find it on, like, carved wooden bowls and such that are only used for decoration. But back two centuries ago, it was very common to find the interiors of homes covered in it, in projects that were painted little by little over the decades. Because it’s beautiful to look at, paint is the cheapest way of decorating your house, and what else are you going to do on the long winter nights when it’s too dark and cold to work outdoors?

But mostly, they did it because it made them happy, and it was beautiful.

Those old peasants were on to something, I think.

[destinationtoast]

I painted rooms in my house these colors and some people had doubts:

I have been SO HAPPY.

[lizzy-bonnet]

What I can't cope with, OK, is L.M. Montgomery's use of bedrooms as a site of both autonomy and belonging. When Emily arrives at New Moon, she has to share the bed with Aunt Elizabeth and feels she is in bed with a griffon but when she moves into Juliet's old bedroom in the "lookout" she is overcome with the sense of nearness to her mother as well as having true space and freedom for the first time at New Moon. Later, she loses a lot of this sense of place and independence moving into Aunt Ruth's spare room where she doesn't have to share a bed, but can't even choose the pictures hanging on the walls - at the same time she loses her freedom to write fiction. Jane hates her bedroom at 60 Gay Street, finding it "hostile and vindictive" - in many ways just like Grandmother Kennedy, but at Lantern Hill, her father lets her choose everything that goes into her bedroom and she is allowed self expression. Her friends give her gifts to furnish it, as emblems of their love for her. Like Jane, Valancy has no control over the furnishings in her room, from the painted floor to the tacky artwork to the dingy and unwelcoming furniture, but she's so constrained that her only rebellion is to throw the jar of potpourri out the window because she's "sick of the fragrance of dead things". To have a sense of self, she imagines a magnificent castle as an escape and is delighted to find Barney's house is just as good a place to be who she wants to be - free from her family, making her own choices. Anne, upon marking the first anniversary of coming to Green Gables, reflects on the garrett room and finds it "as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine." Before Green Gables her life was probably a mix of dormitories and makeshift beds in attics that she couldn't change, in versions of her life with no freedom or affection. THEIR BEDROOMS ARE SYMBOLS FOR THEIR LIVES OK. When their rooms are controlled by others, their inner/emotional/creative lives are constrained. When they have their own rooms, they have autonomoy, they choose furniture, they have freedom, they have themselves, they have love, they have me gnawing armchairs about it.

Also funny that both Valancy and Emily are tormented at various times by inescapable portraits of queens - I do wonder if LM had one in her home that no one would let her take down.

[adzolotl]

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves A stately pleasure-dome decreed. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

[patienz]

they fuck you up your mum and dad two vast and trunkless legs of stone i do not like it, sam i am as small as a world and as large as alone

[bill-blake-fans-anonymous]

God moves in a mysterious way:

He gives his harness bells a shake.

What will survive of him is love

If he should die before he wake.

[inthefallofasparrow]

I had a dream, which was not all a dream. See in her cell sad Eloisa spread, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

If I should die, think only this of me, Between what I see and what I say, In this short Life that only lasts an hour Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

[atamascolily]

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Westron wynde, when wilt thou blow? Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead. I learn by going where I have to go.

[animatedamerican]

But I am done with apple-picking now, I thank whatever gods may be; I never saw a purple cow, I think that I shall never see.

I have a rendezvous with Death, She walks in beauty like the night – Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, So on we worked, and waited for the light.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

keep thinking about how I wrote in my dissertation about how every time a new form of public/social space emerges it's immediately popular with kids and teenagers who see it as a chance at freedom and then adults colonise it and kick them out. this happened with malls in the 80s and diners in the 50s and pool halls in the 20s. my dad was doing research on this trend in like 1975. and I was like "yeah so this is going to happen to the internet" and then five years later every government suddenly decided to ban kids from everywhere online. I hate being right especially when I don't even get paid for it

[genderkoolaid]

there's a special kind of ableism (perhaps mixed with ageism) that comes from people who are older adults, who lived an largely abled life, who get like. personally offended by the idea that you, a young person, could DARE to also have a shitty body. like they view bad knees and fatigue as a badge of honor you get from living a long life & young disabled people don't deserve it? because we haven't suffered enough to... suffer? it's fucking bonkers. like yes ma'am I also make old person noises when getting up. i don't know why you feel like I'm taking something from you by being young and crippled.

[genderkoolaid]

also like. its such an interesting experience to start dealing with chronic pain when you're like. 12. and thinking it was normal and being told its probably your fault for being lazy and being basically tortured every day in gym class. and having to deal with the emotional pain of realizing that everyone else your age isn't in pain and tired all the time and the reason everyone glorifies their teens and 20s is because they feel good in comparison to when they get older. and the pain of realizing you'll never have that youth and having to be in high school grieving over all that loss and thinking about how the last time you were able to enjoy exercise without complication was when you were in elementary school.

and then having some fuck who spent DECADES with a perfectly functioning body get snooty with you because they feel like they fucking own the experience of being in pain all the time. "you're too young to be in pain-" yeah you don't think i fucking know that more than you do?

[genderkoolaid]

i wrote this in the tags but someone in the notes reminded me of this story, so I wanna add it to the main post, as an example of what it can look like when older disabled people don't engage in this sort of adult-supremacist-flavored ableism:

When I was in high school, I was once waiting outside of a grocery store for my friend. My cane at this point had a fun moon-and-star/astrological aesthetic design. And, for no real reason, this older Black man came up to me and asked me where I got it, because he thought it was great. I told him it was just something I got offline. He showed me his cane, which was this beautiful hand-carved wooden staff (I can't remember exactly what it looked like, but it was stunning) and he told me about how he got it custom made from a woodcarver in Africa. I never got his name or saw him again, but he lit up my afternoon.

It was a really touching moment for me. He saw a high schooler with a cane and his first thought wasn't that it must be a fashion statement or that I must be lazy or attention-seeking or that it was generally something strange that needed explanation. During this same timeframe I'd also had adults who I'd never met before who would approach me (again, a child) to, essentially, demand I explain to them my personal health issues for their curiosity and entertainment. So it really meant something to me that this man saw me and thought, "What a delightful cane! I also appreciate a delightful cane! I'm gonna ask that kid where they got theirs and show them mine!" without ever needing to make me justify why I as a young person was using a mobility aid.

Carved Wooden Cane Man, wherever you are now, thank you.

[dustpileofherown]

Attention one and all!!

You are hereby cordially invited to the second Blue Castle Book Club kicking off Monday, May 18th.

We will be continuing to use the tag #Blue Castle Book Club for all posts so feel free to jump in the conversation there!

Here is the official schedule, one chapter per day with weekend breaks to catch up:

May 18-22: Chapters 1-5

May 25-29: Chapters 6-10

June 1-5: Chapters 11-15

June 8-12: Chapters 16-20

June 15-19: Chapters 21-25

June 22-26: Chapters 26-30

June 29-July 3: Chapters 31-35

July 6-10: Chapters 36-40

July 13-17: Chapters 41-45

You can find the full text of the book here: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67979/pg67979-images.html

The Blue Castle: a novel

The Blue Castle: a novel

Also! After book club we will be hosting a fanworks event - any and all genres/mediums of fan work are welcome! Stay tuned for more details to be posted later this summer.

[moonlightredfern]

Thank you to @thesweetnessofspring for proposing the initial timeline and to @mollywog for calculating all the dates out, optimizing them for days of the week, and letting me use @dustpileofherown to publicize book club. You all got my executives functioning.

I’m SO EXCITED for this reunion* you all!

*not really a reunion because we’ve stayed friends the whole time and never stopped reading LMM.

[feyd-meowtha]