Blue Castle Book Club: Chapter 11
The dinner party continues ("dragging its slow length" which is the first of several wonderful turns of phrase in this chapter) and Valancy moves from observing to participating. In the last chapter she said she was "quite prepared to talk if occasion offered", and the occasion promptly offers.
The greatest happiness discussion is one of those fun character-crystalizing scenes. In order, we have:
Aunt Mildred, who last chapter was distinguished by her overbearing insistence on flaunting her husband and children, now piously declaring that the greatest happiness is to be a loving and beloved wife and mother.
Aunt Wellington and Olive both have material happinesses, perhaps influenced by the fact that they are from the wealthy branch of the family. (I can't find the post rn, but someone wrote a great breakdown of Olive and her wasted potential, including the fact that her college offers an arts and music track that she seems not to have taken. It's likely that she would have been exposed to a lot of music while at college, and I think it's a telling character moment that she specifically wants to be a famous singer. Olive has lived her whole life on display, so of course her greatest happiness is to be on the biggest possible stage. (Luisa Tetrazzini is the singer she references. Wikipedia says her career started in 1890 but she didn't become known in England until 1907, which does not help at all with dating the book!))
Cousin Gladys, of course, brings up her medical concerns, and how you feel about this is entirely dependent on whether you believe them to be genuine or not. I think LMM does not particularly believe in them, but it's up for interpretation. I don't think I have any strong feelings one way or the other.
Cousin Georgiana mentions her dead brother, which may be the first time one of the Stirlings has actually expressed open affection for someone else. Every other instance of someone praising others has been presented with an air of humblebragging, whereas Georgiana seems genuine in her grief, if a little dramatic. Which is very in keeping with her personality.
Aunt Alberta's "the poetry of life" and her subsequent hasty deflection are hilarious and I love her. Vaguely deep bullshit is precisely what Uncle James deserves.
And then Amelia, the hypocrite, who declaims loftily that she finds her joy in "loving service to others" while being possibly the nastiest of the lot. She possesses not a jot of self-awareness, and it has led her to become an absolute monster while being unshakably convinced that she is the victim in all situations. I know people like that, and they are always awful to be around. Also fodder for the cursed James/Amelia ship that she is the one who rose to his challenge of "elevating the conversation".
Valancy, meanwhile, has no interest in participating genuinely in this stupid game and is done dissembling. She says precisely what she thinks, at the moment she thinks it. And the sneezing, of course, is emblematic of the bigger constraints that have bound her all her life - even something as involuntary and instinctive as a sneeze has been forbidden. So of course the greatest happiness is to be permitted to exist precisely as you are.
Some other rapid-fire observations, because this is getting long:
-The men of the Stirling clan demand respect without returning it. Benjamin demands that Valancy treat him with respect, defined here as "not talking back" and Wellington states that he "does not argue with women" as a way of silencing her without engaging with her words.
-Georgiana is, as ever, wonderfully dramatic, but also, amusingly, correct about one important thing: "I felt he had something to hide. I am not often mistaken in my intuitions."
-Uncle James' quote is from Shakespeare's King John, which I do not know well enough to comment on further. The Stirlings do like their Shakespeare though. (Although it looks like Georgiana's later "charity thinketh no evil" that she attributes to Shakespeare is actually a bible quote. At every turn, the Stirlings are shown to be less cultured than they believe themselves to be.)
-"That was exactly what they were and not one of them was fit to mend another." I love this observation and how sucinctly it sums up and dismisses the whole clan. They are all of them bitter, broken people and as a result they can only create other bitter, broken people. It's a family-wide crab pot, and the only way to truly grow or heal as a person is to get out completely.
-I love the post-Valancy family conference. This is the first moment we see the other side of Amelia, and she is abruptly toothless. She has gone from the undisputed tyrant ruler of her home, who causes her dependents to bow to her every whim, to a sobbing, helpless mortal who crumbles instantly when her daughter made a scene and is no longer under her thumb.
Only two colors in this chapter:
Valancy is still surrounded by her colorless family, but she is suddenly starting to bloom.
