The Blue Castle has a lot of improbable coincidences when it comes to its plot, but as far as the emotions of the characters go, I honestly don’t find the romance in it “unbelievable” at all.
Yes, Valancy is not “beautiful”, but Barney is a 35-year-old recluse who had been burned by a beautiful fiancée before. It is also clear to me that while he has his own kind of charisma, Barney is implied to not be conventionally handsome either.
Valancy and Barney are two people who enjoy the same things, who don’t have wildly different cultural backgrounds (their families might be financially different but culturally they are similar), who have similar levels of intelligence, who expect similar things out of life, who are clearly implied to be sexually compatible and who have similar senses of humor and can banter. They are two similar people who can still have different opinions on a topic without getting toxic and confrontational. They mostly respect each other’s boundaries. It is a perfectly realistic and honestly ideal romance. It is almost… “healthy” but still keeps its momentum through the secrets and twists and a smidge of self-doubt and self-denial. It is very good and has become one of my favorite love stories.
I was going to chalk up this being called “unrealistic” to Valancy not being attractive, but 20th century literary critics liked to call the Cathy 2-Hareton arc in Wuthering Heights “a sentimental and unrealistic romance” too, and that one features a beautiful blonde 18-year-old as the female lead. But there are three things that Valancy-Barney and Cathy 2-Hareton romances have in common:
1- The female party is active and even dominant in the progress of the relationship: Valancy proposes marriage to Barney, Cathy 2 becomes Hareton’s teacher.
2- The male character is initially reclusive and is eventually “brought back to civilization” through the female partner’s influence. (Though in Valancy-Barney’s case the way this happens is quite complicated and indirect.)
3- Both romances have a happy ending.
For 20th century literary critics, these three things were “unrealistic”. Rather a grim view of the world!
