She also meets and spends time with Barney Snaith, who is a good friend of both Abel and Cissy, but whom town gossips are convinced is a criminal in hiding and/or the father of Cissy's illegitimate, now-deceased child. But her real satisfaction comes from doing something worthwhile, and doing it well. Valancy enjoys earning a salary and spending her money in ways her family would not approve of – such as purchasing a brightly-coloured, low-necked dress. Cissy and Valancy share a room and renew their friendship. Cissy is dying of consumption, but is socially ostracized for having had a child out of wedlock. Then Valancy scandalizes the clan by moving out of her mother's house and taking a position as housekeeper for childhood friend Cissy Gay and her father, master carpenter and notorious town drunk Roaring Abel. She has always judged them objectively and secretly laughed at their foibles: but now, by doing what she pleases rather than what is 'expected' of her, and saying aloud what she thinks of them, she causes the Stirlings to conclude that she has suddenly gone 'dippy.' At a stroke it frees her from fear of the future and awe of her oppressive family. Then Valancy is diagnosed with a terminal heart ailment, a fact she keeps secret. Her entire life has been spent with her nagging mother, aunt, and gossipy extended family: Victorian and middle class, they actively discourage happiness and treat Valancy like a child, constantly comparing her with her beautiful cousin, Olive, putting her down, and calling her by the baby name "Doss." Her only respites come from daydreaming of her "Blue Castle," and reading the nature books of John Foster. Valancy is, at twenty-nine, the old maid of the Stirling clan.
Ĭolleen McCullough, author of The Thorn Birds, evidently used The Blue Castle as the basis of her novel The Ladies of Missalonghi-subconsciously, as she alleged-to the point of provoking accusations of plagiarism. The book was adapted for the stage twice in 1982 it was made into a successful Polish musical, and ten years later Canadian playwright Hank Stinson authored another version, The Blue Castle: A Musical Love Story. It has grown in popularity since being republished in 1990. Montgomery's few adult works of fiction, along with A Tangled Web, and is the only book she wrote that is entirely set outside of Prince Edward Island. Deerwood is based on Bala, Ontario, which Montgomery visited in 1922.
The story is set during the early 1900s in the fictional town of Deerwood, located in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada. The Blue Castle is a 1926 novel by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, best known for her novel Anne of Green Gables (1908).
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