After experiencing numerous bouts of chest pain, Valancy manages to sneak off to see a doctor without telling her nosy family. She is told by him that she has a heart condition which will prove fatal within a year. Stunned, Valancy realizes now that she's dying, that she has never really lived. She's just existed, spinelessly letting herself be intimidated and pushed around by her family, never doing anything that she once dreamed of doing. Valancy decides that, for whatever time she has left, she will say exactly what she thinks and do exactly what she wants. Her family (she doesn't tell them about her diagnosis) is shocked when the formerly spiritless Valancy starts telling them exactly what she thinks of them, and scandalized when she begins associating with people the Stirlings consider beneath them. Her family's outrage makes not one iota of difference to Valancy, and the resulting adventures she has- and her family's reaction to them- make for a very humorous and endearing novel.
"'I've been trying to please other people all my life and failed,' she said. 'After this I shall please myself. I shall never pretend anything again. I've breathed an atmosphere of fibs and pretences and evasions all my life. What a luxury it will be to tell the truth!'" This statement was made by Valancy Stirling, the protagonist of Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1926 novel The Blue Castle. In this book, Valancy is 29 years old, unmarried, and living with her overbearing mother. Meek and timid, she is bossed and bullied by all her relations- and she has a large extended family. She is too afraid of them to push back against their treatment of her, so swallows their insults and demands, forcing herself to smile at their jokes at her expense while inwardly she is resentful, unhappy and unfulfilled. After experiencing numerous bouts of chest pain, Valancy manages to sneak off to see a doctor without telling her nosy family. She is told by him that she has a heart condition which will prove fatal within a year. Stunned, Valancy realizes now that she's dying, that she has never really lived. She's just existed, spinelessly letting herself be intimidated and pushed around by her family, never doing anything that she once dreamed of doing. Valancy decides that, for whatever time she has left, she will say exactly what she thinks and do exactly what she wants. Her family (she doesn't tell them about her diagnosis) is shocked when the formerly spiritless Valancy starts telling them exactly what she thinks of them, and scandalized when she begins associating with people the Stirlings consider beneath them. Her family's outrage makes not one iota of difference to Valancy, and the resulting adventures she has- and her family's reaction to them- make for a very humorous and endearing novel.
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