Commentary on Chapter 18 of The Blue Castle
Valarney has finally arrived and what an arrival!
“She had never looked up, though Barney had gone racketting past every evening since she had been at Roaring Abel’s.”
@kehlana-wolhamonao3 ‘s Barney POV retelling/fanfic interprets this as Barney wanting to meet Valancy and gathering up the courage to approach her. It might be Montgomery’s intention to convey that as well, though I am not 100 percent sure.
“Their eyes met—Valancy was suddenly conscious of a delicious weakness. Was one of her heart attacks coming on?—But this was a new symptom.”
“Delicious weakness” is a pretty good description of the early stages of a crush.
“There was something in his face—one hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment?”
“I’m going over to the Port,” Barney was saying. “Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Cissy?”
“Will you get some salt codfish for us?” said Valancy. It was the only thing she could think of. Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of boiled salt codfish. When her knights came riding to the Blue Castle, Valancy had sent them on many a quest, but she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish.”
“Can I acquire merit” does sound chivalric. But I like how prosaic Valancy’s answer is.
“Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey Slosson.”
I know that the car is called Lady Jane in a punning allusion to Lady Jane Grey, but it is also a nice coincidence that Jane is Valancy’s middle name.
“Barney did not turn away at once. He was silent for a little. Then he said, slowly and whimsically:
“Miss Stirling, you’re a brick! You’re a whole cartload of bricks. To come here and look after Cissy—under the circumstances.”
Yes, he clearly wanted to talk to Valancy all along. I also love how Barney talks in 1920s slang.
“Mr. Gay is paying me fair wages. I never earned any money before—and I like it.”
I love this too within the historical context.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated yowls,” said Barney. “And I’ve told him he’s got to stop damning things when you’re around.”
“Why?” asked Valancy slily, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney Snaith had actually done so much for her. “I often feel like damning things myself.”
They are already so precious!
“For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.”
I love the confirmation here that Barney did not find Valancy physically attractive at the first sight, though he admired her courage. It is Valancy’s character and manners that make her attractive.
“Since then he had called several times, walking down through the barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn’t she listen for it?”
This is the product of a lifetime of sexual repression but Valancy is already letting it go!
“He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed sacrilege to eat it.
She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn’t before his eyes, and, if so, what.”
Well, he brought you candy… So he is clearly thinking of you occasionally, even if it is not yet romantic.
“All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay’s lover. There was nothing like that between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn’t worry Valancy.
“You don’t know what Barney has been to me, these past two years,” Cissy had said simply. “Everything would have been unbearable without him.”
I think it is a true mark of a man’s character how he treats a woman he is not attracted to or related to. Perhaps the truest mark of it.
I love (love) how Valancy gets verification of Barney’s goodness from a female friend of hers. And a working-class, unfortunate, chronically ill female friend too.
“Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal about his adventures and nothing at all about himself.”
An important trait in a writer!
“Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the other things?
If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.”
This could be a terrible story. Barney could be a bad guy. The book itself later alludes to that possibility with the Bluebeard allusion. But there is one thing that makes Valancy’s trust in Barney not totally naive and unfounded: Cissy’s perception of him.
“But then she liked everything about him—his tawny hair—his whimsical smiles—the little glints of fun in his eyes—his loyal affection for that unspeakable Lady Jane—his habit of sitting with his hands in his pockets, his chin sunk on his breast, looking up from under his mismated eyebrows. She liked his nice voice which sounded as if it might become caressing or wooing with very little provocation. She was at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts. They were so vivid that she felt as if the others must know what she was thinking.”
“The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendour, where dozens of little rabbits frisked. Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him.”
Barney the Disney Princess, indeed!
“It reminded her of John Foster.”
Subtlety is not this book’s forte, and I am saying this as affectionately as possible.
pixelskylines
vaporwave
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