Beware of Italics

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Oh the hypocrisy.

That's it, that's the chapter.

Death, the miracle worker, suddenly made the thing quite respectable.

Indeed.

It was the psychological moment—said Uncle James.

Yeah, he'd say that.

This was not—could not be—the girl who had sat all night in the woods with Barney Snaith—who had gone tearing bareheaded through Deerwood and Port Lawrence. This was the Valancy they knew. Really, surprisingly capable and efficient.

Really? The clan has never given her a chance to be capable or efficient in anything...?

Perhaps she had always been kept down a bit too much—Amelia really was rather strict—hadn’t had a chance to show what was in her. So thought the Stirlings. 

How the fuck are they right after all these years?

And Edward Beck, from the Port road, a widower with a large family who was beginning to take notice, took notice of Valancy and thought she might make a mighty fine second wife.

Take a chance, Eddie. I want to be present when she sends him somewhere. (Thinking back to Susan refusing Whiskers on the Moon.)

Dammit, I wish I could give Valancy a hug. She's a champ for not going off at all these people.

Isn't it absurd. Cissy herself didn't want a funeral, Valancy would prefer not to organise one, just give her the burial her friend would have wanted. And yet here we are.

I know Barney wanted to be away from all of it but I wish he was there. He seems a tad avoidant--is that the reason why he lives on that island?

“My child,” she said tremulously, “you’ll come home now?”

This is the most affectionate Mrs Frederick has ever been towards her daughter. Don't fall for it, Valancy!

And she was so tired she wished she could borrow a pair of legs from the cat.

Nothing funny about this situation but this is a funny line. I'm gonna start using 'I'm so tired I wish I could borrow a pair of legs from the cat' from now on.

Uncle Wellington being the pall bearer surprises me. I know it's just to keep up appearances but it's still surprising that he chose to be a pall bearer.

“We will just treat her as if nothing had happened when she comes back,” decreed Uncle Benjamin. “That will be the best plan. Just as if nothing had happened.”

“Cissy dead—Cissy dead,” he said vacantly. “I didn’t think it would ’a’ come so soon. Dead. She used to run down the lane to meet me with a little white rose stuck in her hair. Cissy used to be a pretty little girl. And a good little girl.”

to me, this reads less as “she used to have all these positive qualities and then she lost them,” but rather as a parent who’s shocked at how quickly their child grew up and died—like, part of the grief is that the time went so fast and he didn’t know to treasure it until it was too late.

It's time for hissin'! This bunch is much less hissy than some previous fosters, but at least we get a half-hearted hiss from Cassandra before Zeus tells me where to go.

(ex: chose to not watch anything pg13 until turning 13, no adult content until you were 18)

This chapter is a mini-novel in itself.

I compared Cissy’s dialogue to Fantine, Tess Durbeyfield and Charity Royall before because she is clearly an iteration of a line of character, more than Valancy herself is. But what Montgomery is doing is still noteworthy for a woman writer and a minister’s wife who is known for her children’s books, and for how she makes Cissy work opposite Valancy.

“An inglorious gibbous moon was hanging over the wooded hills and in its spectral light Cissy looked frail and lovely and incredibly young. A child. It did not seem possible that she could have lived through all the passion and pain and shame of her story.”

I am not a fan of Cissy being infantilized to absolve her of her sins, but to be fair tuberculosis is a wasting disease.

I like how the “passion” of her story is acknowledged.

“He was stopping at the hotel across the lake. He used to come over in his canoe at night—we met in the pines down the shore. He was a young college student—his father was a rich man in Toronto. Oh, Valancy, I didn’t mean to be bad—I didn’t, indeed. But I loved him so—I love him yet—I’ll always love him.”

I like that she loved him.

“And I—didn’t know—some things. I didn’t—understand. Then his father came and took him away. And—after a little—I found out—oh, Valancy,—I was so frightened.”

Now, Cissy clearly didn’t know how babies were made.

I am of two minds about this: On the one hand, I like it on a meta level as Montgomery rebelling against the lack of sex education in her environment and the expectation for her to self-censor her own books. On the other hand, this makes Cissy’s story one of dubious consent to say the least, maybe even one of rape. And I don’t think that really works for the point Montgomery is trying to make with her? Especially since she is Valancy’s tragic foil. But I have to think more about that.

“I didn’t know what to do. I wrote him—and he came. He—he said he would marry me, Valancy.”

“And why—and why?——”

“Oh, Valancy, he didn’t love me any more. I saw that at a glance. He—he was just offering to marry me because he thought he ought to—because he was sorry for me.”

I love this. I love Cissy’s pride. She is so strong. Also parallels the ending of the book with Valancy wanting to divorce Barney.

“He wasn’t bad—but he was so young—and what was I that he should keep on loving me?”

This is so sad. One of the saddest lines in this book.

“Never mind making excuses for him,” said Valancy a bit shortly. “So you wouldn’t marry him?”

“I couldn’t—not when he didn’t love me any more. Somehow—I can’t explain—it seemed a worse thing to do than—the other. He—he argued a little—but he went away. Do you think I did right, Valancy?”

“Yes, I do. You did right. But he——”

“Don’t blame him, dear. Please don’t. Let’s not talk about him at all. There’s no need. I wanted to tell you how it was—I didn’t want you to think me bad——”

Cissy made the morally right decision certainly, though maybe she could have provided a better life for her son in this loveless marriage.

I love how Valancy is angry at Cissy’s lover but I also like how Cissy still loves him. Human beings are complicated.

“I used to bite his satin-smooth little face all over—softly, so as not to hurt him, you know——”

“I know,” said Valancy, wincing. “I know—a woman always knows—and dreams——”

Valancy’s wish for “fat babies of her own” seems to be earnest and not just a euphemism.

“And he was all mine. Nobody else had any claim on him. When he died, oh, Valancy, I thought I must die too—I didn’t see how anybody could endure such anguish and live. To see his dear little eyes and know he would never open them again—to miss his warm little body nestled against mine at night and think of him sleeping alone and cold, his wee face under the hard frozen earth. It was so awful for the first year—after that it was a little easier, one didn’t keep thinking ‘this day last year’—but I was so glad when I found out I was dying.”

“‘Who could endure life if it were not for the hope of death?’” murmured Valancy softly—it was of course a quotation from some book of John Foster’s.

“I’m glad I’ve told you all about it,” sighed Cissy. “I wanted you to know.”

I like that this sad story is included in this wish-fulfillment story. It adds a much-needed shade to it.

“Tell Father good-bye for me. He’s always been as good to me as he knew how—and Barney. Somehow, I think that Barney——”

What was Cissy going to say?

“But a spasm of coughing interrupted and exhausted her. She fell asleep when it was over, still holding to Valancy’s hand. Valancy sat there in the silence. She was not frightened—or even sorry. At sunrise Cissy died. She opened her eyes and looked past Valancy at something—something that made her smile suddenly and happily. And, smiling, she died.”

This is a bit too melodramatic and cliched, but I am happy that Cissy died happily.

“She was not in the least sorry Cecilia was dead. She was only sorry for all her suffering in life. But nobody could ever hurt her again.”

The last line reminds me of my favorite part of An Inspector Calls.

“And at the very last—something—had made up to her for everything. She was lying there now, in her white sleep, looking like a child. Beautiful! All the lines of shame and pain gone.”

I don’t like the emphasis on death erasing the shame from her face but I also don’t expect perfect political correctness about this from a 1920s novel written by a religious writer. I don’t even want it necessarily, I think. Our authors can’t always think the same as us and that’s healthy.

“Cissy dead—Cissy dead,” he said vacantly. “I didn’t think it would ’a’ come so soon. Dead. She used to run down the lane to meet me with a little white rose stuck in her hair. Cissy used to be a pretty little girl. And a good little girl.”

As @thesweetnessofspring said in analysis, Cissy’s white roses versus Valancy’s red roses.

“She has always been a good little girl,” said Valancy.”

“Valancy herself made Cissy ready for burial. No hands but hers should touch that pitiful, wasted little body.”

This is saying goodbye to a friend, but it is also Valancy making herself useful. She likes being useful.

“The old house was spotless on the day of the funeral. Barney Snaith was not there.”

I am guessing Barney isn’t at the funeral because he hates seeing the hypocrisy of the attendees. Very Byronic of him.

“Mr. Bradly was very tactful. He avoided all dubious points and it was plain to be seen he hoped for the best.”

Well, her son was a part of Cissy’s story and her happy moments and should have been mentioned.

“The Stirlings all came to the funeral, men and women. They had had a family conclave over it. Surely now that Cissy Gay was dead Valancy would come home. She simply could not stay there with Roaring Abel. That being the case, the wisest course—decreed Uncle James—was to attend the funeral—legitimise the whole thing, so to speak—show Deerwood that Valancy had really done a most creditable deed in going to nurse poor Cecilia Gay and that her family backed her up in it. Death, the miracle worker, suddenly made the thing quite respectable. If Valancy would return to home and decency while public opinion was under its influence all might yet be well. Society was suddenly forgetting all Cecilia’s wicked doings and remembering what a pretty, modest little thing she had been—“and motherless, you know—motherless!” It was the psychological moment—said Uncle James.”

I hate saying this but this is kind of smart social maneuvering. Might have worked in different circumstances.

“Valancy, pale, subdued-looking, her slanted eyes smudged with purple”

What does this mean? “Smudged with purple”? I guess it means she is sleepless and tired? But I am not sure.

“consulting in undertones with minister and undertaker, marshalling the “mourners” into the parlour”

“mourners”

“Perhaps she had always been kept down a bit too much—Amelia really was rather strict—hadn’t had a chance to show what was in her.”

I wonder what makes Amelia even more strict than even the Stirlings are, when her own family Wansbarras had been more unconventional. Is she trying to outStirling the Stirlings? Is it like a convert being more religious than the people who are born into that religion?

“No beauty—but a fifty-year-old widower, Mr. Beck told himself very reasonably, couldn’t expect everything.”

I am offended on Valancy’s account when people remark on her lack of beauty but I also like the fact that Valancy is not Beautiful All Along and seems to be genuinely not “beautiful”, at least not conventionally so. It wasn’t just her abusive family gaslighting her, she really is not the beauty standard of her society.

“Valancy was hating the funeral—hating the people who came to stare with curiosity at Cecilia’s marble-white face—hating the smugness—hating the dragging, melancholy singing—hating Mr. Bradly’s cautious platitudes.”

Yes! Valancy also hates the cautious censoring of Cissy’s life story.

“If she could have had her absurd way, there would have been no funeral at all. She would have covered Cissy over with flowers, shut her away from prying eyes, and buried her beside her nameless little baby in the grassy burying-ground under the pines of the “up back” church, with a bit of kindly prayer from the old Free Methodist minister. She remembered Cissy saying once, “I wish I could be buried deep in the heart of the woods where nobody would ever come to say, ‘Cissy Gay is buried here,’ and tell over my miserable story.”

Return to nature - this book really does have a Romantic sensibility.

“Excuse me, Mother, won’t you? I’ve a frightful lot to do—all those ‘up back’ people will be here to supper.”

I like how Valancy is always busy working when her family bothers her.