Beware of Italics

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

He had done all he could to help Valancy before it - he had shrouded the pale Cecilia in white roses from the garden-

No notes.

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

Dear god, what a brilliant, heartless line.

And Uncle Wellington was a pall-bearer.

The sarcasm in that single paragraph.

This was the Valancy they knew. Really, surprisingly capable and efficient. 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.

This is quite interesting. I wonder what would’ve happened if she had returned to Deerwood? Would they have treated her any differently, especially if she’d continued to speak her mind and be independent?

“Home,” said Valancy absently.

I’m so sorry, but I’m just going to drop in a random Taylor Swift lyric here: To a house, not a home, all alone cause nobody’s there.

Which is essentially true, isn’t it? There’s a difference between a house and a home, and the Gays’ cottage is far more of a home to Valancy than the house she grew up in.

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

I love it when we get to see Valancy being Efficiently Capable.

“Oh, no, I’m not going to stay here,” said Valancy.

Mrs Frederick, you really should’ve seen it coming.

Oh Cecily <3

I wish se'd gotten to see more of how her relationship with Valancy developed, but I suppose that was all we needed to know.

And we finally get Cissy's story and - oof. Just. There's so much there.

How Abel, for all his crude speech, managed to never actually explain to Cissy how babies are made. And his comment "She used to be such a good little girl" with Valancy's retort of "She has always been a good little girl" which explains so much of Cecily and Abel's relationship - they love each other but they never really understood each other, and Abel never understood what she needed. Cecily, of course, figured out a long time ago that there were certain things he could never give her and was resigned to it and loved him anyway.

(Which does beg the question of what Valancy's sex ed was like, because I can't imagine Mrs. "It's not maidenly to think about men" giving a comprehensive explanation.)

Cecily and Valancy are marked as kindred spirits here, both defying society's expectations to follow their hearts.

I think we can rule out the public school, since it's the information source most common between the two girls. And I rather doubt that either church is running a sex ed class in the vaguely 1910s/1920s (the Presbyterians certainly didn't have one for Cissy).

Considering the different options, I suspect Valancy's knowledge is either pieced together from Deerwood tea party gossip, or else came from a (non-Amelia) Stirling. There my guesses would be Cousin Stickles taking on the distasteful task as part of teenage Valancy's "upbringing", and that it was probably a really inaccurate euphemism-laden pro-abstinence message along the lines of 'God sends babies to mommies and daddies; if you ever hold hands with a boy you will have an illegitimate child and DIE and FACE GOD'S JUDGEMENT.'

The other guess would be Olive, who we know attended Havergal college, was engaged for the first time at 18, and likes confiding in and flaunting her status over Valancy. I could absolutely see Olive picking up some basic knowledge at school (from the other girls, from books that the teachers' don't know are circulating among the students, possibly even from her own mother if Aunt Wellington is more pragmatic about ensuring Olive avoids scandal when she's out of the house), and then exulting over Valancy about her engagement, and showing off her sophistication that she knows what married people do when they're alone (oh, Valancy, you didn't know? Well, I'm about to be married' [insert fake reluctance to talk about it because it's oh-so-scandalous, but also not really, since she is engaged, but still she's being modest and proper AND also gets to make Valancy feel ignorant])

Slippers

Artist Unknown, Rosenbloom's department store

leather, c. 1892

A sad chapter, the reader is sad...

An inglorious gibbous moon was hanging over the wooded hills and in its spectral light Cissy looked frail and lovely and incredibly young. 

An evocative sentence. I don't know if LMM meant anything with her moon description, but I don't like gibbous moons, I prefer crescents or full moons. Gibbous just looks aesthetically untidy. (My favourite moon phase is waxing crescent bc it's D as in devil!)

Cissy is always described as such a fragile little thing... she's like a tragic character that was doomed before she had a chance to live. Even her sad romance has something of the poetic. He used to come to her in his canoe... they met in the pines down by the shore... (for some reason I've just remembered the song Holy Terrain by FKA twigs, which I'm not sure is suitable soundtrack here, but I feel like FKA twigs would be the artist to write Cissy's song).

And I—didn’t know—some things. I didn’t—understand. 

I never clocked that this meant that she didn't know about sex, I only know it bc other readers have said so; I just assumed she meant about men and relationships generally (like she thought that a son of a rich man from Toronto would be serious about her), but it doesn't really matter what she meant. Cissy's mother had died before she could tell her about all those things, but surely there must have been someone else to do so? No other female relatives, aunts or cousins? Or one of those housekeepers would have had a sense to do it, if Abel didn't think of asking her. Someone must have cared about Cissy enough. I mean, Cissy going off to work as a waitress to a place frequented by summer visitors, that's just asking for trouble--surely Abel would have known to warn her about men. Men are well aware that they can be bastards. Maybe Abel assumed that Cissy would never get into trouble bc she was a good girl, and Cissy's naivety prevented her from seeing that she was just a Toronto boy's summer fling. A set of unfortunate circumstances.

Cissy making excuses for the guy... well, idk, what else can she do. It seems like he did the right thing, asking her to marry him, but then he didn't show any care about the child--even if they didn't get married, he could still be there for the child. I like that Cissy stayed true to herself. They would not have had a happy marriage.

Oh, Valancy, what you’ve been to me! I can never tell you—but God will bless you for it. I know He will—‘with what measure ye mete.’

This is just so... *wipes tears*

Weird that Cissy never named her baby.

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

Well, not me, lol, I've never wanted children. But like Anne would say, I can imagine. I mean, I can relate to wanting to cuddle a cute little thing, only in my case it's a four legged furry half-angel half-demon with claws.

Cissy was glad to find out she was dying--much like Valancy. But compared to Valancy, Cissy has lived more, bc she has experienced love and even motherhood.

‘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.

Wait, that brings to mind that quote from The Count of Monte Cristo. "We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living."

I don't have much to say about Cissy's dying moments, other than that they are beautifully written. I think that last image Cissy saw before she died was her baby daddy with their baby in his arms.

She was indeed a good a little girl.

Oh Cecily <3

I wish se'd gotten to see more of how her relationship with Valancy developed, but I suppose that was all we needed to know.

And we finally get Cissy's story and - oof. Just. There's so much there.

How Abel, for all his crude speech, managed to never actually explain to Cissy how babies are made. And his comment "She used to be such a good little girl" with Valancy's retort of "She has always been a good little girl" which explains so much of Cecily and Abel's relationship - they love each other but they never really understood each other, and Abel never understood what she needed. Cecily, of course, figured out a long time ago that there were certain things he could never give her and was resigned to it and loved him anyway.

(Which does beg the question of what Valancy's sex ed was like, because I can't imagine Mrs. "It's not maidenly to think about men" giving a comprehensive explanation.)

Cecily and Valancy are marked as kindred spirits here, both defying society's expectations to follow their hearts.

Cissy didn’t know things that somehow even Valancy knew, and I am once again pissed at Roaring Abel. Long sigh. I do not want to spend all my time angry with this man. It is exhausting.

That said, I love Cissy. She has more integrity in her little finger than the rest of the town has in all their bodies combined.

I…don’t think a woman always knows and dreams. I am a woman and I do, but I don’t think that’s a universal experience. Did Montgomery want kids? Did she have them? Did she like them? Now that I think of it, we know perfectly well that she knew it isn’t a universal experience, because she gave us Rilla. This is Valancy’s assumption as a character, not Montgomery’s as narrator.

“Who could endure life if not for some hope of death?” This tells us something very interesting about John Foster. For all the beauty he writes, he is severely depressed, I believe suicidal. He isn’t going to take active steps to die, but he wants to die. Unlike Valancy and Cissy, he isn’t living with a terminal illness. (For those of you who don’t know—though I’m afraid those of us who do know have spoiled you shamelessly already—this isn’t something we know yet, but we will.) And yet, he shares their close relationship with death. I’m going to be sitting with how this shapes the whole story for a while.

Of course, I wonder what Cissy would have said about Barney before she died. And of course, I’m heartbroken that she’s dead. Perhaps if I’d been there with her like Valancy, I would also only be relieved that her suffering was over, but I was not and I am heartbroken.

I do think to some extent, LMM had to have Cissy ignorant of sex in order to (as I've mentioned before) keep her sympathetic to her readers. While the 20s was a lot more free about sex than previous eras (which is why she could do this storyline at all), she also lived a pretty conservative life and knew a lot of people would struggle to sympathize with a single mother. Having Cissy going into it unknowing, which seems really really skeevy now obviously, is a way to keep her "pure" for the intended audience (vomit) rather than someone who knowingly had sex and didn't regret the consequences, y'know? (I also do think to some extent it's clear that Cissy was raised by others in the village, went to Sunday school etc, so her ignorance is on them as much as it is on Abel. Not to say he shouldn't have done a better job, but I think it is worth acknowledging that Deerwood raised her, Deerwood failed to prepare her, and then Deerwood shunned her. For all his faults, Abel never once condemned her for her "disgrace.")

I will say LMM had kids and seemed pretty fond of them from what I've read, but as a childfree person who likes some specific kids but has no desire to have any, she does occasionally lay the Ideal of Motherhood on a little thick lmao.

“Who could endure life if not for some hope of death?”

I don't read this line as suicidal or even having a death wish per se. I think it's a bit about the beauty of ephemeral existence (which I think fits a nature writer very well, especially one who writes about things like wildflowers and insects--very short-term things) and I think there's an element of good ol' Christian "But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven"-type hopeful fatalism. Christianity, especially certain flavors of it, has always been very in favor of looking forward to death, and even if the characters themselves don't necessarily practice that variety of belief, it does leave an impact on the culture.

The last exchange between Valancy and Roaring Abel is everything. “She was always a good girl.”

Mary Martin as Dolly Gallagher Levi in the original West End production of Hello, Dolly! in London, 1965.