Lucy Maud Montgomery by Mary Henley Rubio

Author:Mary Henley Rubio [Rubio, Mary Henley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-67481-2
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2010-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

The Blue Castle sold very well in its day, from England to North America to Australia in English, and in other languages as well. It has stayed in print. Its plot took on political overtones when it was made into a musical comedy in Poland in 1982, and well over a decade later that show was still a box office success there. In 1992, it was made into a successful play in Canada, authored by Hank Stinson, and it was performed in both Muskoka and Prince Edward Island. In 1987, the Australian writer Colleen McCullough wrote a book, The Ladies of Missalonghi, which had so many similarities to The Blue Castle that she was accused of plagiarism. (In the resulting international furor, McCullough acknowledged that she had read Montgomery so many times in her childhood that she might have unconsciously internalized the plot and characters.) Maud herself probably had a literary model in mind for Barney Snaith: his prose sounds much like that of John Burroughs (1837–1921), a famous naturalist whose works she enjoyed. Barney’s writing also echoes Maud’s own purple prose.

When Valancy Stirling thwarts convention and marries Barney Snaith, his shack of a cottage recalls the cottage of John Mustard. No doubt John Mustard read this novel after it came out. He would have recognized the physical landscape of the novel, and the cottage, but he must have puzzled over its dashing, freewheeling, and raffishly charming Barney Snaith, who bore no resemblance to him, except in his love of escape into the deep woods. Nor would there have been any clear visible connection between Mrs. Ewan Macdonald—who had always been staid, distant, and formal with him, even as a girl in Prince Albert—and the sexually vibrant Valancy Stirling. As a minister who dealt steadily with the parables, metaphors, and symbols in biblical messages, he must have puzzled over the magical transformations of fiction and the secret thoughts that lay deep in Maud’s heart.

If “Captain” Edwin Smith read the novel—and he undoubtedly did—he would have seen many of his own characteristics as adventurer and raconteur in the hero, Barney Snaith, who sweeps repressed Valancy off her feet. Both he and Snaith had travelled extensively, both loved driving on the open road, and he, like Barney, could be a charmer with blarney. Smith wrote well, too, about travel, beauty, and nature, and had published in various Canadian magazines. Would he have been flattered—or alarmed? Likely, he would have seen many of Maud’s traits in Valancy Stirling, for they had revealed some of themselves to each other in their late evening talks.

Another man who would have read the novel was the egotistical Edwin Simpson, Maud’s former fiancé. He kept up with Maud’s novels and always bragged to others that he knew the sources of Maud’s characters. Did he fancy that he had only to look in the mirror to see some of the mysterious and deeply alluring Barney Snaith in himself?

But the man who must have been most puzzled of all by

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