Blog Nº 41
“I shouldn’t think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”
I Capture the Castle is a novel that has been ‘capturing’ people’s hearts for over 50 years thanks to Dodie Smith’s witty and charming narrative. Smith, of The Hundred and One Dalmatians fame, is an important twentieth-century writer and many consider I Capture the Castle as her seminal work. It has earned its place amongst my favourite books of all time and I hope this blog will convince you to give it a go.
The novel is set in the 1930s and is written in diary format by seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain. The Mortmains are a bohemian but impoverished family living in a crumbling castle in rural Suffolk. Cassandra documents her life alongside her beautiful, restless sister, twenty-one-year-old Rose, her schoolboy brother Thomas, the family’s dashing young lodger Stephen, her ethereal and glamorous stepmother Topaz and her eccentric novelist father, whose writer’s block has financially crippled the family. Despite the family’s precarious situation, Cassandra’s diary is cheerful and unguardedly funny. However, when the American heirs to the castle estate arrive unexpectedly, the Mortmains’ lives are changed dramatically and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.
The magic of this novel lies with its narrator and diarist Cassandra. Her characterful and amusing personality would make any reader smile while her guileless charm is refreshing and only adds to the humour of the story. The opening line of I Capture the Castle, “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink”, is probably one of the most memorable of twentieth-century literature. The Mortmains’ family friend the vicar perceptively says of Cassandra that she is “Jane Eyre with a touch of Becky Sharp” – she is at once fanciful, whimsical, sensible and intelligent, while her good-naturedness has continued to charm readers since the book’s publication. Through Cassandra, Smith has managed to create a very convincing diary novel. The improving fortunes of the family are also mirrored in the three notebooks Cassandra completes throughout the course of I Capture the Castle, going from the sixpenny book to the shilling book to the two-guinea book. There are sometimes jumps in time when she runs out of paper, or gentle reminders to herself to relay events in chronological order which add a keen sense of reality to her diary. In all, Cassandra is one of the most vibrant, engaging and memorable characters I have come across in literature.
Two key themes running through I Capture the Castle are poverty and love, and with the arrival of Simon and Neil Cotton the American heirs, these themes soon collide. Before their arrival the sisters long for romantic entanglements and worry about never meeting any marriageable men, “even hideous, poverty-stricken ones”, Cassandra writes. Despite their precarious financial situation, the Mortmains are very upbeat and maintain a make do and mend attitude. Even when hungry, cold or sighing over worn, too-small clothes, there is always fun to be had and a hopeful outlook. However, like most young women the sisters long for romantic encounters. The arrival of Simon and Neil who have inherited the Godsend Castle estate and Scoatney Hall, the nearby manor house, causes quite the stir within the family. In typical Pride and Prejudice fashion, Rose is determined to marry the elder brother (and heir) Simon – despite her aversion to his beard – for the good of the family. But of course, as the Mortmain sisters grow closer to the Cotton brothers, complications arise and all parties find themselves conflicted by aspects of young love.
Overall, I Capture the Castle is an enchanting and joyful read, and through Cassandra’s colourful narration the reader will feel an affinity with the majority of the characters.This is a novel I know I will re-read several times and I would encourage others to do the same.
Happy reading,
Imo x
ImoReads 