i capture the castle
I have read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith at least three times in my life: as a bookish pre-teen, as a 19-year-old bumbling my way through uni and as an early 20-something thinking I was now an adult. Every time the story has been different. Narratives are not fixed. You cannot step in the same river twice.
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea cosy.
I Capture the Castle follows the story of the Mortmain family as narrated by the middle daughter Cassandra. The rest of the family are made up of a reclusive father, a Bohemian step-mother, a beautiful oldest daughter, Rose, and smart little brother, Alex. They rattle around in a dilapidated old castle the very picture of poverty chic. Cassandra's father is a famous author who hasn't written a word since he was released after a short stay in prison. Her step-mother is a free-spirit, once an artist's muse, now turned into a some-what reluctant runner of the family household. Cassandra longs to escape, to find herself and reach her full potential. She observes the adult world and thinks herself understanding of it and above it. She is me at 12, thinking she knows it all and that she understands people better than they know themselves. Once the Cotton brothers arrive and disrupt family life, Cassandra realises that the world is not as she thinks it is and that coming-of-age can be fraught with embarrassment and hard lessons.
Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can
Reading I Capture the Castle at 19, mid-way through an English Literature degree produced a different feeling: a nostalgia for myself at 12, reading it and feeling as Cassandra did the potential of an adult life ahead of me. And then another layer, a wry look back at my own naivety of thinking I understood the world. A cursory glance over my own teenager diary reveals a total (and cringe-worthy) lack of self-awareness or self-knowledge. The ending changed the most, or at least how I felt about it, I was disappointed when I was younger that Cassandra didn't marry the rich, nice American, Simon Cotton, once in love with the beautiful Rose. I thought the ending sad or a least a letdown. Reading it at 19 I only felt joy, glad that Cassandra was free of a man she didn't really need. She had a whole story ahead of her still, chapters and chapters left to write after the novel ended.
The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently [...] There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.
In my early-20s re-reading it again made me notice the other characters: Rose, of course, who feels as trapped as Cassandra, believing see only has her looks to trade on finds a way out as best she can. She picks the wrong man unfortunately and her betrayal, which once I judged as harshly as Cassandra, I now understand. I have a great appreciation too of Topaz, Cassandra's step-mother who tends to her family and husband with great care and selfishness, something I had taken for granted in my earlier readings. She is a free-spirit, squirrelled away in a broken castle, far from the high society she knows. But in the end, she always returns to her life and the family she has made. The happiness she has created for herself. She keeps the whole family fed and clothed with little-to-no thanks. I Capture the Castle is full of different ways to live and love and Cassandra, like all of us, has the messy task of figuring out which way is best for her.
(sidenote: the film version is divine and for years I wanted to dress like Rose and Cassandra)
This is not a romance as I first thought as a child, nor is it solely a book about Cassandra's coming of age. It's a family drama, with all the intricate heartbreaks and joys, petty squabbles and mundane kindnesses that family bring. It is a story about learning to write your own story and finding your place in the world. It's a story about how you create a family and a life of your own — whatever that may look like. It's a book I look forward to reading again and again and seeing what else this narrative has to tell me.
More re-reading: this time from Penelope Lively