Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "i-capture-the-castle"
Capturing Castles
Dear Blog,
I have two large boxes in our basement filled with the journals I kept from age 10 until my mid-twenties. When I moved back to North America several years ago and retrieved this box from my parents' attic, I spent a long afternoon reading over my childhood and adolescence, rolling my eyes, laughing, and shuddering at me-of-the-past. There are three years of little hardcover notebooks filled with snarky observations in an ugly ballpoint scrawl. When I turned thirteen I started using big fat spiral notebooks and writing nicely with a fountain pen, so the journals become much easier to read. My style changed, too, becoming suddenly quite flowery and British-sounding. I was writing longer entries, trying to "capture" people and places and give events a fictionalized feel. The reason for the change was obvious and I laughed aloud in the attic realizing what it was: I had read Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle for the first time.
This was by far my favourite book in my early teens (also a great read for adults, like any really good YA). It is presented as the journal of Cassandra Mortmain, middle child of the eccentric Mortmain family, who live in destitution in a Victorian house attached to a castle in the countryside near London. It tells the story of their changing fortunes when their rich, young American landlord moves to England to claim his estate after his grandfather's death. The beautiful oldest child, Rose, who cannot bear their poverty any longer, sets her sights on marrying him. The story starts out (as Cassandra notes) a sort of cross between Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, but carries on past the engagement and what might have been the "happy ever after" in a very different sort of story (for example, a Jane Austen / Charlotte Bronte book) to explore all the complications of real life and real love.
Here is Cassandra on happy endings, which this book is far too good to offer up in any pat way:
Oh, I'd love the clothes and the wedding. I am not sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later. What I'd really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but happiness to look forward to. Of course no life is perfectly happy - Rose's children will probably get ill, the servants may be difficult, perhaps dear Mrs. Cotton will prove to be the teeniest fly in the ointment. (I should like to know what fly was originally in what ointment.) There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but - I think what I really mean is that Rose won't be wanting things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.
It made me think about wanting, and how differently we want and hope when we are young and every door is still open (or, many of them, if we are lucky). I used to take long walks in my teens and early twenties imagining the places I would go and the life I would have - it was different every time of course. I still have a long list of places I want to go and I still want things for myself - mainly time to write and money to travel - but something has shifted and now most of my wants, the really big wants, are for my children. Hopes and dreams for my own life are narrower and more practical. I've closed so many doors. And one has to, eventually (or maybe one doesn't - but the desire for children and perhaps the connected desire to stop thinking / dreaming about myself is a whole other post for another time). In any case, the book deals beautifully with dissatisfaction and wanting and the sense of anything-is-possible that (can) characterize youth. In a way, Cassandra is content in their dire straits and enjoys entertaining hopes for the future, until she falls in love and wanting becomes something altogether different for her. It is as authentic and painful and powerful a depiction of first love as I've ever read, and Cassandra is one of the most likable, enjoyable narrators in any book anywhere ever.
Three more observations about I Capture The Castle :
1. I am really interested in the way different authors write about children and teenagers wrestling with and questioning religion. Dodie Smith writes wonderfully about Cassandra's own faith / lack of faith. Cassandra is not quite an atheist - she goes to church on occasion, and she prays, but she has no certain and definite faith. Her prayers are a bit like wishing on a possibility. The vicar in the book talks very beautifully to Cassandra about faith, about religion as an art form, perhaps the greatest art, "an extension of the communion all other arts attempt." Later, considering this, Cassandra writes: I suddenly knew that religion, God - something beyond everyday life - was there to be found, provided one is really willing. And I saw that though what I felt in the church was only imagination, it was a step on the way; because imagination itself can be a kind of willingness - a pretence that things are real, due to one's longing for them. It struck me that this was somehow tied up with what the Vicar said about religion being an extension of art - and then I had a glimpse of how religion really can cure you of sorrow; somehow make use of it, turn it to beauty, just as art can make sad things beautiful.
It's an interesting passage (I think) and made an impression on me as a teen, because it seemed to separate religion from real faith in a way. It was sort of like the way an atheist might choose to be religious. And in fact Cassandra does not convert, but her thoughts on religion (and the vicar's too) are worth reading and beautifully expressed.
2. I have been reading a lot of YA lately and was struck but just how slow this book is, comparatively. Not that there isn't narrative tension - Dodie Smith is a master of it. But she takes her time. She is not constantly driving the plot forwards. She takes us on long journeys inside Cassandra's thoughts. She "captures" the Castle and the countryside and the village and the characters vividly and at length. When Cassandra rides her bike to the train station, we get the whole bike ride: her thoughts, the weather, the scenery. YA books in particular tend to be page-turners these days. It is rare to get such a long and languid book. I'm not sure exactly what I want to say about that. The old fogey in me wonders if it isn't that our attention span is suffering ( I Capture the Castle was published in 1949). Books now have to compete with television, with the internet, with the endless click click click on to something else as soon as your attention wanders a bit. I wonder if we read differently now - if a book really has to hook a reader and not let go in order to keep them. I Capture the Castle is a slow and quite "literary" book (and in a sense I just mean that the characters themselves are very literary-minded; there are long scenes of Cassandra taking walks with other characters and talking about books and poems - it assumes a well-read reader, though it does not require one). I wonder if a book like this could be published in its current form, now, and it makes me sad to think perhaps not. But maybe I am just being a grumpy pessimist. I do love page-turners, too, but reading this I was startled to realize just how slow it seemed, in a good way.
3. I've sometimes wondered (and I know my parents did) why I was such a train wreck in my teens. I came from a sane and happy home with two parents who loved us and each other and didn't even yell. The awful conclusion I've come to is that I was bored and wanted something exciting to write about in my journal. Cassandra's "journal" was full of angst and event. I wanted my story to be A Story, too. I succeeded in that, in any case - my journal does become much more interesting in my teens. I was not, of course, modeling myself on Cassandra, an incredibly sensible, kind, bookish virgin in unusual and interesting circumstances. I just modeled my writing on hers (via Dodie Smith). For a teenager leading a very conventional life and trying to create her own "interesting circumstances," the options are limited and certain kinds of misbehavior are an easy (rather unimaginative) way to stir things up. My journal turns very Cassandra Mortmain just as I start to experiment with being a Bad Apple. There, I've said it: I blame Dodie Smith for all the worry I caused my parents!
Well. Another post perhaps, on whether books can really be Bad Influences (we'll see where that post ends up but for now I'll say I think no, but it's a complicated no, and depends a bit on what you mean by influence, and what you mean by bad).
Yours, blaming-beloved-authors-for-my-mistakes,
Catherine
I have two large boxes in our basement filled with the journals I kept from age 10 until my mid-twenties. When I moved back to North America several years ago and retrieved this box from my parents' attic, I spent a long afternoon reading over my childhood and adolescence, rolling my eyes, laughing, and shuddering at me-of-the-past. There are three years of little hardcover notebooks filled with snarky observations in an ugly ballpoint scrawl. When I turned thirteen I started using big fat spiral notebooks and writing nicely with a fountain pen, so the journals become much easier to read. My style changed, too, becoming suddenly quite flowery and British-sounding. I was writing longer entries, trying to "capture" people and places and give events a fictionalized feel. The reason for the change was obvious and I laughed aloud in the attic realizing what it was: I had read Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle for the first time.
This was by far my favourite book in my early teens (also a great read for adults, like any really good YA). It is presented as the journal of Cassandra Mortmain, middle child of the eccentric Mortmain family, who live in destitution in a Victorian house attached to a castle in the countryside near London. It tells the story of their changing fortunes when their rich, young American landlord moves to England to claim his estate after his grandfather's death. The beautiful oldest child, Rose, who cannot bear their poverty any longer, sets her sights on marrying him. The story starts out (as Cassandra notes) a sort of cross between Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, but carries on past the engagement and what might have been the "happy ever after" in a very different sort of story (for example, a Jane Austen / Charlotte Bronte book) to explore all the complications of real life and real love.
Here is Cassandra on happy endings, which this book is far too good to offer up in any pat way:
Oh, I'd love the clothes and the wedding. I am not sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later. What I'd really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but happiness to look forward to. Of course no life is perfectly happy - Rose's children will probably get ill, the servants may be difficult, perhaps dear Mrs. Cotton will prove to be the teeniest fly in the ointment. (I should like to know what fly was originally in what ointment.) There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but - I think what I really mean is that Rose won't be wanting things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.
It made me think about wanting, and how differently we want and hope when we are young and every door is still open (or, many of them, if we are lucky). I used to take long walks in my teens and early twenties imagining the places I would go and the life I would have - it was different every time of course. I still have a long list of places I want to go and I still want things for myself - mainly time to write and money to travel - but something has shifted and now most of my wants, the really big wants, are for my children. Hopes and dreams for my own life are narrower and more practical. I've closed so many doors. And one has to, eventually (or maybe one doesn't - but the desire for children and perhaps the connected desire to stop thinking / dreaming about myself is a whole other post for another time). In any case, the book deals beautifully with dissatisfaction and wanting and the sense of anything-is-possible that (can) characterize youth. In a way, Cassandra is content in their dire straits and enjoys entertaining hopes for the future, until she falls in love and wanting becomes something altogether different for her. It is as authentic and painful and powerful a depiction of first love as I've ever read, and Cassandra is one of the most likable, enjoyable narrators in any book anywhere ever.
Three more observations about I Capture The Castle :
1. I am really interested in the way different authors write about children and teenagers wrestling with and questioning religion. Dodie Smith writes wonderfully about Cassandra's own faith / lack of faith. Cassandra is not quite an atheist - she goes to church on occasion, and she prays, but she has no certain and definite faith. Her prayers are a bit like wishing on a possibility. The vicar in the book talks very beautifully to Cassandra about faith, about religion as an art form, perhaps the greatest art, "an extension of the communion all other arts attempt." Later, considering this, Cassandra writes: I suddenly knew that religion, God - something beyond everyday life - was there to be found, provided one is really willing. And I saw that though what I felt in the church was only imagination, it was a step on the way; because imagination itself can be a kind of willingness - a pretence that things are real, due to one's longing for them. It struck me that this was somehow tied up with what the Vicar said about religion being an extension of art - and then I had a glimpse of how religion really can cure you of sorrow; somehow make use of it, turn it to beauty, just as art can make sad things beautiful.
It's an interesting passage (I think) and made an impression on me as a teen, because it seemed to separate religion from real faith in a way. It was sort of like the way an atheist might choose to be religious. And in fact Cassandra does not convert, but her thoughts on religion (and the vicar's too) are worth reading and beautifully expressed.
2. I have been reading a lot of YA lately and was struck but just how slow this book is, comparatively. Not that there isn't narrative tension - Dodie Smith is a master of it. But she takes her time. She is not constantly driving the plot forwards. She takes us on long journeys inside Cassandra's thoughts. She "captures" the Castle and the countryside and the village and the characters vividly and at length. When Cassandra rides her bike to the train station, we get the whole bike ride: her thoughts, the weather, the scenery. YA books in particular tend to be page-turners these days. It is rare to get such a long and languid book. I'm not sure exactly what I want to say about that. The old fogey in me wonders if it isn't that our attention span is suffering ( I Capture the Castle was published in 1949). Books now have to compete with television, with the internet, with the endless click click click on to something else as soon as your attention wanders a bit. I wonder if we read differently now - if a book really has to hook a reader and not let go in order to keep them. I Capture the Castle is a slow and quite "literary" book (and in a sense I just mean that the characters themselves are very literary-minded; there are long scenes of Cassandra taking walks with other characters and talking about books and poems - it assumes a well-read reader, though it does not require one). I wonder if a book like this could be published in its current form, now, and it makes me sad to think perhaps not. But maybe I am just being a grumpy pessimist. I do love page-turners, too, but reading this I was startled to realize just how slow it seemed, in a good way.
3. I've sometimes wondered (and I know my parents did) why I was such a train wreck in my teens. I came from a sane and happy home with two parents who loved us and each other and didn't even yell. The awful conclusion I've come to is that I was bored and wanted something exciting to write about in my journal. Cassandra's "journal" was full of angst and event. I wanted my story to be A Story, too. I succeeded in that, in any case - my journal does become much more interesting in my teens. I was not, of course, modeling myself on Cassandra, an incredibly sensible, kind, bookish virgin in unusual and interesting circumstances. I just modeled my writing on hers (via Dodie Smith). For a teenager leading a very conventional life and trying to create her own "interesting circumstances," the options are limited and certain kinds of misbehavior are an easy (rather unimaginative) way to stir things up. My journal turns very Cassandra Mortmain just as I start to experiment with being a Bad Apple. There, I've said it: I blame Dodie Smith for all the worry I caused my parents!
Well. Another post perhaps, on whether books can really be Bad Influences (we'll see where that post ends up but for now I'll say I think no, but it's a complicated no, and depends a bit on what you mean by influence, and what you mean by bad).
Yours, blaming-beloved-authors-for-my-mistakes,
Catherine
