A Well-Captured Character

I f you’ve not met Cassandra Mortmain, you truly must. The heroine and narrator of Dodie Smith’s 1948 novel I Capture the Castle combines dry wit, deep thought, keen observations, and quirky interests in one fascinating character. She has both a matter-of-fact nature and a dreamy tone to her narration, painting for readers a colorful picture of her life. It’s a rather hard life, to be honest, when we first meet her, as she and her family are living in “not-so-genteel poverty.”

Cassandra, her father, stepmother, sister, brother, and a family friend reside in a ruined castle in the English countryside. Perched on the kitchen sink on a rainy night, Cassandra opens the novel by sketching out the character lines of the castle’s inhabitants, but as the story unfolds, we and Cassandra both discover so much more about each person. It’s a delightfully quirky cast. Mr. Mortmain is a one-hit wonder, having written a best-selling book and then refused to pick up a pen after its success. His second wife (his first having died of “perfectly natural causes”), Topaz, an artist’s model, is devoted to Mr. Mortmain, and sometimes “communes with nature” in the nude.

The younger set consists of 17-year-old Cassandra, her older sister, Rose, their younger brother, Thomas, and 18-year-old Stephen Colly (the son of their late cook whom they haven’t the heart to turn out). Stephen is deeply in love with Cassandra, but as so often happens in such tales, she has almost no interest in him. Since their father hasn’t worked in years, the family has almost nothing to live on, but he never seems to notice.

Cassandra notices, though, and she details the family’s daily doings and conversations with whimsy and clarity. Through her narrative, Smith deftly portrays a young girl’s coming of age, simultaneously showing us her naïveté, her wisdom, and her growth. This character arc is memorable for numerous reasons, but particularly because of the believable way in which it unfolds. When we meet Cassandra, she’s rather light-hearted, despite her poverty, and takes delight in much of what surrounds her. Imagination and practicality are perfectly melded in her, and she can both work hard to help her family or sit for hours observing nature.

The shift from bubbly 17-year-old to maturing young woman, however, is sudden and rather stark. She finds herself unexpectedly and helplessly in love, but knows her passion is unreturned and would ruin her relationships with her family if it were broadcast. Smith gives an honest portrait of how love can change us to our core and irrevocably shift our perception of the world.

What struck me particularly about this book was the sense of a loss of innocence. It’s not conveyed in a violent or seamy way, but simply through observing what Cassandra loses as she goes from teen to adult. While Smith never romanticizes poverty, there are hints that Cassandra misses the way things were at the book’s beginning, at least in terms of relationships. We also see her cast off two cherished childhood activities, one of which involved celebrating Midsummer’s Eve in an amusingly pagan way.

It’s the second activity, though, that struck me most. In the bedroom that Cassandra and Rose share, there’s an old dressmaker’s dummy, which they’ve named “Mrs. Blossom.” At night, for years, the girls would make up a voice for Mrs. Blossom and tell each other things through that persona that they’d have trouble expressing in their own words. If something hard but true needed to be said, Mrs. Blossom would say it. Same for jokes, riddles, and stories. This depiction struck close to home for me, as it was almost identical to something my sister and I made up when we were having trouble communicating in high school. When Rose leaves the castle halfway through the book and Cassandra tries to make Mrs. Blossom talk once more, the game shatters in a particularly heartrending manner.

Were I to issue one complaint about the book, it would be aimed at Simon Cotton, the Mortmain’s neighbor and Rose’s love interest. The nerve of this man to wear a pointed beard at the book’s outset is appalling. And though he gets rid of it eventually, I’m sorry to say that Smith, in her vibrant description of his facial hair, firmly prejudiced me against him.

Careless as she is about beards, Smith is masterful at portraying her characters’ feelings in a moving manner, helping us to cheer on or scorn them at any given moment. Her background as a playwright comes through both in this aspect of the book and in how it’s laid out in three “acts” of sorts. She does not cater to readers’ wishes, either, choosing to end the book on a bittersweet (though not depressing) note that is more true to life. In our Hallmark-ending era, this is refreshing indeed.