It’s impossible to ignore that Cassandra is forced to rely on the men in her life, most notably, for income. In fact, there are a few things I find fault in. But, I Capture the Castle has no feminist agenda. When I started this book, perhaps because of the charisma and brilliance of Cassandra Mortmain, I really wanted it to be a Feminist Book. Nobody dares question her when she declares she wishes to become a writer, and while this is not a Feminist Book, Dodie Smith sets a precedent for young women who are brilliant in their own right. Most notably, her intelligence is obvious to everyone in the book. Cassandra is the farthest thing from a simpering teenage girl. Cassandra and Thomas plot to get their father to write by tricking him and trapping him in a dungeon for days on end. Cassandra and Rose are on the run trying to escape a mob of townspeople who think they are bears and attempt to shoot them. The adventures she finds herself on are also not the makings of a damsel in distress. As opposed to being shy and demure, she is outspoken about things she cares about and thoughtful beyond her years. This is especially important considering that she is a seventeen-year-old girl in a novel written in 1948.Ĭassandra is different from how I expected a seventeen-year-old girl to be portrayed in 1948. In fact, she comes off as intelligent and self-aware and thoughtful. Because of the candid way Cassandra is able to write to us in her diary, she never seems foolish like other characters. Each of the characters lie to themselves, but when Cassandra lies to herself, thinking that she’s happy without Simon or that she doesn’t take some amount of pride in knowing Thomas’s hung up on her, you best believe she’ll concede the truth a few lines later. Simon thinks Rose loves him, Rose thinks that she knows how to charm men, Stephen thinks that Cassandra will love him one day, Thomas thinks that he knows everything, Topaz thinks she can fix father, and father thinks that he’s on his way to writing a great work of literature. It became perfectly clear a few chapters in that Cassandra is the only character who is not disillusioned, or at least, who is aware of her disillusionment. Finally, Cassandra’s father is perhaps going mad, bless him, and Cassandra sees that he’s not very good of a father without blaming him too much for it. Thomas is still a little kid who’s trying to act like an adult, and Cassandra often bristles when he tries to act as if he’s older than her. He’s foolish sometimes, and Cassandra looks down on him a bit because of his ongoing crush on her. Cassandra finds her lovely, but she’s eccentric, and she’s obsessed with being the woman who ‘fixes’ Cassandra’s father. Topaz is never going to be able to replace her mother, but oh does she try. Rose, she says, is perfectly lovely, but a bit delicate and frivolous. This is important because novels often speak about issues their authors see in the world, and by shifting the blame from individuals to the world as a whole, Dodie Smith is able to point out the vast importance of the points she raises.Ĭassandra is very shrewd and likes to think of herself as somebody who sees the world as it truly is, no sugar-coating or fancy metaphors. This allows for the novel to criticize the world without assigning blame. What makes Cassandra such a unique narrator is her keen ability to love her family to death and simultaneously criticize them relentlessly. She is able to articulate this complex relationship we have with money, where of course it doesn’t really mean anything, but of course it matters to have food on the table. She looks down upon the ultra-rich she begins to see, who have money coming out of their ears, but who have become shallow and frivolous. Simultaneously, she feels as though by acquiring wealth, she’s losing something, because the money comes with a whole host of new problems. She states very clearly that money has made her life easier, better. Cassandra, even more than others in her family, wrestles with this. The Mortmain’s go from barely having enough food on the table in the beginning of the book, to living comfortably by the end. One of these interesting topics is how money affects status. To be quite honest, I’m now torn between feeling like this book is too childish for me now and wondering whether that’s a terribly self-important thing to say, but nevertheless, the book touches on several interesting topics, including how to write a coming-of-age story for teenage girls. I only got around to reading the book recently, which is unfortunate because I now believe that my eighth-grade self would have been able to learn a lot from Cassandra. I was given this book for my eighth-grade graduation along with a raving review of the book’s brilliant female protagonist, Cassandra Mortmain.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |