Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle

            I Capture the Castle was an absolute delight to read. I stayed up most of one night reading it because I had to know what happened. Smith managed to build incredible tension throughout by writing in the voice of a narrator who is not fully aware of what’s going on in her own heart and mind, something that some of my other favorite authors manage also. Meg Cabot pulls off this feat brilliantly in The Princess Diaries, the first example that comes to mind. It suits young adult fiction well because the characters are at an age where they are changing faster than they can really keep up with, in ways they will only fully grasp in retrospect. The young characters in this novel do that wonderful thing that seems to be a specialty of this age: they hold clear, strong views on what they would and would never do, only to discover when it comes to acting on those beliefs that life is much more complicated than that, so they have to adapt and grow.

            The novel is written in first person, present tense, something that feels self-conscious at first, but since it’s a diary, suits the story perfectly. In fact, the structure of the novel lies in the actual notebooks and journals that Cassandra has available to write in, forming three chapters entitled The Sixpenny Book, The Shilling Book, and The Two-Guinea Book. It’s not accidental that the titles contain increasing amounts of money, because money drives the story, including all of the bad choices that the characters make because of it. Increasing the cost of each journal reflects the rising fortunes of the Mortmain family, highlighting how much that drives the story.

            One January when I found myself suddenly unemployed, I wrote a tv pilot about an exceedingly broke young woman who agrees to marry the devil for financial security. I was told in no uncertain terms that women characters can’t be driven by the need for money, that this is conventional wisdom in the industry. I’m still perplexed by this, given, well, Jane Austen. Just for example. I’ve since discovered a fun game to play with a group of writers: think of as many works of fiction as possible where women are driven by the need for money. It’s not even rare!

            The story of the Mortmains is definitely driven by money, in a very Jane Austen way, as two wealthy young men inherit a nearby stately home as well as the decrepit castle where the Mortmains are starving. The Mortmains are so poor in fact that they have sold off nearly all of their furniture and feel tremendously lucky on a day when the hens lay eggs. This is not a genteel, picturesque poverty. When Cassandra’s elder sister Rose sets her sights on one of the wealthy young bachelors, nobody can blame her for doing whatever it takes to save her family from actual destitution. But as the story unfolds, and starvation gets pushed farther away, Rose’s actions start to seem not just pragmatic, but calculated, and worse than that, cruel, since her target, Simon, actually falls in love with her, but she does not love him.

            Cassandra herself doesn’t realize she has fallen in love with Simon until much later than the reader realizes it. Structurally, this development plays a vital role in the story, since otherwise Cassandra would be put in the terrible position of breaking up her sister’s engagement over her own scruples, which would turn Cassandra into an extremely unpleasant character. Likewise, Simon or his brother breaking off the engagement would destroy their characters as well. Rose breaks off the engagement by running away with Simon’s brother, Neil.

            The structure of this novel follows the typical romance as it has been since the advent of the Greek novels of classical times: a couple gets matched up, obstacles intervene, obstacles are overcome, they get together, happy ending. Smith leaves the ending open for Cassandra and Simon, but the structure still stands, with a difference in financial status the biggest obstacle between the two families. It’s interesting to me that it’s not social status, which might be harder to overcome, but financial status only. The father of the family had been a famous author, but hadn’t written anything since that first and only book. There are regular references to Pride and Prejudice throughout the novel, including but not limited to Cassandra’s overt discussion of the similarities between the Mortmains and the Bennets.

            Why can’t the Mortmains go out and work and earn some money, so they don’t starve? Because of class. Only Stephen, the orphan son of the family’s old cook, who works for the family for free anyway, can go out and get a job in the local inn, using his pay to support the rest of them as they do nothing beyond housework and gardening. (Though to be fair, they grow the vegetables that comprise nearly their entire diet.) It’s Stephen who gets a job being photographed and then as an actor. It’s Stephen who falls in love with Cassandra, though she rejects him because she doesn’t feel the same way, setting up all of the dominoes to fall throughout the rest of the story, as Cassandra confronts Rose, Rose leaves Simon for Neil, and Cassandra has to face Simon offering her affection as a substitute for love. Cassandra rejects that too, but ends the novel, running out of space in her current notebook, by writing “I love you. I love you. I love you,” to Simon.

            All of these structures work together to build this story. Writing in first person, present tense, gives the narrative immediacy and allows the author to keep us in the limited sphere of the young narrator. The device of writing in a journal further limits our access to any knowledge or information that Cassandra herself doesn’t know or interpret, though it likewise allows Cassandra to relate information that she doesn’t fully understand, while we do. And building a story on the classic structure of a romance gives the story forward momentum, but only because we care so much about what happens to Cassandra.

            I think this novel was left over from my previous list, so it wasn’t chosen for structure, but I’m very interested in the ways that Smith follows a narrator as her experience of the world expands and changes her understanding of her own story as she tells it. Even the way Cassandra presents herself throughout the narrative changes completely. That’s fantastic, that first person transformation of self-awareness and self-perception. First person both limits and expands what the writer can convey to the reader. That seems to me to be one of the richest veins to mine when writing young adult.