Indeed, the strongest and most enduring relationship and portrayal of love in the novel is the one between the two sisters. It can all crumble in a heartbeat and blind you in the process. It shows how dangerous it is to tell young girls that all they can and should aspire to is romance and marriage. Instead, this makes for a beautifully nostalgic interpretation of youth, infatuation and the painful love that comes with it. Now that I am older and (slightly) wiser, it becomes a very different reading experience. I thought the love-interests and heartache was something to aspire and look forward to. When I first read this I was 14 and had yet to experience much of life and love. Whilst this is indeed a story about love, I found most of the true romance was instead the romantic lens through which our heroine views life and relationships. This is a novel I would re-read every summer, and every time I would take away something different from it.
I fell in love with the beautiful setting of a castle in the English countryside, the ever optimistic lead heroine and the very honest portrayal of first love. Whether that is Rose who ruthlessly schemes and seduces Simon, or Cassandra who pursues her dream of becoming a writer and seeks an education, both show complexity and heart.Īs a teenager, this was one of my favourite novels. However, both girls possess autonomy and ambition and use their intelligence to get what they want. The fact that the only way for the Mortmain girls to escape poverty is to marry wealthy men is a sad insight into the lives of women in the 1930s. Rose decides she wants to marry Simon, who is the eldest, which launches the Mortmain girls into a life of romance, glamour and new relationships.
The main catalyst for the events of the novel is the arrival of an American family, specifically the two unmarried sons, Simon and Neil. The story follows the characters’ difficulties in romance, family life and growing up in the 1930s. The Mortmains are a poor and bohemian family who live in a decaying but ever-romantic castle in England. Finally, there is Cassandra, who is our protagonist and through whose witty and honest diary entries this story is told. Then there is his second wife Topaz, the eldest daughter Rose, the youngest sibling Thomas, and the live-in son, Stephen. The household consists of Mortmain, the father and eccentric writer of the family who has been struggling from writer’s block ever since the success of his first novel. I Capture the Castle is a coming-of-age story by Dodie Smith, published in 1948, which focuses on the lives of the Mortmain family.
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