Readers Place

About the Book

This wonderful novel tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her extraordinary family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Cassandra’s eccentric father is a writer whose first book took the literary world by storm but he has since failed to write a single word and now spends most of his time reading detective novels from the village library. Cassandra’s elder sister, Rose – exquisitely beautiful, vain and bored – despairs of her family’s circumstances and determines to marry their affluent American landlord, Simon regardless of the fact she does not love him. She is in turns helped and hindered in this by their bohemian step-mother Topaz, an artist’s model and nudist who likes to commune with nature. Finally there is Stephen, dazzlingly handsome and hopelessly in love with Cassandra. Amidst this maelstrom Cassandra strives to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries, which candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle’s walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has captured the heart of the reader in one of literature’s most enchanting entertainments

Starting Points for Discussion

• As I Capture the Castle is made up of Cassandra’s diaries, she is ‘captured’ in the novel just as much as she herself endeavours to ‘capture’ life in the castle. In what ways does Cassandra change during the months the novel covers?

• ‘ “Which would be nicest – Jane with a touch of Charlotte, or Charlotte with a touch of Jane?”’ Cassandra repeatedly refers to Pride and Prejudice and two of the reviews quoted above also make a connection between I Capture the Castle and Jane Austen. Can you identify examples of the influence of Jane Austen and/or Charlotte Brontë in Dodie Smith’s writing? How do the other references to literature in the novel affect your reading?

• Consider the attitudes to class depicted in the novel. In what ways can the Mortmains be seen to be a particularly modern family and in what ways do their attitudes reflect the standards of the time?

• ‘The only Henry James novel I ever tried to read was What Maisie Knew, when I was about nine – I expected it to be a book for children.’ I Capture the Castle is seen as a classic example of crossover literature which appeals to both adults and children. What other examples of this sort of writing have you come across and how do they compare with I Capture the Castle?

• Compare Cassandra’s feelings about her home and the countryside with her experiences in London?

• ‘It is a pity that Simon is the heir, because Rose thinks the beard is disgusting; but perhaps we can get it off.’ How do you feel about the way men are portrayed in this novel?

Other Books by Dodie Smith

• 

  I Capture The Castle

  I write this sitting in the kitchen sink is the first line of this timeless,…

  Reading Guide

Suggested Further Reading

• Dear Dodie ~ Valerie Grove
• Cider with Rosie ~ Laurie Lee
• My Family and Other Animals ~ Gerald Durrell
• To Kill a Mockingbird ~ Harper Lee
• Pride and Prejudice ~ Jane Austen
• Lost Years ~ Christopher Isherwood