The Istoriaphile’s Corner

“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”  So begins seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, the narrator of Dodie Smith‘s I Capture the Castle.  You’ve got to admit that’s an interesting opening line.  Only eight words and  you know something unusual must be going on because who sits in a sink to write? Well, Cassandra does and she has a good reason to since that position catches the last of the daylight.  The Mortmain family doesn’t have electricity.  They’re a 1930’s family living in a medieval castle and they use lamps and candles after sunset.  If they sound romantic and eccentric, I Capture the Castle suggests that normalcy may be something only  people with an income can afford. The Mortmains might still be eccentric under regular circumstances but right now they’re too poor to be normal. Once Mr. Mortmain wrote a successful book and their income was such that eccentricity was more acceptable but that was before his leviathan-sized writer’s block moved in.  Since then the family has been making do on his ever-decreasing royalties, the money his second wife brings in from artist modeling jobs and what the family gets from selling the castle’s furnishings.  (Not really their property).  It is obvious…