LECTURE 93 I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith Want to know why The Atlantic put this at the top of their summer reading list Listen in!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Listeners. Readers, welcome to the Fox Page, where we dive
deep into the very best books. You'll come away with
a richer understanding of the text at hand, all while
learning to read everything a little better. I'm Kimberly Ford,
one time adjunct professor at Berkeley, best selling author, and
PhD in literature. I'm also someone who has loved this
book for such a long time. I Capture the Castle

(00:26):
by Dotie Smith is a novel that I returned to
again and again, and honestly, of all of the things
that I recommend to people and all of the things
that I have discussed in my various iterations of these lectures,
this is honestly one of the books that is always
a crowd pleaser. We begin these lectures with this question
of why should we read this book? And I've been
wanting to revisit it for a long time, especially as

(00:47):
the summer is upon us. And what really gave me
the impetus recently is that this was in a list
of books by The Atlantic that they suggest you read
over the summer. It was in fact the very first
book on that list, and I was very happy to
see my old favorite getting such pride of place in
that list. But I also was very happy about the
idea that that Atlantic list might mean that more people

(01:08):
are revisiting this absolute gem, super quick housekeeping. I am
here in New York, and I thought that I had
the working microphone, but I don't. If you are on
the podcast or on the YouTube and the audio is
not quite what it usually is, that is the reason.
And if it sounds good, then we just give full
credit here to my MacBook pro. So mostly what we're

(01:29):
going to be doing today is just looking at this
book as an absolute joy. We're going to be digging
into the pros. We're going to look at some of
the elements that make it just such an absolute pleasure
to read. We're also going to talk about some of
the very sophisticated elements of this book that I think
go unnoticed and that I think deserve a lot of credit.
In terms of agenda for those of you who like
an agenda, we're going to start with the publication history

(01:52):
and a very very brief bio of Dorothy Gladys Smith
otherwise known as Dodie Smith. The history the moment in
time in which the book was published is actually very important,
and if you have that in mind while you're reading
or think about it afterward. It really can enrich your
experience of the book. This is probably a good place
to say that I'm not going to spoil anything until

(02:12):
the very end, when we take a look at the
very end of the novel. So this might be an
appropriate thing to listen to before you dive in. Often
that's great because I do think you'll have a richer
experience of the work, but also, if you have read it,
I think it will also make you love the thing
even a bit more. So. First, we're going to talk
about the publication history. We're then going to dive in.
We're going to look at the cover art on my

(02:34):
hideous copy of this book. I have this very strange copy.
It was the only one in my local bookstore. It
does such disservice to this work. So we're going to
chat about that very briefly. I'm also going to show
you the covers of the books that I have, the
copies that I have at home, one of which I love.
It looks very much like kind of like a liberty print.
It's green. And then the other one that I'm going

(02:57):
to show you is and honestly, if you're on a YouTube,
I'll pop a picture of it right now. This is
a copy of first edition of I Capture the Castle
that my mom gave to me. She attended the lecture
at the bookstore that I gave on it years ago,
and it's really one of my prized possessions. She got
it through my older brother who deals in rare books,
so it was very like an all in the family moment,

(03:17):
and I'm just so so happy to have what feels
to me like a little slice of history. So we're
going to talk about the cover art. We're going to
talk about the title. Then we're going to dive in
and take a quick look at the first paragraph, which
is very important in terms of understanding the whole novel.
We're going to look at how the narrator functions. We're
going to look at some of the levity and some
of the joy and the cleverness, just the overall tone

(03:40):
of the book. This is not something that we really
dig deeply into for the most part here at the
fox page tone, but in this book it is singular
and interesting and definitely deserves a bit of our attention.
We're then going to talk about the role of the
mother specifically the absent mother and how she functions actually
a little bit differently in this book than she does,

(04:02):
you know, in your typical absent mother slash Bambie slash
fairy tale story. We're then going to talk about some
of the meta elements simply meaning passages that are talking
about the writing of the text, and in that same grouping,
we're going to talk about intertexts, which are simply other
books that are named in this one. We're going to

(04:23):
talk a bit about Austin, We're going to talk about
the Brontes, and importantly, we're going to talk about James
Joyce and how he relates to the father in the story.
We're going to take a very quick look at how
Americans are seen in the novel, and also at the
role of pets. Most of you probably know that Dotie
Smith is the woman who wrote The thousand and one Dalmatians,

(04:43):
and she writes about dogs in a way that is
so compelling, and I want to take a very quick
look at why that is so well done. We're going
to take a very quick look at a couple of
elements that are sort of problematic, and then we're going
to end by looking at the final pages of the
book in order to just sink a little bit more
deeply into this incredible prose. Okay, quick bio. Dorothy Gladys

(05:04):
Dodie Smith was born in eighteen ninety six in England.
She died in nineteen ninety also in England. She was
ninety four years old. Fairly certain that math is correct.
She was a very successful playwright, wrote a bunch of plays.
Her most important work, the one she's most known for is,
in fact The thousand and one Dalmatians that came out
in nineteen fifty six. But I Capture the Castle, which

(05:26):
was published in nineteen forty eight, is really, you know,
that's the adult book that is really the one that
I think is the best. I mean, honestly, I have
not gone back and read The thousand and one Dalmatians.
I am actually sure that it is compelling. We should
probably go back. I should probably go back and report
to you how that novel is. Obviously, the screen adaptations
of that are hugely important. In nineteen sixty one, just

(05:48):
five years after Disney did their version of it, there
was that live action one. I think that was the
one with Emma Stone, which somehow, at some point I
decoupled Kuella de Ville from the thousand and one Dalmatians.
When I was looking through my notes, all of a sudden,
I was like, oh my gosh, this is the iconic Cruella.
So in many ways Dotie Smith's legacy, just for the
creation of Kuela Deville is worthy of lots of attention.

(06:11):
So I capture the castle again. It was in nineteen
forty eight. This was written when she was in California.
She was married to a man who was a conscientious objector,
so they left England before the Second World War and
she wrote the book while she was in California. I
love that about it. There's a lot of talking here
about ranches in California, and as a lifelong Californian and

(06:33):
someone who spent a lot of time on her cousin's
ranch in Calistoga, the idea of a California ranch as
being central to a novel that is set in a
castle in England really warmed my heart. The book is
known This novel is known as number eighty two in
the BBC Collection That the Big Read, which is a
list of very important books that the BBC deems that

(06:54):
we should all be reading in twenty nineteen, the BBC
News named it one of the one hundred most inspiring novels,
and I do find it very inspirational. In two thousand
and three there was a film version of it. Rose
Byrne plays Rose in it, and I actually have not
watched it. I'm sort of saving it as a treat
for once I'm done with this lecture. But the trailer
itself is just absolutely beguiling. It's just it's so it

(07:17):
looks so good. So it's worth taking a moment and
noting the fact that this book is published in nineteen
forty eight. So most of you will have in mind
that the Second World War, the dates of that are
sort of nineteen thirty nine to nineteen forty five. It
is crucial to realize that this book was published only
three years after the end of the Second World War.
What's most interesting to me about that date is the

(07:40):
fact that it is set in nineteen thirty four. So
what Smith has done in this really interesting way is
essentially erased the Second World War. She's writing in the
late nineteen forties. It comes out in nineteen forty eight,
only three years after the end of the war. But
it's harkening back to a much more peaceful time in
nineteen thirty four, well before well I'm not sure it

(08:02):
was well before, but you know, significantly before the Second
World War. It is such a good trick in many
ways because it allows the reader back to kind of
a more innocent time. It's allowing for an escape. In fact,
the Atlantic named it as a book that's like one
that you should read if you want to kind of journey,
if you want to escape into another place, And in
many ways you're also escaping into another time significantly. Also,

(08:25):
they are living in a twelfth century castle, so you
are also escaping even further back. But it's really important
to remember that some of the poignancy and some of
the real heft of the novel comes from the fact
that it was written during those war years, and the
California pieces of it are really compelling. The Americans in general,
this fixation on Americans seems very kind of honestly come

(08:47):
by in the sense that Dorothy Smith Dotie Smith was
in the United States during the writing of the book. Okay,
we're going to dive in and take a look at
the actual book itself. So I mentioned how hideous my
copy is. I mean, hideous is not the right word,
but what we have here, I'm holding it up for
those of you on YouTube. It's like these two little blonde,
very young girls running through a field toward a beautiful castle.

(09:10):
And there's something about the colors and something about the
sort of soft focus and the age of these girls
that literally make it look like something so cheeseball and
something just like not interesting at all. I don't love
the fond I don't love anything about this. It also
has a blurb up at the top by JK Rowling
which reads, this book has one of the most charismatic

(09:31):
narrators I've ever met, which I actually think that's also
kind of an understatement. And I also think I actually
couldn't figure out when Saint Martin's published this. I looked
through it pretty carefully. They don't seem to have the
publication date, which is very odd actually, But having the
only cover blurb b by JK Rowling seems to me
a tad insensitive, given that she has made some very

(09:52):
controversial and really horrible comments that have made her I
think somewhat of a wonky person to be looking for
for your only blurb on the cover of the book.
There have been many other iterations of covers that are
all much better. If you're on the YouTube again, I
will flash a few of those up now. And if
you're on the YouTube here again, is that the first

(10:13):
edition that my mom gave to me, maybe five or
ten years ago. So now we're going to talk briefly
about this title. So the title I Capture the Castle,
like any good title, is going to have a bunch
of different connotations. So here largely we realize right from
the beginning that Cassandra Mortmain, who is our narrator and
our protagonist, her attempt throughout the entire book is to

(10:35):
capture her life in the Castle in writing. It is
in fact speed writing, which is funny, and it's this
kind of cryptic writing which is so interesting in many
ways because we think of her text as being very straightforward,
as opposed to this text that her father is writing,
which is very opaque and full of games and full
of riddles and clues. But in many ways, what Cassandra
is doing, with all of her sort of shorthand and

(10:57):
all of her own code, is creating some thing that's
not that different from the text that her father is writing,
which is like this very experimental, very James Joycean kind
of work. So she's writing in order to capture their
life in the castle and the sense of capturing it
and being able to communicate that thing to someone else.
There's also this idea of kind of like physically capturing
the castle. So in many ways, she loves her home,

(11:20):
she loves being there, but they have only leased it
from these two brothers who arrive, who are very much
the love interests of the novel. So this idea of
capturing the castle is a bit tenuous in the sense
that she lives there with her family, and yet they
are not the people who own it. They have not
captured the castle. We also, of course, you know, the
idea of a castle really evokes a bygone era, and

(11:42):
in many ways this well, it is a coming of
age story. It's a story about someone who is growing
from innocence into something that is much more sophisticated. She's
moving from this bucolic existence toward the city of London.
She's moving from childhood into womanhood with all of the
complexities therein But you really have her in many ways
identifying with this very simple life. I mean, she's often

(12:04):
bored by it, but this very sort of simple life
of what it would have been like to live in
a castle, and that is very much in contrast with
the life that she will go on to use. There's
also like a very slight connotation with chess. There's a
lot of chess being played in my family, both virtually
and across the board, by all of my children and
their friends, which sounds way like nerdier than it actually is.

(12:26):
But I've been thinking a lot, not a lot, but
I've been thinking some in terms of chess moves these days,
and capturing the castle. I don't actually really know what
that means, but I think the rook is a very
important piece, more important than the pond at least. Oh
my gosh, that's like literally all I know. But you know,
knowing that there's also castling, which is when you change
the one piece for the other. I can't even really

(12:47):
remember now. I mean, I'm waiting into really unclear waters here.
But there is this idea of strategy, and this idea
of exchanging things, and this idea of kind of making
a good choice and a good move. This is a
good moment. After we have looked at the title, to
talk about the names in the book. So I just
mentioned Cassandra Mortmaine. She is our protagonist certainly, and Cassandra

(13:08):
is a Greek name. It's one of these Greek figures
and it's a very important one. And in some ways
it should feel heavy handed when we see it in literature,
but when well done, it is not in fact heavy handed.
Cassandra was kind of like cursed with this idea that
she could tell the future. She was like a prophet
and she could make these prophecies and they were true.
But the thing that she's kind of cursed by is

(13:29):
the fact that no one would believe her. There is
another novel. It is called Cassandra at the Wedding. This
is a book that is actually set in California, and
it is set on a ranch in California. It is unbelievable.
That is another crowd pleaser every single person. I recommend
that book too, just like cannot get enough of it.
And I love this kind of this strong Cassandra woman

(13:49):
at the heart of both of them, and in fact,
both of them are coming of age stories. There are
a lot of similarities between the two. So we have
Cassandra and Cassandra to me stands in pretty stark contract
to her sister Rose. So Cassandra has these kind of
Greek connotations. It's sort of sophisticated. It has to do
with language and communication. Rose, to me is more kind
of like an English Rose, like a little more delicate,

(14:11):
a little more decorative. You also, of course have this
idea of someone who has risen, someone who rows up,
and in many ways she does rise up into society
in a way that her sister does not. But it
seems like kind of a more trite name, like a
much less interesting name in many ways. And I think
it's very bold for Smith to have had these sisters
with such kind of pointed names in some ways. Their

(14:32):
younger brother is Thomas. He's very clever, and he is
someone who unlocks the keys at a couple of important points.
One of the things he understands is what his father
is trying to do. Their father is trying to do
with literature, and you can kind of associate Thomas in
that case with doubting Thomas. He's like one of the
maybe one of the apostles. Oh my gosh, that's so
embarrassing that I don't have that like right in my mind.

(14:53):
But this idea of doubting Thomas. He is very clever,
and he does sort of look at things in a
somewhat skeptical way, but also he's very bright. Things come
very easily to him. The other person who the other
young person who's kind of floating around is Stephen. So
in Greek Stephen has to do with honor, it has
to do with victory and fame. So this Stephen in
the novel is like a young servant who essentially lives

(15:17):
in this tiny little room and takes care of everybody,
you know, sort of like a jack of all trades
who lives in the castle and supports the family. But
he is someone where without spoiling anything, I would say
that victory and fame are kind of within his reach
in an interesting way, Saint Stephen is also the first
Christian martyr. I did not know that, but I did
find it out when I looked it up. If there's

(15:38):
something if you want to be a better reader, take
a look at the names. If it is a book
that is well written, the names should really have a
lot of, you know, potential for unpacking. So this idea
of him being the first Christian martyr was so funny
to me because in many ways, Stephen is very Martyrus.
And I loved our relationship between Cassandra and Stephen again

(15:58):
and again, like you had the sense that things could
get very romantic, and almost every time, I was so
pleased with the choices that Castandra makes. And then the
other two people in this household are Topaz, who is
their stepmother, and Mortmaine, who is their father. And I
want to take just a quick minute to read a
couple of the different things, just to get some of

(16:19):
the tone right here at the top. So when we
have this first description of Topaz, so you know in
any fairy tale that the stepmothers tend to be, you know,
evil stepmothers. In this case, she is absolutely not that.
And I really like the way that again and again,
Dotie Smith is really pushing against a lot of our
expectations and our stereotypes. So here we have Topaz, and
she is such a vivid character. Every character in this book,

(16:42):
even the minor ones, are so well drawn in a
way that feels light and just sort of easy and effortless.
But when you take a step back and realize all
that you know about these people, it's just incredibly well done.
So in terms of Topaz, we have this kind of
levity of tone, but also a really like beautifully kind
of rich experience of who she is three years ago

(17:04):
or is it four? I know father's one spasm of sociability.
Sociability was in nineteen thirty one a stepmother was presented
to us. We were surprised. She's a famous artist's model
who claims to have been christened Topaz. Even if this
is true, there is no law to make a woman
stick to a name like that, which I thought was

(17:24):
so funny. So Topaz, I mean, honestly, it sounds like
more of a name for a cat. But there is
so much here. It is a name that Cassandra is
very skeptical about, cannot take seriously. It's also telling us
so much about this woman who claims to have been
christened Topaz, like the suspicion on the part of our
narrator there is excellent. And then this idea that even
if she were, even if that were her given name,

(17:45):
that like it's really too absurd and she shouldn't go
by it. She's very she's like very ethereal. I always
picture her as like those like pre Raphaelite people, you know,
those very pale, very saturated, very detailed illustrations of those
women with like all the long reds hair. It's like
always like Ophelia floating in the water, that kind of thing,
or the Lady of the Lake or whatever that is.

(18:06):
So she's a famous model who has a bunch of
portraits in the Tate, which is one of those ways
that Dotie Smith is anchoring us very much in England,
which is such an efficient way of showing us that
the sort of prestige and the kind of grandeur and
kind of gentrification of this family. Meanwhile, they are living,
you know, basically in poverty inside this castle. So the

(18:28):
father is named Mortmaine, which is spelled mort m ai
n in French. That would mean dead hand. And of
course what is significant about that is that the father
wrote this one important book and then has never been
able to write anything since, so in some ways his
hand is dead. But again we have this kind of
elevation of them. It's very fancy to think about them

(18:49):
with this kind of French overtone. And our narrator makes
a lot of the fact that it is Topaz who
insists on calling him Mortmaine, both because she's trying to
sort of harken back to his glory days, but also
because she's trying to elevate him. We're going to look
toward the end. There is one point where our narrator
says her name together. She calls herself Cassandra Mortmain, and

(19:10):
you have this idea then of her really coming into herself,
and it is really significant that she is she's calling
herself at the end of the novel, when she has
a much better sense of who she is. She's calling
herself by a name dead hand, but she's calling herself
by a name that is very much wrapped up in
this idea of being a writer. Super Briefly, I'll just

(19:31):
mention that Neil, who is one of the brothers, Neil
in Irish means passionate or champion, which says a huge
amount about what happens with him in the book. Okay,
we're going to go on now and take a look
at the first paragraph of this novel. If you are
a longtime listener to the Fox Page, you know that
one of the ways that you can become like a
better reader, if that is why you were here, is

(19:53):
to really just pay attention. It sounds basic, but I
think a lot of us move through books and if
that's you're reading that screen, you know, just like chill
and just enjoy yourself, just let it wash over you.
But if you're wanting to really engage more, and well,
if you're wanting to engage more, you should write. You
should read with a pencil. You should always be underlining things,
you should be circling. You're never going to go back

(20:14):
and look at them. I don't, but it really does
help you engage more with a book. But the other
thing that you should be doing, if it is a
book worth its salt, when you read the first paragraph,
certainly the first paragraph, but also maybe the first chapter,
it will really point you in important directions in terms
of what this book is trying to do. So on
page three of my copy, I write this sitting in

(20:38):
the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it.
The rest of me is on the draining board, which
I've padded with our dogs, blanket and the tea cozy.
I can't say that I'm really comfortable, and there's a
depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only
part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left,
and I have found that sitting in a place where
you have never sat before can be inspiring. I wrote

(21:00):
my very best poem while sitting on the hen house.
Though even that isn't a very good poem. I've decided
my poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any
more of it. So many important things are happening here
in the very beginning. The very first word of the
entire novel is I. The second word is I write this.
That's three words, and that might you know. You probably

(21:21):
just gloss right over that, but it is hugely important.
This is a young woman whose voice we are hearing.
It's also the voice of a narration, who is of
a narrator who is dreamed up by a woman. So
we have this very strong female voice right from the start,
and it is not a tentative voice. It is also
telling us right from the start that what is important
here is that that voice is writing. She's saying I write.

(21:43):
We also have this immediacy hear because it is in
the present tense. I write, this is happening right now.
She's writing it down in real time, and there is
so much beautiful immediacy. There was a whole vein of
that that I wanted to look at but I realized
we were really getting into the weeds. But again and again,
partly because of this first person narration, and because a
lot of the book is in present tense, we really

(22:05):
do have the sense that these things are happening right now.
There's a real immediacy and proximity to all of this
that is really important. We also have this idea of
the kitchen sink here, so you know everything but the
kitchen sink, you know, has this idea of plenitude in
this idea of lots of detail and putting a lot
of things in. And this is a book. This time
it actually did feel it did not feel long, like

(22:27):
it didn't feel overly long, but I really remembered how
rich it is. A lot happens in this book. Many
different people have arcs, there are lots of different locations.
There's so much beautiful description. So you really do have
a sense that this is a book that's going to
have a lot, We're going to have everything. It is
also a book that is going to focus on the domestic.
So they start it starts in the kitchen. A lot

(22:49):
of stuff happens in the kitchen. The kitchen is also
kind of the one main room and in fact, like
the only warm room in the castle, which is so
important because what she is capturing here is not I mean,
obviously it's not battles, and it's not the life of
a night. It is really very much about a domestic
group who is living in this castle. And then lastly,

(23:10):
we have this idea of perspective that she's sitting here
and it's the only place where there's lights, so that's
speaking to illumination and how she's going to illuminate things
for us. But we also have this sense, you know,
she says it to us like she has found that
if she sits in unusual spaces and looks at things
from a different perspective, then she has a better understanding
of them. So what she's promising to us is that

(23:31):
she will give us unique perspectives, and she certainly does. Lastly,
which I think is so funny, she's throwing the idea
of poetry right out the window. But there's a lot
of comment here, both in terms of Cassandra and in
terms of Stephen of not being able to write good poetry.
And I think I for one, I mean, it's embarrassing
again to admit that I'm not, in fact a poetry lover,

(23:53):
but I did enjoy the fact here that she's like,
my poetry is so bad, I am not going to
write any more of it. There's also a certain level,
in a more serious way, that she's telling us what
I write is going to be good. Like I am
somewhat of an arbitrar of taste, and I can tell
you that my poetry was not good and I pushed
it aside. So essentially what I'm going to give you
is good. Those of you on the YouTube might notice

(24:15):
that I just did a quick costume change. I was
trying to do something kind of English and juvenile, so
I had on like a little pink argyle vest sweater
vest that actually belonged to my daughter. It was so itchy,
it was so itchy. I was just like distracted. So
now I have on a different sweater vest. But I
want to go ahead and read a little bit, not
a little bit, We're going to read the next two

(24:35):
paragraphs of the beginning, because what Dodie Smith is doing here,
it seems so light and just sort of fun and
so rich and beautiful. But what she's doing here is
very important, Importantly, the book is actually kind of dated.
It begins in March, it ends in October, so we're
beginning March is very early. It's not sort of like,
you know, well into spring. So we're beginning at the

(24:57):
end of winter. We're beginning with cold, we're beginning with darkness.
And what we're going to have. I mean, if you
think about those for even a half second, you have
this idea of lots of growth is coming and change
and blossoming and all of the kind of plenitude of summer.
So at the beginning, she's really leaning into that. If
you like me, happen to sort of skip over chapter titles.

(25:19):
In fact, this one is called the sixpenny Book March,
if you happen to skip over that. It also has
illustrations which I couldn't find anywhere in the book saying
that Dotie Smith did them. But I also couldn't find
out that anyone else did them, so I have to
presume that she did them. They're actually very sweet their
line drawings, and you might skip over them a little bit,
but they're worth taking a look at. So here we

(25:39):
have her setting the scene in a way that is
it's very efficient. We're having a lot of information conveyed
to us. But it is in this tone that is
so beautifully consistent throughout the book. It's slightly light, but
also very passionate in an interesting way. Drips from the
roof are plopping into the water butt by the back door.

(26:00):
The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear.
Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined
walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat
the boggy plowed fields stretched to the leaden sky. I
tell myself that all the rain we have had lately
is good for nature, and that at any moment spring
will surge on us. I try to see leaves on

(26:20):
the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the
more my mind sees green and gold, the more drained
of all color does the twilight seem in some ways too.
Knowing the end of the book, it is very I
am going to tell you this book is not a tragedy,
but it is not quite as kind of buoyant and
romantic and kind of cliche as you might think. It is,

(26:42):
in fact a very sophisticated ending, and I'm realizing now,
it's always so interesting to go back to the beginning
right after you've finished. I'm realizing that in the beginning
we do have some overtones of the complexity of where
we are going to end. So right under that she's
talking about how drained of color does the twilight seed.
It is comforting to look away from the windows and

(27:03):
towards the kitchen fire, near where my sister Rose is ironing,
though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be
a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. I have two,
but one is minus. It's behind. Rose looks particularly fetching
by firelight because she is a pinkish person. Her skin
has a pink glow, and her hair is pinkish gold,

(27:24):
very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her,
I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty
one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger,
feel older. I am no beauty, but have a nedish face.
So a couple of things here that make it feel
sort of juvenile. When she says she is a pinkish person,
that is kind of this unusual and in some ways

(27:46):
kind of a little kid kind of way to describe someone.
But it also is doing that thing she promised she
would do, which is giving us kind of an interesting
perspective on things. She also has like the kind of
adolescent feel of this, and the passion of it comes
from kind of a conviction. When she says she is
nearly twenty one and very bitter with life, that's this

(28:06):
kind of very strong statement. It's a little exaggerated. She's
very bitter with life and sort of large in scope.
And I love the fact that we have these little
detailed things. Her hair is very you know, feathery and light,
and then she is very bitter with life. We have
these beautiful counterpoints of like these large, passionate statements that
have some exaggeration in them, together with a very kind

(28:28):
of light touch where the description is concerned. We also
have this idea here she looks younger but feels older,
and that in some ways is important because Cassandra as
our trustee narrator, we want her to be more interesting
than Rose, and in many ways what she wants and
what she chooses is more interesting than Rose, although that
is arguable, but it is very good at the beginning

(28:48):
to have this sense that we are being narrated to
by a slightly more interesting sister. So one of the
ways with the levity that we see at the very
beginning of the book, one of the ways that that
is important and that it sort of manifests itself throughout
the book is with the presence, in fact, the absence
of the mother. So there is an old saw with
literature that sort of no adventure can ensue if there

(29:11):
is a mother around, which is just very interesting. I mean,
the idea being, of course that a mother would keep
things under control and would sort of regulate decisions and
would sort of protect her children, and that life is
much more interesting once you have taken a mother out
of the picture. It's kind of shocking how many works
of literature are our families where the mother is absent.
In fact, Cassandra at the Wedding is another one where

(29:31):
there is no mother figure. And what happens here is
the mother becomes very shadowy. In fact, that is literally
the word that Cassandra is using to describe the absence
of her mother. But there is also a levity. There's
sort of this idea that the mother is absent in
many ways that's hard, but it also seems like this
kind of like slightly ambivalent, very kind of realistic way.

(29:51):
I mean, also perhaps totally not realistic, but it's kind
of this unusual attitude on the part of Cassandra about
her missing mother. But I find it really interesting the
kind of matter of fact nature with which she is
discussing the mother, and also the matter of fact and
like really very appreciative way that they welcome Topaz as
this very unconventional but really in many ways delightful stepmother figure.

(30:17):
So on pages five and six, so very much toward
the beginning of the book, right after the description of
the castle and the description of Rose, we have this
mention about the mother. And before I read this, importantly,
one of the plot points is that the father lost
his temper at one point and when after the mother
with a cake knife, and in fact had to spend

(30:37):
three months in prison. And even that is described with
a lot of levity, in fact, probably with more levity
than should be described. There is a part of the
end where he loses his temper with Castandra and in
fact pushes her, and there is you know, like a
fairly traumatic and violent situation there that is also handled
with a certain amount of levity in a way that
made me a little uncomfortable. It maybe is fitting into

(30:59):
one these problematic aspects of the novel. There are different
times when class and race and in fact domestic violence
are treated in a very light way that can be
seen as sort of problematic. Although those they're just like
tiny glimpses. I think I'm so tuned to look for
these kinds of things that they stand out. But there's
a lot less of this in nineteen forty eight than

(31:22):
there could have been. So on page five, mother died
eight years ago from perfectly natural causes. Their little joke
about the fact that she did not die from the
cake knife. I think she must have been a shadowy
person because I have only the vaguest memory of her,
and I have an excellent memory for most things. I

(31:42):
can remember the cake knife incident perfectly. I hit the
fallen neighbor with my little wooden spade. Father always said
this got him an extra month. Again. I mean, that's
in parentheses her role in this whole thing. But you know,
it's a very serious thing, and yet it is being
treated with levity here, this idea. It's very in some ways,
it's cute and in some ways it's very sad that

(32:03):
she would have any role, and the idea of her
going over and you know, bopping the neighbor in this
very juvenile way speaks to the levity not only of
the tone of the book in general, but also with
which the family is dealing with things. It's also interesting
that that is sort of the end of this description
of the mother. Right from there we go, so eight
years ago the mother died, and then three years ago

(32:24):
a stepmother was presented to us. So this mention of
the mother is very quick. We also though at the
very end of the book. In some ways, this book
has lots of sort of book ends. We have a
lot of things where we have come full circle, which
again is another reason that it's interesting to go back
and look at the beginning. So that was pages five
and six. On page three oh seven we have, like

(32:45):
another time. It's sort of one of the only maybe
three or four, four or five times when the mother
is prominent in the book. On page three oh seven
we have this really beautiful description of her sort of
arriving in the text. Importantly, we find out that she
was a very important inspiration for Mortmain. In fact, we

(33:05):
wonder if, in fact her death had to do with
him not in fact being able to write anymore. And
here she arrives in the text at the very end,
when Cassandra and Thomas, her younger brother, cook up this
plan to try to cure their father's writer's block. So
on three oh seven we have this godsend church clock
had begun to strike ten, and suddenly, as well as

(33:26):
the far off booming bell, I heard in memory the
tinkling chime of mother's little traveling clock. And then my
mind's eye saw her face, not the photograph of it,
which is what I always see when I think of her,
but her face as it was. I saw her light
brown hair and freckled skin. I had forgotten until then
that she had freckles. And that same instant I heard

(33:48):
her voice in my head, after all these years of
not being able to hear it, A quiet, clipped, little voice.
It was completely matter of fact. It said, do you know, dear,
I believe that skin of yours might work quite well?
I heard my own voice answer, but Mother, surely we couldn't.
It's fantastic. Well, your father's quite a fantastic man, said

(34:10):
mother's voice. Then I mean just genius. We have this
next paragraph, she says that second, a gust of winn
slammed the tower door just above me. So we have
this idea of hearing the mother's voice but then having
a door slam on it. So a couple of things here.
The mother's voice is matter of fact, and she is supporting,
you know, this plan that Cassandra has. But it's this
kind of matter of fact voice. We also hear that

(34:32):
it was a clipped little voice, and we do find
out fairly soon after this that she was a real
muse and a real help meet to the father. It's
important that her voice is one that we are hearing
toward the end when Cassandra is making decisions about her
future liberation. But I also really appreciate the fact that
this is not some really like overdrawn but deeply a

(34:52):
dramatic moment. It is, in fact more kind of matter
of fact. Importantly, we have a couple of stand ins,
a couple of foils the mom. There's a school teacher
named Miss Marcy. There is a dressmaker's dummy called Miss Blossom,
who often you know, quote unquote speaks to the girls.
And what I mean by that is Cassandra gives voice
to all sorts of different things that Miss Blossom might

(35:14):
be saying. And Topaz in many ways is a very
important maternal figure, although she ends up she's closer in
age to the girls, so she's kind of more like
a sister to begin with, and she's always doing things like,
you know, communing with nature and getting naked, and she
is not in fact able to really inspire writing in
her husband. So the absence of the mother definitely can
be felt, but I appreciate the way that it is

(35:36):
not kind of overblown. It's not a huge, huge plot point,
and when it appears, it's sort of this interesting, kind
of matter of fact presence. So we're going to move
on now and talk about this idea of intertexts. These
are texts that appear in the book. It's always important
to stop and think about what the author is trying
to do. So when we have mentioned in the very

(35:56):
beginning of Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen, I mean
that begins with that very famous quotation about how you know,
every young woman is in need of a husband or
whatever that thing is. And from the very beginning, you know,
we have the arrival of Bingley and mister Darcy, and
you know, the young family of Girls is just kind
of all at twitter because they might find in fact
a rich husband. It is literally like the exact same premise.

(36:19):
And in many ways it's really skillful of Dodie Smith
to just go ahead and name what it is she
is doing. The other thing is that a lot of
these books are dealing with what is called the marriage plot.
And this goes all the way back to kind of
to the idea of tragedy versus comedy. So in the
in the Greek era, really the definition of a comedy
was that it ended in marriage, and that holds in

(36:41):
literature for a long long time, through Shakespeare all of
these different things. If things kind of work out well
for people, and for women in particular, then the piece
of writing or the play will end with a marriage.
That is obviously a plot and an arc. And sort
of this marriage plot concept is something that people are
really pushing against in really important ways, and in many

(37:03):
ways this book is also doing that. But I love
the fact that right at the start Smith is really
pointing out that she is playing with that. There are
a lot of other intertexts here at one point we
mentioned the Bronte's and that's kind of a double thing
because not only do we have like Weathering Heights and
Jane Eyre and this idea of you know, young girls
out on like wind swept English landscapes, but we also

(37:26):
have the idea of the Bronte sisters as and Jane Austen.
I mean, it's no coincidence that she is choosing female writers,
because these are female writers whose work has stood the
test of time, and they really do serve as kind
of like a blueprint for how Cassandra might move forward.
We know from the beginning she wants to be a writer,
so these people are obviously looming large. But the book

(37:46):
I want to talk about just a little more in
detail is this idea of Jacob wrestling. I have to say,
the first time I read it, I wasn't paying very
much attention at all to what it was that the
father was writing. But this time I did take a
slightly closer look. So Jacob wrestling, of Jacob wrestling with
the Angel, I did have that in mind. These are
one of those biblical phrases. I am not a biblical scholar.

(38:07):
It's kind of like my reading of the Greek tragedies
or comedies, all of those works, all of those plays
in particular. That is not a really strong body of
knowledge that I have at my hands. We had a
course in high school called the Bible as in Literature,
and I really wish I paid more attention, because that
would have been very cool. I just remember about nothing

(38:28):
from that class. Although maybe Jacob wrestling with the Angel
came from that, I do not know. Jacob wrestling with
the Angel comes from Genesis. It comes from the Bible.
It's very early Bible. And it is this idea that
Jacob spent all night long, he was away from his family,
spent all night long wrestling with this kind of angel,
and it might have been God or it might have
been an angel, and the Bible is a little bit

(38:49):
unspecific about that and what he is seeking. What Jacob
is seeking is a blessing. There is some thinking that
he's kind of like a pre Christ kind of figure.
In the end, he ends up with a new name,
which is Israel. Well, at one point there is a ladder,
and this ladder essentially looks like a staircase leading up
to heaven. And one of the things that we know
about the book Jacob Wrestling that Mortmain has written is

(39:12):
there is a ladder in it, and in fact the
latter is shaped by words, which speaks to this idea
of experimental literature. Some of you know, like Appolinaire, who
is a French poet who like when the you know,
when the writing is on the page, it like looks
like things which always seem kind juvenile to me, but
also kind of cool. So one of the things that
is very cool and could be heavy handed, but isn't

(39:33):
It just ends up kind of boosting our appreciation of
what Mortmain has done is that when Simon arrives, Simon
being the British of the two brothers, when Simon arrives,
turns out he's a big fan of Jacob wrestling. And
again that could be like too coincidental, but what it
does is make you think like, oh, this is a
book that was actually pretty famous. Simon is also a
literary critic, so you have an idea here that you know,

(39:55):
he might be aware of difficult texts that everyone else
is not aware of. So this a book that was
thought to be you know, revolutionary and really important in
terms of the body of English literature, and many of
the illusions that are made, especially toward the end, are
are speaking, I think to James Joyce and the idea
of a lot of that kind of surrealistic, experimental literature

(40:16):
that was happening in the nineteen twenties and thirties, essentially
all of the modernist writing. So Ulysses by James Joyce
was published in nineteen twenty two in Paris. It actually
came out in US kind of serial editions a couple
of years before that. And there is a ladder in
Ulysses also. We have this idea. It's in the beginning Telemachus,
It's in the first part of Ulysses, and it's essentially

(40:39):
a ladder that kind of leads into the novel, into
the action. I mean, insofar as Ulysses is a novel.
I will say right now, I did, at one point
really dive into Ulysses. I did it. I had to
be oh my gosh. When my daughter was little, she
was an ice skater, which I loved watching her ice skate,
but she would ice skate for like ninety seconds, you know.
And at one point I had to spend ten days
at an ice skating competition. That was not a world

(41:02):
that I loved. I was not like right in there
with all the skating moms. I mean, I liked them,
but I wasn't like really like into all of the
competitive ice skating the way that they were. I always
was so freaked out because whenever you were in the
stands with all those people, I had this really strong
feeling that like one kid is out there, like my
kid is out there doing her thing, and her coach
and I are hoping she's going to do well. Literally

(41:24):
every other person in the entire place wants her to fail.
There was so much crazy energy at these things. I mean,
and I will say when the other kids were out
there and they were competition against my daughter, I was
not like really radiating a lot of positive energy toward them.
But I digress. I brought you Lissies. That is a
book that you cannot read on its own. You need
to read it with all sorts of references all around.

(41:46):
This was like, I mean, very early oughts, So this
was not when I had like a computer that had
reliable Internet. So I brought all of these kind of
books because I had learned that when we go on
these long ten day ice skating junkets that I really
needed to have a counterpoint, and Ulysses was absolutely that.
I did find it interesting and I found it very worthwhile.

(42:07):
Now that I am just like so deeply obsessed with
Irish literature, I should go back to it, and I
will say that it's not something to be attempted lightly.
And the fact that it is known as kind of
like the archetypal, I mean, Finnegan's Wake is the one
that's truly unreadable. But the fact that this is this
kind of very experimental literature is important because the evocations
in the parallels between what Mortmine is doing and what

(42:29):
Ulysses is doing are really potent. So we're going to
look briefly at some of that description on page three
thirty four, and it's important. We're going to get to
why it's important beyond just the fact that this is
what the father is writing. So on three thirty four,
this is when Thomas, the younger brother, is explaining to
his older sister Cassandra, why what it is that their

(42:52):
father is up to. Importantly, at the top of this
page we have these two quick paragraphs Apparently I was
all wrong about father. Currently, it is very clever to
start a book by writing the cat sat on the
mat nineteen times. Then we have a paragraph break. Now
stop it, Cassandra mortmein. You are still piqued because Thomas
was the one to guess that what we found in

(43:14):
the tower wasn't just nonsense. So we have this idea
here of her naming herself. Now stop at Cassandra mortmean,
she is really coming into the idea of this last
name and her full name. She's coming, you know, we're
at the end of the novel. She's coming into her
adulthood and her own last name, importantly not a married
last name, and one that is very associated with the

(43:36):
idea of writing. So there's this book. Apparently he wrote
the cat sat on the matt nineteen times. That's how
the new book opens, and her younger brother Thomas has this,
and there is a perfectly logical explanation. So they say
that in the new edition of the book he only
has seven times the cat sat on the mat, and
there is a perfectly logical explanation of them. According to

(43:59):
that bright way Thomas, they are supposed to be in
the mind of a child learning to read and write.
Am I unusually stupid? Am I old fashioned? Oh? I
can see that Father's puzzles and problems are clever in themselves,
that the language in which he sets them out conjures
up beautiful images. But why are they supposed to be
more than puzzles and problems? And then right across, if

(44:23):
only father would answer a few questions, if Thomas would
throw out some more of his bright ideas. After telling
me section A was a child learning to read and write,
he decided he was not prepared to say any more.
So we have this idea that Thomas is pointing her
in the right direction. But very much like the point
of these kinds of books, this experimental kind of literature

(44:43):
that really makes the reader work hard, Thomas is also
making his sister work hard. Then we have this hilarious thing,
you know, she says Thomas isn't going to isn't prepared
to say anymore. Topaz, of course, is always delighted to
air her views, but I hardly find them helpful. Her
latest contributions are cosmic significance and spherical profundity, which is

(45:04):
so funny. Again, she's a little airy dairy. She's always
being sort of histrionic. She speaks in a lower voice
because she wants to sound sort of dramatic. She's such
a great character. But then on page three thirty seven
we have a bit more about this text, and now
it is Simon who is speaking. It's another male figure
who is explaining this to her, which is all very like,
you know, patriarchal, But there you have it so importantly

(45:26):
toward the end here when Simon is talking with her,
he's at one point he talks about how this idea
of enigma is important and that Cassandra's father had a
very important forerunner. And in my mind I was like, oh,
we're obviously talking about James Joyce, But in fact Simon
was talking about God and the mystery and the enigma
of the universe and how it was created and how
we are supposed to interpret it. And Sandra says this,

(45:50):
Cassandra were God. Sandra. Wow, Sandra is not the same
name as Cassandra. So at the bottom of three thirty
six he says God made the universe an enigma, and
she says, and very confusing it's been for everybody. I
don't see why father had to copy him. Simon said
he thought every creative artist did, and that perhaps every
human being was potentially creative. I think one of the

(46:13):
things your father is after is to stimulate that potential creativeness,
to make those who study his work share in its
actual creation. So that is literally the definition of experimental
literature if you think of any of the modernist writers.
So certainly the poets t. S. Eliot. Poetry in general
makes the reader work a little harder, but other writers,

(46:34):
like Virginia Woolf or like Faulkner in the United States,
it can be very satisfying. Sometimes it can be very
opaque and difficult to be a reader who is also
helping in the creation, who is assisting, and who is
sort of co creating with a writer. And then Simon
says a little further down, I think your father believes
that the interests so many people take in puzzles and problems,

(46:56):
which often starts in earliest childhood, represents more than a
mere desier desire for recreation, that it may even derive
from man's eternal curiosity about his origin. So again here's
Simon going way back before Joyce, all the way to
the origin of mankind. Anyway, it makes use of certain
faculties for progressive, cumulative search, which no other mental exercise does.

(47:20):
Your father wants to communicate his ideas through those faculties.
I asked him to repeat it slowly, and suddenly I saw, Oh,
I saw absolutely. So then she goes on to ask
some questions about sort of how it works, and interestingly
there's a lot of talk then about crossword puzzles and puzzles,
and what I loved about that was kind of the
ludic nature of ludic just meaning playful and sort of childlike.

(47:44):
And this has been some long digression about what the
father is up to, but I do think it's really
important to look at what's happening with all of this
stuff with Jacob wrestling is we're meant to read it,
I think, as a counterpoint to the novel that is
in our hands. So in many ways, when she's doing
all of this is thinking about writing, and really the
book is you know, her sort of dry run and

(48:04):
her sort of teaching herself how to write, which, oh
my gosh, I mean, I wish this is like what
my learning to write ended up being. But she's speaking
here about this idea of the reader having to take part,
but also that that can be a very playful exercise.
It can be very much you know, like completing a
crossword puzzle. It can be very simple. In some ways,

(48:25):
you have to think about it a little bit, and frankly,
this is not a novel that you have to really
think a lot about, but it is a novel that
if you dig a little deeper, they are all sorts
of really important rewards. And she is making some very
big statements about choices and about the idea of being
independent or the idea of spending your life really attached

(48:46):
to someone else. They are all sorts of really large
philosophical questions that have a lot to do with art.
There's the whole part of the book that has to
do with Lyda Fox Cotton, who is this kind of
innovative photographer. There's a lot of art making that's happening.
I mean, in some ways Cassandra's Midsummer Night writes are
a form of art. We have lots of paintings being

(49:07):
done by mc morris of Topaz, So we have all
of these different forms of art that are happening with photography, painting, dance.
In some ways, we have tons of music. I wish
I really knew a lot about music, because we could
talk for hours about the music in this book. We
do not have the time for that. But there is
all of these different questions about art and its role,

(49:29):
and I really appreciate the way that at the heart
of it we have this challenging text that we don't
have to actually read, but that is speaking to all
of the different ways that the actual novel itself is
achieving what we as readers want. So we're only going
to touch very briefly on a couple of the things
about the Americans in the novel. I mean, I was
obviously reading this with an ear toward that because I

(49:50):
am American and I'm always so fascinated to see how
we are portrayed. I'm worried frankly that often it's not great.
But in this case, what happens often is that the
the presence of Neil, who is the American in the book,
it really allows Cassandra to see He'll either say something,
or he'll make an observation, or he'll show her something

(50:10):
that he is seeing, and it allows her to see
England in a completely different way. So one of the
best things about having someone who is not from England
is that it allows for a different perspective. So she's
doing that thing she promised at the beginning where she's
giving us this completely different point of view, which is
really enlightening. In fact, she articulates this like very explicitly.

(50:31):
At one point she's talking about Neil. One thing he
said was that he could never get used to the
miracle of the long English twilight. It had never struck
me before that we have long twilights. Americans do seem
to say things which make the English notice England so
it's really beautiful. It's one of the things they say
is that at one point that everything that's so beautiful

(50:53):
in England is very melancholy, which is one of these
other sort of counterpoints, one of these elements of this
work that make it not just seem like kind of
a trifle and it's really beautiful. The way that she
underscores that. At one point she says that Americans seemed
more affectionate. At a different point, she's talking about essentially
the wealth of Americans and all their consumerism and how

(51:14):
all of them must have gramophones and kind of their
technological advancement. There's also a hilarious part where Neil is
doing a barbecue for them, and there she talks about
Bereer rabbit, which is a very problematic American text. But
she talked about how he did a barbecue and how
she had always wondered and didn't know what that was,
and then he did it, and she said that the

(51:34):
steak was burnt on the outside and raw on the inside,
but that it was delicious, which I thought was just
a very excellent description of how an American might cook meat,
which would be very different from the way that an
English person in nineteen forty eight would be cooking her meat.
So we're going to take a quick look here at
some descriptions of the dog, and then we're going to

(51:54):
close by looking at some of the beautiful prose and
specifically the very close of the novel. So I did
not mention this before, and I should have. Hellowey is
an Abalard are the names of the dog and the cat.
It's a bull terrier, which I have to say is
not my favorite kind of dog. I have very strong
feelings about dog breeds, and I really like actually a
lot of them. That is like one of my least favorites.

(52:17):
It's probably because of that really weird and like very
like bestiality heavy kind of advertisement where I think the
dog was called like bud or something, but it was
like it was like for Budweiser, and the dog was
a bull terrier, and like women in like gross like
skimpy bathing suits. I mean, the bathing suits were not
that gross, but like their use of skimpy bathing suits

(52:38):
was gross in the advertising campaign. But they're all kind
of like falling all over this dog. It's like so bizarre.
If you're on YouTube, I will pop an image of
it up there for you. It's honestly so odd that
now I think I'm maybe misremembering it, but I'm fairly certain.
I mean, I don't think I would dream something like
that up. It's so odd. But so we have this
bull terrier and he that is the girl. For some reason,

(53:00):
I also because I knew it was a bull terrier,
I kept conceiving her Heloise as a male. Those dogs
all seem kind of male to me, which is weird.
Then Abialard is the cat. So Halloweys and Abalard are
a very important French play. I think it's really old,
like from like the twelve hundreds or something, maybe the
fourteen hundreds, but you know, really really old text and

(53:21):
it's epistolary, so it's letters back and forth, and I
think it's Persian in origin, but it's these two lovers.
It was a nun and her teacher, and they fall
in love with each other and they have some sort
of affair. I mean, it's very not great in some ways,
but it is this kind of archetypal unrequited love affair story.
And it is significant that these young people, that these

(53:43):
young women have these animals who are named after this
archetypal romantic pair. So I want to read on page
two oh six, and every time we are looking at
specific pieces of the prose, were also, of course just
enjoying how absolutely beautiful this pro is. So on two
oh six we have this. We slept for hours. I

(54:05):
don't think I ever slept so long in the daytime.
I felt terribly guilty when I woke up and found
it was nearly four o'clock. Hell thumbed her tail as
if I had just come back from somewhere, and Ab
gave us a look as if he had never seen
either of us before in his life, which just killed me.
I mean, that is so like dog versus cat. You
know that the dog is so happy to see you
waking up and the cat literally is looking at you like,

(54:27):
oh my god, who are these people who are suddenly
in my space? It's just such an efficient and economic
and really fun way to capture the essence of like
dog versus cat. Here, So Helloise whose name they call
her Hell, and Hell ends up being this ends up
sounding a couple of times like expletives. So it adds
to this kind of jokey kind of slapstish slapstick kind

(54:48):
of punny humor. But it always works for me. So
I also want to take another look at when we
see the dog Hellowise. In particular, this is when Cassandra
is out in it sort of in the woods by herself,
and then someone, a gentleman, arrives Cassandra a long drawn
out call. This time I knew it was a man's voice,

(55:09):
but I still couldn't recognize it. I was sure it
wasn't father's or Steven's or Thomas's. It was a voice
that had never called me before. Here I am, I
called back, who is it? Someone was moving through the
mist crossing the bridge. Hellowise came racing ahead, very pleased
with herself. So we have so much important stuff here.
I mean, she's in the woods, she's hearing this calling,

(55:30):
and then someone's coming across a bridge, which is very
important symbolically in terms of bridging worlds. It's also a
liminal space. So anytime you have a space that has
to do with travel or transition, it often means that
a character might be transitioning or not in certain ways.
So we have this kind of heady like somewhat it's
not tense, but you know, it's like this kind of

(55:51):
important moment. And then this idea of Hellowe's racing ahead,
being very pleased with herself. We have this leavening of
the thing that is so good a description of Hellowaise
I want to look at really is underscoring this idea.
Especially we're a little later in the book. This is
page two fifty seven. We're really underscoring this concept of
her as like a romantic and in fact a sexualized creature,

(56:13):
not in the way that the Budweiser added. So on
two fifty seven we have this, Oh, it is so
hot in this room. I daren't open the window wide
in case Hellowise takes a flying leap out of it.
One of her suitors, the Sheep dog from four Stones
is prowling around the castle. Hellowise, darling, he would be
a most unsuitable match. I wonder if he has gone. No,

(56:36):
he hasn't. There are two dogs now, just the other
side of the moat. I feel terribly sorry for lovelorn dogs.
I can't say Hellowise is minding it much, though she
is looking rather smug. So this is so interesting. I mean,
picking apart these paragraphs is really helping me understand why
this book is so rich, because there is so much

(56:57):
happening here. So I love the fact that Cassandra is
talking talking about this unsuitable match. So one of the
things that happens in the book is is this very
classiest thing where her father is concerned that maybe Cassandra
is is, you know, sort of making a match with
someone who is a lower class than them. I don't
want to spoil anything, which is highly problematic, obviously in
very classiest ways. But we do have this question of

(57:19):
suitable matches. It's obviously, like you know, looming fairly large
throughout the book. So what we have in the end
here is she's kind of projecting that onto Hellois. And
then importantly we have outside you know, the windows so
far away across the moat. Here we have not just
the one dog, but then the two dogs. So of
course we should think of Simon and Neil as these

(57:39):
two suitors. And then this kind of compassion that she
has for love lorn dogs really speaks to the fact
that the decision that she makes is maybe going to
end up leaving several I'm trying not to spoil here,
at least more than one love lorn man. That's actually
a good segue to that. When I mentioned before that

(58:02):
we're going to talk about the elements that are slightly problematic,
it's actually kind of a small amount of things. So
we have this class issue, but in many ways there's
a lot of mobility for Stephen, and we have a
lot of kind of crossing of age and of class
lines ultimately, maybe not with Cassandra and Stephen, but with
other people. So maybe in some ways we can talk

(58:24):
about this book not as being classist but also speaking
you know, largely because of the war, both the First
World War and the Second that everything got there's enough
turmoil in English society that things are getting kind of
looser in terms of a lot of that rigid social
stuff I mentioned something about race. So Leita Fox Cotton
has a giant photograph, like this huge, big, giant photograph

(58:46):
of a black man and he's naked, and when they
refer to to this this image, they say her negro.
So you have this sense it's not great, and in
fact it's very fetishizing in lots of ways, But I
don't want to give the impression, you know that there's
sort of look over racism throughout the book. There's also
that moment where mort Maine, the father of Cassandra, is

(59:08):
sort of violent with her, and that is not really
remarked upon, Like it seems kind of fine for Cassandra
not to mention the fact that earlier in the book
he had brandished a cake knife at his wife and
it was a violent enough situation that he had to
spend some time in prison. There is also another time
when an unexpected kiss happens for Cassandra, and it is
someone who is very committed to a monogamous relationship with

(59:30):
someone else, and that is, I think, in many ways
to be expected in this kind of a novel. But
he's someone who's older and she's younger. Like my antennae
were vibrating, a little bit with this idea of like
whether or not this was kind of a sexual assault,
sort of a situation. So in thinking about these problematic areas,
I think it's I'm going to call it problematic light.

(59:52):
There's not a ton here to be concerned about, and
in fact, for a book that is written in nineteen
forty eight, there's relatively little. So we're going to by
taking a look at the prose at the very end
of the book. So if you are someone who has
not yet read the book, you might not want to
listen to this last part. And I'll tell you right now,
I'm going to read this, I'm going to talk a
little bit about it, but I'm not going to say

(01:00:13):
anything at the end that you're going to really miss.
So I can say right now, in fact, what I
usually do at the end, which is thank you for
tuning in and happy reading. For those of you who
have read the book and want to dig into the
end and see why this prose is so great, we
will move on. Okay, great to think now I can speak,
you know, with abandon. I have to say, as usual,
I was not paying attention to the plot, and my

(01:00:35):
shitty memory means that I had totally forgotten what happened.
And when they are going and looking for Rose and
then they hear Neil's voice in the inn where Rose
is staying, I was shook. I thought that was so
well earned. I thought it was like so in an
ending of a book, if something is well earned, what
should happen is the reader should be shook. But then

(01:00:56):
the reader should be like, oh my god, obviously, and
that is exactly what happened. I was like, duh, all
of this kind of tension between them and how like
Neil hates her and all of that kind of stuff.
So should have been pointing me toward the fact that
there was a lot of sexual energy. And I love
the way that Dotie Smith spells it out and pinpoints
the minute, like way back at the beginning of the book,

(01:01:17):
when they have this kind of antique time with you know,
she's in a bear coat and she's running away and
they think she's an actual bear and all this stuff
is happening. But to know that the sort of the
sparks were there in the very beginning makes so much sense.
It's such a deft ending. And then, of course, if
you are me and you want a romantic ending you're

(01:01:38):
then rooting for Simon and Cassandra, and the way that
Dotie Smith handles it is so excellent. So we're going
to take a look at that now on page three, p.
Forty one, we're like last three pages of the book.
At last, he said, this is Simon and Cassandra together.
At last, he said, I wish I could take you
to America with me. Would you like to come? For

(01:02:01):
a second, I thought it was just a joking remark,
but he asked me again, would you Cassandra. Then, something
about the way he spoke my name made me sure
that if I said yes, he would ask me to
marry him. And I couldn't do it, though I don't
think I fully knew why until now. Then a little
further down, I didn't make any mistake. I know that

(01:02:24):
when he nearly asked me to marry him, it was
only an impulse, just as it was when he kissed
me on Midsummer Eve, a mixture of liking me very
much and longing for Rose. So what's excellent about that
is that we have Smith pulling back a little bit.
It's not this super tidy thing where you know one
brother is in love with one sister, and then they
can kind of and the other is in love with

(01:02:45):
the other, and they can swap sisters, and like it's
very neatly going to happen, and you'll have a double marriage.
Like she's noting here that there is a lot of
energy and attraction between them, but that probably Simon is
still in love with Rose. What's beautiful about that, though,
is that we have a night enough of his attraction
and enough of his admiration and his appreciation of how

(01:03:05):
Cassandra is this unique, interesting, like wacky person that we
don't at all feel like Cassandra is diminished, even though
like she would have gotten the proposal, but she understands
that he is still in fact in love with Rose,
which is more realistic. So then she has this very
neat kind of synopsis and it is so excellent. I mean,
Smith here is doing the opposite of Jacob Wrestling in

(01:03:28):
that she's kind of laying the whole thing out for
us in a way that is very satisfying. She says this,
she's talking about Simon's love for Rose. It is part
of a follow my Leader game of second Best. We
have all been playing Rose with Simon, Simon with me
me with Stephen, and Stephen, I suppose, with that detestable
Lyda Fox Cotton. It isn't a very good game. The

(01:03:51):
people you play it with are apt to get hurt.
Perhaps even Lyda has, though I can't say the thought
of her harrows me much. So then a little further down,
the daylight is going I can hardly see what I
am writing, and my fingers are cold. There is only
one more page left in my beautiful blue leather manuscript book,
but that is as much as I shall need. I

(01:04:12):
don't intend to go on with this journal. I have
grown out of wanting to write about myself. I only
began today out of a sense of duty. I felt
I ought to finish Rose's story off tidily. I seem
to have finished my own off, too, which I didn't
quite bargain for. So this is such a lovely meta moment.
Here we have this idea that she's coming to the

(01:04:33):
end of the three journals that she has been keeping,
and in a very tidy way, she's also coming to
the end of the story. And in some ways that
is a melancholy statement by her, because she's still very
much in love with Simon. So then down a little bit.
It isn't a bit of use my pretending I'm not
crying because I am pause to mop up better. Now

(01:04:54):
there's that immediacy. It's so good. Perhaps it would really
be rather dull to be married, settled for life, Liar,
it would be heaven. Only half a page left, now
shall I fill it with? I love you, I love you,
I love you, like father's page of cats on the mat. No,
even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.

(01:05:15):
There is light down in the castle kitchen tonight. I
shall have my bath in front of the fire with
Simon's gramophone playing Topaz has it on now? Much too
loud to bring father back to earth in time for tea,
But it sounds beautiful from this distance. She is playing
the Bearsus from Stravinsky's The Firebird. It seems to say,
what shall I do? Where shall I go? You will

(01:05:38):
go into tea, my girl, and a much better tea
than you would have come by this time last year.
A mist is rolling over the fields. Why is summer
miss romantic? An autumn mist just sad? There was mist
on Midsummer Eve when we drove into the dawn. He
said he would come back only the margin left to
right on Now I love you, I love you you.

(01:06:01):
So in many ways we have this incredible ending where
it is like somewhat ambivalent. We have this idea that
she knows she shouldn't marry Simon, although she's in love
with him. And we have this idea that she has
made this giant arc, that she has really evolved in
many different ways, although she is very beautifully in the
same place. But what has happened is she has finished

(01:06:23):
writing this book that we are holding in our hands,
and you have a sense that she is ready to
keep writing. When she says she doesn't need to write
about herself anymore, she's speaking to the idea of writing
more in the future. But what she is delivering is
something that's a bit more forlorn, a bit more unclear,
and in some ways, I think you can read that
as a result of the war. This is a book

(01:06:43):
that is optimistic and inspirational in lots of ways, but
it's also sort of realistic in the sense that she
understands she can't have what she really wants, but the
most beautiful thing. And I think this is the reason
why the BBC called it such an inspiring novel, is
that she's done so much thinking about writing and so
much thinking about creation that we understand that she's going

(01:07:05):
to go on and do all sorts of things that
are going to be very satisfying for her. I think
it's just such an artful ending. So, speaking of artful endings,
I might just leave it right there, and I'll say
it again to all of you who have hung on
until this point. I really appreciate you tuning in. I
hope you loved this book as much as I did,
and I hope you come back soon to listen to
a lecture on something else. If you haven't read it,

(01:07:27):
it sounds interesting to check out Cassandra at the wedding.
So good, Okay, thank you so much for tuning in.
Happy reading,