Capturing Castles

"A few hours ago, when I wrote that I could never mean anything to him, such a chance would have seemed heaven on Earth. And surely I could give him... a sort of contentment?

That isn't enough to give. Not for the giver." -- Dodie Smith

I just finished reading my favorite book, Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, for the... Nth time, where N equals anything between a dozen and three dozen. I first picked up the novel during the sixth grade when my school imposed a mandatory half-hour-a-day reading period; it had been collecting dust in my locker for six months, so I decided to give it a try.

A hundred pages in, I thought it was an intriguing enough story. The narrator -- a mature, intelligent, hopeful 17 year-old named Cassandra -- lives in poverty in a derelict castle in the English countryside. Her journal entries (i.e. the text of the novel) speak of the castle, her eccentric family, her beautiful yet stone-dumb sister, and how all of their lives change when two American brothers become their landlords. Simon Cotton, the elder brother, soon establishes himself as Cassandra's intellectual equal and the only person alive who truly understands the way her mind works. Cassandra falls deeply in love with Simon... then he proposes marriage to her sister.

The novel, since it poses as Cassandra's journal, chronicles her interactions with Simon in minute detail, from their first meeting to their final touch. As a result, I too fell in love with Simon Cotton. Together, Cassandra and I dissected his words, thrilled in his kisses, mourned his impending nuptials, resented his fiancee, and dared to hope when the wedding was called off. Then, in the book's last few pages, Simon decided to return to America. I wept as he visited Cassandra for the last time... and then I cheered out loud when he asked her to come to America with him.

Then Cassandra said no and let Simon walk out of her life forever. Why? She recognized that he didn't love her in return and felt that both of them would be selling themselves short by ending up together.

For the next five years of my life, I thought Cassandra was an effing idiot. She found someone who saw the world the exact same way she did and she threw it away out of ridiculous sentimentality! My feelings were understandable, too; after all, I spent junior high and the first half of high school surrounded by immature idiot boys who had nothing in common with me. Ever finding a man as good for me as Simon is for Cassandra seemed like a close to impossible wish, so finding one and then letting him go seemed like downright lunacy.

Between then and my seventeenth birthday, I grew up a little. I learned more about how to critically read and analyze literature, I fell in love a few times only to later recognize it as mere infatuation, and I met a few men who understood my mind and my jokes. Consequently, when I re-read the novel during my senior year of high school, I adopted a new interpretation of the ending. Cassandra rejected Simon because she recognized that she may be in lust instead of in love and she didn't want to pledge her life to an emotion she may grow out of feeling.

I'm now twenty-three years old. In the last seven years, I've learned the difference between love and lust and I've said my fair share of goodbyes. I've also met men as good for me -- and maybe better for me -- as Simon is for Cassandra. I finished I Capture the Castle this morning and cried over the last ten pages just as I always have, but for the first time, I understood why Cassandra rejected Simon. Her feelings for Simon weren't lust and they weren't a crush; when you truly, honestly love someone, you want the best for them even when the best isn't you. More importantly, though, I now understand that Cassandra rejected Simon because she wanted the best for herself. She wanted to spend her life with someone who understood her AND loved her, and honestly, that's the best any of us can ever hope for. This morning, for the first time in N readings, I would have rejected Simon too.