Smith never lets us forget the impracticality that is largely responsible for the Mortmains' straitened circumstances. We're never asked to confuse the plight of the Mortmains -- who belong to that odd class of intelligent and cultured people who are also unskilled and unemployable -- with the desperation of the truly poor. Smith manages the tricky task of detailing those circumstances (the worn-out clothes, the furniture sold off bit by bit, the meager meals, the hoarded candles that provide the only light) without breaking the romance of her premise. But we also know that Cassandra's youth makes this life easier for her to take. Her ability to savor a hot brick warming her bed or an unexpected egg for supper is tied up with her discovery of her burgeoning powers of description. Smith wants to make us share Cassandra's love for this life, to stir us into recognizing her as a heroine embarking on an adventure.

There's nothing foolish about Cassandra, as there is about Rose, who, while not unlikable, is vain and given to fits of drama. ("For some time now," she announces near the start, "I've been considering selling myself. If necessary, I shall go on the streets.") But Rose also has a practical side, which is no less vital for beginning in self-interest. It's understandable that she would hate never being warm enough or full enough. But what's most wounding to her comes from her desire to possess things -- for instance, being unable (like Katharine Hepburn in "Alice Adams") to afford a new dress in which to receive potential suitors. "If you're really taken with the idea of selling yourself," Topaz tells Rose afterward, "you'd better choose a wealthy man and marry him respectably." And soon Rose gets the chance, when two rich American brothers arrive in England to become their new landlords.

What follows is, of course, about how true love and sisterly love right themselves after stumbling over the obstacles in their course. But instead of merely treating Rose as an avaricious schemer who needs to be punished, Smith is daring enough to let Rose justify her intention of marrying for money. "Oh darling," Rose writes her sister, "do you remember how we stood watching that woman buying a whole dozen pairs of silk stockings and you said we were like cats making longing noises for birds? I think it was that moment when I decided I would do anything, anything, to stop being so horribly poor." Despite that honesty, Rose is still kidding herself at this point: "It's so wonderful that I can be in love with Simon as well as everything else." But she is unrepentant even when Cassandra forces her to face the fact that she doesn't really love Simon. "No. Isn't a pity?" she says calmly, plainly. Only when Cassandra accuses her of selfishness is her composure ruffled: "You talk as if I were doing it all for myself," she says. "Do you know what my last thoughts have been, lying here night after night? 'Well, at least they've had enough to eat at the castle today.'" Rose has reasons for not loving her young man -- for one, his emotional neediness, which repels her. But Smith, being a clever popular novelist, finds a way to give the girls both love and money. (Withholding either would be breaking faith with her readers.)

Yet her evenhanded attitude toward Rose is still startling, because the intersection of money and sex is a topic that has never lost its power to raise hackles. I don't know how many times I've heard people try to smooth over Madonna's "Material Girl" by claiming it was a satire on the greed of the Reagan '80s. And none of the disapproving reviews of Adrian Lyne's "Indecent Proposal" acknowledged that this glitzy, terrible movie was a hit because its admission that love isn't always enough touched a nerve. Rose's truest descendant may be the woman in Cyndi Lauper's 1984 cover of the Brains' new-wave hit "Money Changes Everything." Lauper switched the song from the perspective of a man whose girlfriend has left him for a rich suitor to that of the girlfriend herself, explaining to her lover that she's leaving him because he can't give her the things she wants. The mixture of self-recrimination and plain-spokenness in the performance is indelible and chilling. "No one can judge me harshly as I judge myself," the singer is saying. "No one can understand the choice I've made. Walk a mile in my Blahniks." The attitude of that performance is, at least in part, a reaction against the stereotype of the heartless gold digger and the femme fatale, male constructs that identify as evil the same unemotional logic men often criticize women for lacking.

Given all that baggage, it may seem strange to characterize "I Capture the Castle" as lovely and enchanting and deserving of all the other similar adjectives generally accorded it. Rose's engagement of convenience is merely the strongest in a series of incidents that opens Cassandra's eyes to the imperfect nature of romance and to the havoc that desire, material as well as sexual, can play with it. "I Capture the Castle" is an example of the sometimes deft way pop culture dealt with feminist issues in the years before feminism. What's wonderful about it, though, isn't restricted to issues of sex. This coming-of-age novel is too canny to equate the changes and compromises of growing up with the corruption of the world. Smith makes you fall in love with her young heroine's voice, and then every time Cassandra has to confront the fact of people she loves making choices she had never imagined possible, Smith allows her to find the strength to assimilate this new information without growing judgmental or scared. Cassandra learns what's worth settling for and what isn't. As the title promises, she sees the home she loves so much ultimately strengthened and stabilized. But the greater gift her creator gives her is a ticket to the world outside.

Recent Stories