Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't like the look of? It is half real and half pretence — and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet any eligible young men. They just . . . wonder. And if any family ever had need of wonderment, it is ours. But only as regards Rose. I have asked myself if I am doing any personal wondering and in my deepest heart I am not. I would rather die than marry either of those quite nice young men.

Nonsense! I'd rather marry both of them than die. But it has come to me, sitting here in the barn feeling very full of cold rice, that there is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means. Now I come to think of it, I am judging from books mostly, for I don't know any girls except Rose and Topaz. But some characters in books are very real — Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage. I wonder if Rose is? I must certainly try to make her before she gets involved in anything. Fortunately, I am not ignorant in such matters — no stepchild of Topaz's could be. I know all about the facts of life. And I don't think much of them.

Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
© 1948 by Dorothy Gladys Beesley. All rights reserved.

Posted 14 April 1996

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