![]() ![]() Angry that novelist Elizabeth Bowen was overlooked in favor of Gibbons for the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, Virginia Woolf wrote, “Who is she? What is this book?” Smith’s novel was out of print in the United States for many years. Published in 19, respectively, Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture the Castle share a checkered history that does not include an extensive critical legacy. Recently I discovered Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm and Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle, which are very light and contain some of the most fascinating commentary on pre-and-post-WWII gender roles that I’ve encountered, lending further credence to her reassurance. My tastes have remained stubbornly popular, drifting towards the romantic, charming, and funny as much as the serious and consciously literary, so I think of what she said often. “Just because something is light,” she said, “doesn’t mean it isn’t good.” I still remember my mom’s response when I blurted these half-formed anxieties to her. They had depth! They absolutely could not be light, or the self-satisfaction I got from reading them, patting myself on the back for enjoying serious literature, would be completely ruined. ![]() ![]() Austen was romantic, of course, but her novels were important. ![]() When I was about thirteen, and even more insecure about my literary tastes than I am now, I got into a conversation with someone who referred to Jane Austen as “light.” I was horrified. ![]()
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