Yesterday my daughter was writing quotations from
Howl’s Moving Castle (the book, not the movie) to post on the pantry quotation
wall. She told me that thinking about Sophie, the main character, inspired her
to clean her room. That, in turn, inspired me
to think of many things: cleaning, the touches of everyday life in books, and
the way fictional characters motivate us to imitate them.
Sophie Hatter certainly does do a lot of cleaning
in this book. She cleans remorselessly.
(I love that phrase.) The dirt and spiderwebs don’t stand a chance. Nor does
Michael.
“I wish you’d
stop,” said Michael, sitting on the stairs out of her way. (p.43)
She doesn’t necessarily do her cleaning in the
right order, however.
[Calcifer] crackled
with mean laughter when Sophie discovered that soot had got all over the room
and she had to clean it all again. That was Sophie’s trouble. She was
remorseless, but she lacked method. But there was this method to her
remorselessness: she calculated that she could not clean this thoroughly
without sooner or later coming across Howl’s hidden hoard… (p.44)
The word “method” also reminds me of a story my
mother tells, about my grandmere coming to visit us in Geneva when I was a
toddler and being disturbed by my mother’s housekeeping. “You have no method!”
she complained. Apparently I inherited this lack and so have something in common with Sophie.
There are other lovely details in the book, like
the description of the bathroom before Sophie gets to cleaning.
Sophie winced from
the toilet, flinched at the color of the bath, recoiled from green weed growing
in the shower, and quite easily avoided looking at her shriveled shape in the
mirrors because the glass was plastered with blobs and runnels of nameless substances.
The nameless substances themselves were crowded onto a very large shelf over
the bath. (p.33)
This is one of the few areas in which I must say
the movie did a good job. They really made that bathroom look terrible. Some years ago I commented on Facebook that M had gotten face paints for her birthday, and our bathroom sink looked like it belonged in Howl's Moving Castle. I wish very much that I had taken a photo, but apparently I didn't.
The bathroom is important, given Howl’s vanity.
Every time I pass our bathroom right after M takes a shower, I think of Howl
emerging from the bathroom in a cloud of hyacinth-scented steam. Of course, in
our house it’s more likely to be lavender, or frankincense-citrus, or some
other really interesting Zum soap combination.
I said earlier that I was thinking about the way
fictional characters inspire imitation. It’s obvious with kids and cartoon
heroes, but does it stop there? When I was taking t’ai chi classes, I sometimes
imagined myself as a movie ninja, to feel that state of relaxed alertness that
movie ninjas display. I want to deduce like Sherlock Holmes, read tracks like
Jim Chee, maybe even quote poetry like Inspector Gamache. I’d like to sing like
Aza of Fairest, or recite epics like Meryl
of The Two Princesses of Bamarre. And
I mean not just that I’d like to be good
at it, the way they are, but that when I read those books, singing with others
and reciting poetry suddenly seem like appealing activities. Even if I’m not particularly good at them.
I can’t conclude a post about Howl’s Moving Castle without a word about the movie. The movie is
totally unlike the book. It is
visually amazing and having Sophie’s appearance continually change is clever,
but the characters are very different and so is the plot. Whether you liked the
movie or not, consider reading Howl’s
Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Just remember—the castle doesn’t look
anything like the mechanical contrivance of the movie.
Side note: when did the English start saying
“different to” instead of “different from”? I’m sure the British-authored books
I read when I was young didn’t do this. I meant to look for an example in this
book while I was re-reading it, but I got too caught up in the story.
Second side note: I have included quotations,
which I think counts as Fair Use since this is sort of a review of the book and
sort of educational (if you stretch the point a bit.) And everyone quotes
little bits of this and that on the internet—not that that really proves anything.
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