The dirtiest house Sophie has ever seen was Howl’s moving castle. Sophie was the cleaning granny in this castle. She was actually 17 years old, but she was under a spell that made her a 80 years old granny. Even if she was not under the spell, she was an old woman inside, who confined herself in her to-inherit-hat-shop, watching all the interesting things on the street through window.
Sometimes, she admired the interesting life that never happened to her. She thought:
“Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else.”
Most of the time, she tried to be peace with herself. One time she went out and felt overwhelmed. She said:
“What made me think I wanted life to be interesting? I’d be far too scared.”
That was before she worked as cleaning granny at Howl’s moving castle.
Howl is a brilliant talented wizard in the land of Ingary. Kind hearted, young, gifted and charming wizard Howl had a habit which caused him trouble and caused his friends headache. The habit was he was always after ladies. He even dare to pursue and to jilt the witch of the waste – the evil witch.
“He’s only interested until the girl falls in love with him. Then he can’t be bothered with her.”
Calcifer said, the fire demon and the good friend of Howl.
One day, Sophie found out Howl was after her sister, she worried about her sister would fall into the trap. She wanted to warn her sister about Howl’s habit, anyhow no chance at all. She was upset.
“I suppose there’s no chance,” she asked hopelessly, “that Howl could be properly in love this time?”
“I was afraid you’d start thinking like that.” Michael said. “But you’d be deceiving yourself … “
Michael was Howl’s apprentice. Calcifer, Michael and Sophie were living in the moving castle. Michael explained how would the sign look like if Howl is properly in love.
“Did he (Howl) forget to spend at least an hour in the bathroom this morning?” Michael asked.
“He was in there two hours,” said Calcifer, “putting spells on his face. Vain fool!”
“There you are, then,” said Michael.
“The day Howl forgets to do that will be the day I believe he’s really in love and not before.”
Anyway, Sophie’s sister never fall for Howl. No worry.
Howl another habit was to destroy his own reputation by creating and spreading rumors in order to avoid responsibilities or uncomfortable situation. With all his might Howl was denying the task from the king to find his royal brother. A dangerous task, which involved the evil witch of the waste. Howl asked Sophie to pretend to be his mother to talk to the king about how incapable was Howl for the task. He was also honest with his flaw. He said,
“I’m a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I’m not doing it!”
Coward like Howl risked breaking his neck came to territory of the witch of the waste to rescue Sophie. And you know what?
Howl had not bothered to shave or tidy his hair … …
In other word, he forgot to spend two hours in bathroom!
“I want it dirty, thank you!”
Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle.