But, is Casey Really Margaret?!

I think so. I want to say, “yes, she is,” but “I think so” is about as definite as I can be because the movie changed the story from the original book.

Whether or not Casey is actually Margaret, the lost heir to Candleshoe, is the burning question everyone is left with after watching the Disney movie Candleshoe. The movie deliberately left Casey’s true identity unresolved at the end, probably because they wanted to have the people at Candleshoe decide to accept her into their family on her own merits, not just because they had to because she’s the heir to the place. In the beginning, the audience is told that missing heir of Candleshoe, Margaret, was kidnapped as a young child by her own father, apparently in some kind of marital/custody dispute, and that she disappeared after his death in a car accident and has not been located although attempts to find her were made in the ten years that have passed since her disappearance. Casey is a teenage girl who was apparently an abandoned child with an unknown past and no memory of her early life who bears an odd resemblance to Margaret, including a couple of distinctive scars that are like ones Margaret was known to have. She is recruited as by con artist to play the part of Margaret, returning to Candleshoe as the lost heiress in order to gain access to the house and find a hidden treasure. Although Casey initially came to Candleshoe under false pretenses as part of a con with the promise of a share of the Candleshoe treasure and a red Ferrari as her payment, she eventually becomes fond of the people there and decides that she can’t let them be cheated by the real villain. Casey proves herself to be part of the Candleshoe family through her loyalty to them, and in the end, they would accept her whether she really was Margaret or not. It’s a nice sentiment, but viewers still have the urge to ask who Casey really is.

Casey is legitimately an orphan or abandoned child, found at about the right time and the right age and in the right place to really be Margaret. She has no memory at all of her early childhood, her parents, or where she came from, and she also bears some telltale scars that match ones that young Margaret was known to have. That’s what we’re told about Casey. Casey’s history is never explained in detail in the movie (we never find out under what circumstances she was found and entered into the Los Angeles foster care system), but from what we do know, her history meshes well enough with Margaret’s known past that it would seem plausible for her to actually be Margaret. Is she really Margaret, and Harry Bundage, the con man, just persuaded her that she was only pretending in order to use her for his own ends? Or, is the real Margaret still out there somewhere? If Casey actually is Margaret, did she lose her memory in the car crash that killed her father, or did he abandon her somewhere before his death, even though he had kidnapped her from her mother and took her to a completely different country?

When Harry Bundage is briefing Casey about Margaret’s background, he poses the theory that Margaret was in the car when her father crashed it and that she may have wandered off in a state of shock after the accident. That explanation might be partly for the benefit of the viewers, helping to explain how Casey could be Marget and not remember it. A young child suffering from shock might be unable to tell anyone who she was or what had happened to her. An accident may even have left some bruising that might have obscured the telltale scars that could have identified her, but again, the matter is never fully settled, and we just don’t know enough of Casey’s background to make a full connection. There are enough pieces to make it possible, maybe even probable, but nothing that definitively settles the matter.

In the final scene of the movie, Casey asks Margaret’s grandmother what will happen if Margaret is ever really found and comes home, and the grandmother says cryptically that maybe she already has. It’s a brief hint that the grandmother thinks Casey might really be her kidnapped granddaughter, even though she accepts that Casey was lying to her earlier about things she said she remembered and knows that Casey herself thought that she was just an imposter. Casey does have those telltale scars, and it does seem like quite a coincidence that two random girls of the same age and similar circumstances would have identical sets of scars. However, the movie stops short of declaring that Casey really was Margaret all along, and the unanswered questions still rankle viewers. So, some of us turned to the original book to get more detail, but it turns out that it doesn’t completely help.

As I said, the original book was different from the movie. Not only was the child hero in the book a boy instead of a girl, he wasn’t kidnapped and taken to America the way that Margaret was. In the book, Jay definitely knows who his mother was, and it’s the question of who his father was that establishes his identity as the heir to Candleshoe. It turns out that Jay’s father was the nephew of the lady of Candleshoe, making her his great-aunt rather than his grandmother. Her nephew had been a ne’er-do-well, and although his family didn’t know it, he had married an American woman before his death. He died not too long after the marriage, but by that point, he had fathered Jay. Jay’s mother knew about her husband’s family, but she wasn’t sure yet whether or not she wanted to tell them about Jay. She took the job as housekeeper so she could observe the family and decide whether or not to reveal their relationship. Unfortunately, she died in an accident before she made up her mind. By the end of the book, Jay’s identity is established, and he is definitely proven and recognized to be the heir to Candleshoe, and because of that, I believe that Casey really is the missing Margaret. At least, that’s as close to confirmation as we’re likely to get. If the child in the book was the rightful heir to Candleshoe, it would make sense if the child in the movie was, too, even if it’s not really the same child.

Of course, that’s not full proof, and it doesn’t answer the questions about Margaret’s kidnapping or her father’s accident or how Casey was found and placed in foster care in California without anyone else connecting her with the missing Margaret when Margaret’s disappearance was reported to the authorities and newspapers. I have a theory that Harry Bundage was right that Margaret was in the car during the accident and that she did wander away from the scene of the accident in shock and possibly suffering injuries that covered up her identifying scars, but that’s still just a theory. There’s nothing in the movie or book that I could use to prove it. We don’t even know exactly why Margaret’s father in the movie kidnapped her in the first place or why Margaret’s mother died not long after she disappeared. (A convenient accident or illness for story purposes so there’s one less person to try to identify Casey/Margaret, or did she kill herself out of despair at the loss of her husband and daughter? The movie doesn’t say, so those are just guesses, too.) There’s a lot of backstory missing, and the book doesn’t clarify these points because of the differences between the book and movie. I guess it’s not really important to the story in the movie, but inquiring minds still want to know.