A Little Princess

This post originally published May 18, 2010.

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
Published: 1905
Publisher: Puffin Classics
294 pages (paperback)
 
Summary: Sara Crewe is sent to a seminary school in London while her caring and doting father Captain Crewe continues his business ventures in India, leaving strict instructions that his little girl is to have anything and everything she wants.  The headmistress of the school, Miss Minchin, thus assumes that Sara is a spoiled little girl, but because her father is so rich, she decides to turn Sarah into a ‘show pupil’, much to the jealousy of the former show pupil. However, Sarah is not spoiled at all, and is a kind and generous person, making friends with her outcast classmates and servants alike. Unfortunately, Sara goes from riches to rags overnight when she is informed her father has lost his entire fortune due to his friend investing it all in a failed business plan and died from jungle fever. Miss Minchin, not wanting to give the school a bad name by turning Sara onto the streets, keeps Sara as a servant. Sara finds herself being cruelly treated by almost everyone, but attempts to brave through the situation by pretending that she is a secretly a princess.

My Thoughts: After having read The Secret Garden, I’ve taken a liking to Frances Hodgson Burnett so I got myself a copy of another novel of her’s, A Little Princess, and I’ve completely fallen in love with the story. Though technically categorized as a children’s novel, this book has the ability to warm and touch an adult’s heart too (more children need to read books like this)! When I read this book, I felt a strong connection to Sara, even though I don’t think she and I have many similarities; I found myself caring for her completely.

I really like Sara; she is very kind and generous but not perfect. She has to work really hard to contain her anger (because she believes rage is strong, but being able to control your rage makes you stronger) and she has her moments of feeling as if the whole world has abandoned her, yet she tries her damn hardest to make the best of her situation. She also won’t let anybody treat her like a pauper, but she still maintains her politeness and good manners. Sara’s really an extraordinary character and gives the reader so many important lessons about life and how to be a good person. That’s one of the awesome things about this book, these ‘life lessons’ or ‘life advice’ (I guess?!) it has and when coupled with Sara’s character and story, it is very strong and touches you deeply. One of my favourite ‘life lesson/advice’ is that even when the world seems to treat you like dirt, as long as you believe you are a worthy and important person, they cannot bring you down, and that is exemplified in my favourite quote:

‘Whatever comes,’ she said, ‘cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.

I also loved how the ending isn’t perfect either (and a few spoilerish things about the ending are coming up so skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to read it)!

Although I totally expected Sara to reclaim her status as an extremely wealthy upper class girl by the end of the novel, I am happy that Sara wasn’t so kind and so forgiving that she could just overlook everything that Miss Minchin did. She was cruelly treated after all — no food, a cold attic with rats to sleep in, running errands in mud and rain! Of course, Sara doesn’t do anything petty or scheme revenge either, but she lets Miss Minchin know that no, she wasn’t going to go back with her to her school ever again and even asked her what she thought her father might say if he could see the way Miss Minchin was treating her now (which made Miss Minchin all sorts of angry). I was extremely happy with the revealing that Sara is not actually poor (again, kind of expected, but it was such a happy moment in the book, I couldn’t help but smile as I read it) and I am glad that there was no surprise “Oh look your father is actually alive!” ending either (coughmovieversioncough).
This book is really good, I definitely recommend reading it, and I hope Sara’s story touches your heart and your soul as much as she did to mine.

My Rating: 5/5