A Little Princess was one of my very favorite books when I was a kid. I couldn't tell you how many times I read it-- enough that I can still recite parts of it. I never once read it to my sons, though, and so it's been a long time since I dove into that riches-rags-riches story.
Stella loves it, which is really fun. I am finding myself a little skeptical about Sara, which feels disloyal. Can we talk about Sara?
I'm having the same reaction to Sara that I did to Esther Summerson when we read Bleak House for one of those AMDRALs. Virtue takes practice and maturity, and young girls who leave shining trails of virtue behind them, like garden snails clad in gauzy Victorian-era frocks, arouse my ire. The idea of a 7-year-old who is unrelentingly patient, generous, polite, and unflappable seems less plausible to me in adulthood than it did when I was 7 myself. Why would Sara have needed to cultivate those virtues in her years of fabulous wealth and ease? How could Esther have cultivated those virtues in her years of deprivation? Why would anyone want to teach kids that virtues arise ex nihilo?
I suspect my skepticism will intensify as Sara moves from the parlor boarder suite into the attic. If memory serves, she slides capably into a life of servitude.
One of the early chapters sparked an all-but-forgotten memory of a conflict at Girl Scout camp that I tried to resolve by channeling Sara Crewe. "We," I said imperiously to the doubtless puzzled ringleader, "are not little gutter children."
It worked better in Sara's schoolroom.
It would be unfair to expect Frances Hodgson Burnett to write in a way that isn't quite so classist and colonialist; we're all products of our times. It doesn't seem unreasonable, though, to expect her to write in a way that has some connection to the actual moral development of actual children.
Oh gosh, I loved A Little Princess. I mean, taciturn Mary Lennox was more my style, but you knew Sara was someone to emulate.
The perils of reading children's literature with adult eyes! Your assessment is even more complicated by the fact that the narrator reveals Ralph Crewe indulged her left and right, so my current theory of Sara's good nature rests with her Indian ayah.
You were a bit old for it at the time, but I wholeheartedly recommend the 1995 film version of A Little Princess. And while I'm at it, the 1993 version of The Secret Garden is fantastic, and if you haven't yet seen The Secret of Roan Inish, WELL. It is one of the few movies that surpasses the book it was modeled after. Plus there's selkies. The mid-90s was a halcyon time for movie versions of children's books.
Happy reading with Stella! I don't often say things like "I wish I had a daughter" but when it comes to reading aloud, I have a feeling my son will not appreciate Heidi or A Little Princess in quite the same way I did.
Posted by: Colette | November 12, 2018 at 10:03 AM
Colette, your son might surprise you —mine really loved The Secret Garden.
I don’t think the Victorians shared modern ideas about child development. I hope/assume some diligent academic has already analyzed the works in terms of Romanticism or perhaps (more thrillingly?) by means of a connection to Songs of Innocence and Experience. But even if fhey haven’t, it’s not so surprising to me to find Victorian authors (presumably) ignoring all the real children in their lives as they wrote perfect exemplars of the childhood innocence that needed protecting. Harriet Beecher Stowe could pull up a seat at Hodgson Burnett’s tea party and fit right in, don’t you think?
I didn’t read this particular book to my children, even though I adored it to pieces as a girl. I’m not sure why, anymore!
Posted by: Jody | November 12, 2018 at 08:44 PM
Paging Nicole!
Posted by: Jamie | November 12, 2018 at 09:45 PM
Sara learned her virtues from reading. That's why all us bookworms believed in her.
Posted by: Beth Mitcham | November 13, 2018 at 12:37 AM
True confessions: I always doubted Sara Crewe. Mary Lennox seemed a much more realistic portrait of child development, and give me Martha over Sara any day for keeping up sweetness and good spirits while in servitude.
Posted by: MrsDarwin | November 16, 2018 at 10:08 PM
Sorry to chime in so belatedly!! I also read, and reread, this book obsessively as a kid, and recently read it to my daughter...and I feel really torn. I agree Sarah's not realistic, but I also think the novel pushes us to see her wrestling with her grief and loss in ways that seem believable--by telling herself stories. If it's about the power of story-telling to remake the world for you, Sarah feels that when she's privileged (albeit motherless and in the care of a sweet but pretty feckless dad) and continues to hold on to that and use it when she's lost everything. Like Esther, for me, she's a kid who's actually not very well taken care of by grown-ups--even those that love her--and her precocious goodness maybe in some ways reflects that?
Posted by: Nicole | November 18, 2018 at 02:13 PM