A Little Princess

I can be a princess inside.

A Little Princess is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Published in 1905 as an expansion on her earlier short story, "Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's" (serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine from 1887 to 1888), A Little Princess tells the story of a Victorian era girl named Sara Crewe who moves from India to England to attend school. Raised in wealth, Sara Crewe is initially a popular student, but she experiences tribulations after the unexpected death of her father leaves her in poverty. A classic of children's literature, the novel explores themes of kindness, imagination, and magic.

Quotes

• She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face. It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven. The fact was, however, that she was always dreaming and thinking odd things and could not herself remember any time when she had not been thinking things about grown-up people and the world they belonged to. She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.
  • Chapter 1, "Sara"

I want her to look as if she wasn't a doll really.

• "I want her to look as if she wasn't a doll really," Sara said. "I want her to look as if she LISTENS when I talk to her. The trouble with dolls, papa"—and she put her head on one side and reflected as she said it—"the trouble with dolls is that they never seem to HEAR."
  • Chapter 1, "Sara"

• I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.
  • Chapter 1, "Sara", said by Sara Crewe.

• She was a child full of imaginings and whimsical thoughts, and one of her fancies was that there would be a great deal of comfort in even pretending that Emily was alive and really heard and understood.
  • Chapter 2, "A French Lesson". Emily is a doll that Sara Crewe's father gifted to her.

• "What I believe about dolls," she [Sara Crewe] said, "is that they can do things they will not let us know about. Perhaps, really, Emily can read and talk and walk, but she will only do it when people are out of the room. That is her secret. You see, if people knew that dolls could do things, they would make them work. So, perhaps, they have promised each other to keep it a secret. If you stay in the room, Emily will just sit there and stare; but if you go out, she will begin to read, perhaps, or go and look out of the window. Then if she heard either of us coming, she would just run back and jump into her chair and pretend she had been there all the time."
  • Chapter 2, "A French Lesson".

• "I promised him I would bear it," she [Sara Crewe] said. "And I will. You have to bear things. Think what soldiers bear! Papa is a soldier. If there was a war he would have to bear marching and thirstiness and, perhaps, deep wounds. And he would never say a word—not one word."
  • Chapter 3, "Ermengarde"

• [W]e are just the same—I am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!
  • Chapter 5, "Becky", said by Sara Crewe

• Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.
  • Chapter 6, "The Diamond Mines"

• Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.
  • Chapter 6, "The Diamond Mines", said by Sara Crewe

Nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different.

• Whats'ever 'appens to you—whats'ever—you'd be a princess all the same—an' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different.
  • Chapter 7, "The Diamond Mines Again", said by Becky

• How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.
  • Chapter 9, "Melchisedec"

• EVERYTHING'S a story. You are a story—I am a story.
  • Chapter 9, "Melchisedec", said by Sara Crewe

• When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in—that's stronger.
  • Chapter 10, "The Indian Gentleman", said by Sara Crewe

• Nothing but a doll—doll—doll! You care for nothing. You are stuffed with sawdust. You never had a heart. Nothing could ever make you feel. You are a DOLL!
  • Chapter 10, "The Indian Gentleman", said by Sara Crewe

She is hungrier than I am.

• 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.
  • Chapter 11, "Ram Daas", said by Sara Crewe

• "I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she [Sara Crewe] said then; "but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."
  • Chapter 11, "Ram Daas"

• [T]warn't for you, an' the Bastille, an' bein' the prisoner in the next cell, I should die. That there does seem real now, doesn't it? The missus is more like the head jailer every day she lives. I can jest see them big keys you say she carries. The cook she's like one of the under-jailers.
  • Chapter 13, "One of the Populace", said by Becky

• Some very odd things happen in this world sometimes.
  • Chapter 13, "One of the Populace"

• The beggar girl was still huddled up in the corner of the step. She looked frightful in her wet and dirty rags. She was staring straight before her with a stupid look of suffering, and Sara saw her suddenly draw the back of her roughened black hand across her eyes to rub away the tears which seemed to have surprised her by forcing their way from under her lids. She was muttering to herself.
  Sara opened the paper bag and took out one of the hot buns, which had already warmed her own cold hands a little.
  "See," she said, putting the bun in the ragged lap, "this is nice and hot. Eat it, and you will not feel so hungry."
  The child started and stared up at her, as if such sudden, amazing good luck almost frightened her; then she snatched up the bun and began to cram it into her mouth with great wolfish bites.
  "Oh, my! Oh, my!" Sara heard her say hoarsely, in wild delight. "Oh, my!"
  Sara took out three more buns and put them down.
  The sound in the hoarse, ravenous voice was awful.
  "She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving." But her hand trembled when she put down the fourth bun. "I'm not starving," she said—and she put down the fifth.
  • Chapter 13, "One of the Populace"

• [T]o be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people.
  • Chapter 15, "The Magic", said by Sara Crewe

• "There isn't any banquet left, Emily," she [Sara Crewe] said. "And there isn't any princess. There is nothing left but the prisoners in the Bastille."
  • Chapter 15, "The Magic"

The room of her dream seemed changed into fairyland.

• Do you wonder that she felt sure she had not come back to earth? This is what she saw. In the grate there was a glowing, blazing fire; on the hob was a little brass kettle hissing and boiling; spread upon the floor was a thick, warm crimson rug; before the fire a folding-chair, unfolded, and with cushions on it; by the chair a small folding-table, unfolded, covered with a white cloth, and upon it spread small covered dishes, a cup, a saucer, a teapot; on the bed were new warm coverings and a satin-covered down quilt; at the foot a curious wadded silk robe, a pair of quilted slippers, and some books. The room of her dream seemed changed into fairyland—and it was flooded with warm light, for a bright lamp stood on the table covered with a rosy shade.
  • Chapter 15, "The Magic"

• [I]t was just like Sara that, having found her strange good fortune real, she should give herself up to the enjoyment of it to the utmost. She had lived such a life of imaginings that she was quite equal to accepting any wonderful thing that happened, and almost to cease, in a short time, to find it bewildering.
  • Chapter 16, "The Visitor"

• Here the Indian gentleman lost his temper. "As to starving in the streets," he said, "she might have starved more comfortably there than in your attic."
  • Chapter 18, " 'I Tried Not to Be' "

• She saw through us both. She saw that you were a hard-hearted, worldly woman, and that I was a weak fool, and that we were both of us vulgar and mean enough to grovel on our knees for her money, and behave ill to her because it was taken from her—though she behaved herself like a little princess even when she was a beggar. She did—she did—like a little princess!
  • Chapter 18, " 'I Tried Not to Be' ", said by Amelia Minchin

• And, somehow, Sara felt as if she understood her, though she said so little, and only stood still and looked and looked after her as she went out of the shop with the Indian gentleman, and they got into the carriage and drove away.
  • Chapter 19, "Anne"

Quotes about A Little Princess

I cannot understand why they did not mention themselves to me at first. They were as real as Sara.

• It is hoped that "The Little Princess" will find permanent lodging in New York among the plays to be seen "at night", for jaded playgoers will find here a pure spring where they may refresh themselves with clean and wholesome entertainment.
  • The New York Times review of a 1903 stage adaptation of the initial short story, as quoted in Barbara Jo Maier, " 'A Delicate Invisible Hand': Frances Hodgson Burnett's Contributions to Theatre for Youth", in In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett, ed. Angelica Shirley Carpenter (Scarecrow Press, 2006), 124

• When I wrote the story of "Sara Crewe" I guessed that a great deal more had happened at Miss Minchin's than I had had time to find out just then. I knew, of course, that there must have been chapters full of things going on all the time; and when I began to make a play out of the book and called it "A Little Princess" I discovered three acts full of things. What interested me most was that I found that there had been girls at the school whose names I had not even known before. There was a little girl whose name was Lottie, who was an amusing little person; there was a hungry scullery-maid who was Sara's adoring friend; Ermengarde was much more entertaining than she had seemed at first; things happened in the garret which had never been hinted at in the book; and a certain gentleman whose name was Melchisedec was an intimate friend of Sara's who should never have been left out of the story if he had only walked into it in time. He and Becky and Lottie lived at Miss Minchin's, and I cannot understand why they did not mention themselves to me at first. They were as real as Sara, and it was careless of them not to come out of the story shadowland and say, "Here I am—tell about me." But they did not—which was their fault and not mine. People who live in the story one is writing ought to come forward at the beginning and tap the writing person on the shoulder and say, "Hallo, what about me?" If they don't, no one can be blamed but themselves and their slouching, idle ways.
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett, "The Whole of the Story", in A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe now Told for the First Time (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917), xi–xii

• A Little Princess is a modern version of a familiar fairy tale, and it has gained thematic and symbolic richness in Burnett's retelling.
  • Phyllis Bixler Koppes, "Tradition and the Individual Talent of Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Generic Analysis of Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden", Children's Literature 7 (1978): 191-207, here 195

• Another way of putting this might be to say that laughter is liberating; it allows at least a momentary respite from care and even hunger. Liberating laughter breaks down barriers: the scullery maiden and the "little princess" come together, or, in the case of Ermengarde and Sara, the clever and the dull come together. Laughter levels. It creates a true community. It also challenges authority. The power of laughter lies in its effective dismantling of power.
  • Roderick McGillis, A Little Princess: Gender and Empire, Twayne's Masterwork Studies (Twayne Publishers, 1996), 84

• A Little Princess […] critiques contemporary politics and social conditions that could produce 'forgotten' citizens. At an individual level, the heartlessness of some city residents is exposed, exemplified in its worst instance by Miss Minchin. More broadly, the failure of the middle class to act in assisting those drifting toward savagery is denounced.
  • Michelle J. Smith, Empire in British Girls' Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880–1915 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 131

• She [Sara Crewe] believes that if a young girl thinks she is a princess and performs the role at all times, then she is a princess. It is not the class position of the girl but her ability to commit herself to the role that makes her an authentic princess. Sara's storytelling allows the child to rewrite or re-imagine her class position such that she creates an identity for herself that cannot be touched by discipline and punishment.
  • Christopher Parkes, Children's Literature and Capitalism: Fictions of Social Mobility in Britain, 1850–1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 138–139

• Particularly against the backdrop of her schoolmates, then, Sara paradoxically embodies both the appropriateness of the class system (rich or poor, we are to acknowledge her as a "princess") and its injustice (at a moment's notice, she may be moved from one end of the social scale to the other). Her first conversation with Becky illuminates the novel's simultaneous egalitarianism and elitism[.]
  • Claudia Nelson, Precocious Children and Childish Adults: Age Inversion in Victorian Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 36–37

• I was a kid who loved to read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I didn't have one favorite book. I had lots of favorite books: The Borrowers by Mary Norton, Paddington by Michael Bond, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Stuart Little by E. B. White, A Cricket in Times Square, all the Beverly Cleary books.
  • Kate DiCamillo, "Kate DiCamillo: I Just Realised that I Am Always the One Forcing Other People to Read Books", The Guardian, July 29, 2014

• Early in the novel, the narrator establishes Sara as a child better versed with narrative than social experiences: a child, that is, less trained in cultural codes of behavior than in imaginative scripts.
  • Ruth Y. Jenkins, Victorian Children's Literature: Experiencing Abjection, Empathy, and the Power of Love, Critical Approaches to Children's Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 56

• The main character of A Little Princess, Sara Crewe, is clever, well behaved, noble, lovable and, in many respects, exemplary for young readers.
  • Varvara A. Byachkova, "Unhappy Birthdays in the Novels by F. H. Burnett (A Little Princess) and Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)", Libri & Liberi 10, no. 1 (2021): 63–71, here 64

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