A long time ago, when I was a kid, maybe 9, I watched A Little Princess on one of those huge ass laser discs that is longer than the size of your forearm. They were bigger than vinyls, but the packaging looks like that. And as much as I’m a hardass that I am now, I still remembered pretending not to cry after the credits roll. Years down the track, I looked up the movie again and I had no idea that it was directed by Alfonso Cuarón who will one day do bigger and better things.
So I had some ideas of what’s going to happen in the book, not knowing that the storyline is vastly different between the two mediums. And you know what? I like them both. Even though I haven’t seen the movie for almost 25 years I still remember quite a fair bit of it. I read A Little Princess as a 35 year old bloke, as someone who I’d like to think is mature enough to be considered an adult, someone who “knows better” than the happy endings preached in children’s stories. But I’ve picked up the book mainly because it is a thorn in my side as a book that I cannot tick off in the multitudes of book lists.
And fuck me dead A Little Princess is a good read. Maybe it isn’t fair to compare it with Burnett’s other works, namely The Secret Garden but there are a lot of similarities here — the age of the young leads, the feeling of isolation and that in the end, kindness conquers. And why is that a bad thing? I get almost the same giddiness when I read Spyri’s Heidi last year right in the middle of the lockdown. It pays to be kind, and it is something that is best learned when you’re young before you’ve grown too cynical. And reading A Little Princess dumbs down my cynicism some.
Sara Crewe is not really a princess, but she is treated almost like one by her well to do father. She is not like the other children in that she is motherless, but also that she was raised in colonial India. She is a polyglot and speaks Hindi and French fluently. And despite her upbringing she remains grounded. In fact, being an outsider makes her oblivious to the differences between the classes and the social conventions that separate the masters and the servants. The fact that Sara also speaks French, a bourgeois language, puts her above those who have these aspirations.
Still, we can’t have a story without conflict and tribulations. Sara’s decline in fortune happens within minutes and she is forced to adapt quickly. I think it is just my perversion to read about misfortunes, but I love books where the protagonists are made to adapt to new situations. And I think it is an important book to read for children, to give them a heads up that shit does happen, even to the nicest people and that is important to salvage from the situation mentally. I think it makes for better readers, and I find that readers tend to make for better people.
And yes, I’d recommend this strongly for adult readers. We live in a time where cynicism comes naturally with wit, kindness sells in views on Tik Tok videos and people care more about their egos than the person next to them. It’s books like these that keep us grounded.
