Work record
A Little Princess
1905 · Early 20th Century · Novel · English
Abstract
Background. Burnett had told this tale twice before, in an 1888 magazine novella and on the London and New York stage, before rewriting it at full length as what her title page called the whole story of Sara Crewe.
Plot. Left at a London boarding school by her wealthy father, Sara is petted by the headmistress yet stays generous, befriending a dull pupil, a baby of the school and the scullery girl. Word arrives at her eleventh-birthday celebration that the Captain has died in India, apparently bankrupt. Moved to a garret, she runs errands, teaches little ones and goes hungry, sustaining herself with games of make-believe and a tame rat. The ailing gentleman next door, who blames himself for her father's ruin and has hunted Europe for the girl, is in fact his partner; his servant secretly fills her room with warmth and food, and an escaped monkey finally reveals her identity.
Themes. Courtesy as self-government, generosity under want, storytelling as a means of endurance, and the gap between flattery shown to money and respect owed to persons.
Significance. With Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden it is among Burnett's most reprinted books, adapted repeatedly for film, including versions starring Mary Pickford and Shirley Temple.
Main characters
- Sara Crewe: Officer's daughter from India who keeps her dignity after sudden poverty
- Miss Minchin: Mercenary headmistress who turns her richest pupil into an unpaid drudge
- Becky: Overworked kitchen girl who sleeps in the attic beside Sara's
- Ermengarde St. John: Loyal schoolmate who finds lessons hard
- Lottie Legh: Tiny motherless pupil whom Sara mothers
- Lavinia Herbert: Jealous older girl who rejoices at Sara's ruin
- Mr. Carrisford: Invalid former partner of Sara's father, searching for the lost heiress
- Ram Dass: His servant, who furnishes the attic by night across the rooftops
- Anne: Ragged street child fed by Sara at the bakery
Summary
A Little Princess opens on a foggy London day as seven-year-old Sara Crewe rides in a cab with her adoring father, Captain Ralph Crewe, a young officer who has brought her from India to Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Because her father is rich, Sara is given a private sitting room, a French maid, a pony and a doll named Emily whom she half believes can walk and talk when no one is looking. Miss Minchin flatters her for her money and dislikes her for her cleverness, while the spiteful Lavinia envies her. Sara does not become spoiled. She befriends slow, plump Ermengarde St. John, mothers the motherless four-year-old Lottie, tells stories to the whole schoolroom, and treats Becky, the overworked scullery maid, as a fellow human being, feeding her cakes and letting her sleep by the fire. She pretends that she is a princess, and decides that a princess must be gracious to everyone. On her eleventh birthday, in the middle of a lavish party, the solicitor Mr. Barrow arrives with news that Captain Crewe has died of jungle fever and business troubles after a friend's diamond-mine scheme seemed to ruin him. Sara is left penniless. Miss Minchin takes away her clothes and toys and sends her to a cold attic beside Becky's, where she works as an errand girl and teacher of the little ones in shabby, outgrown dresses, half starved and scolded by the cook. Sara endures by imagination and pride: soldiers do not complain, she tells herself, and she pretends that the attic is a prison in the Bastille, makes friends with a rat she names Melchisedec, and tries to stay a princess inside. Next door lives an invalid Indian Gentleman, Mr. Carrisford, tended by his servant Ram Dass, whose monkey escapes across the roofs to Sara's window. Carrisford was Captain Crewe's partner; believing he had ruined his friend, he fell ill with brain fever, and now the mines have made him rich while he searches Europe, through the lawyer Mr. Carmichael, for the lost child. One bitter day Sara finds fourpence in the mud, buys hot buns, and gives five of her six to a beggar girl hungrier than she. Ram Dass, watching from the roof, and Carrisford begin secretly to transform her attic with a fire, food, blankets and books, a Magic that comforts both girls. When the monkey runs away again and Sara returns him, Carrisford learns who she is. Sara becomes his ward, Becky her attendant, Miss Amelia finally speaks back to her sister, and the beggar girl Anne is taken in by the baker woman. Burnett first told the story as the novella Sara Crewe (1888) and as a stage play; Scribner's published the expanded novel in 1905.
Virtues in this work
- Charity: Starving herself, Sara gives five of her six hot buns to the beggar girl on the baker's step.
- Fortitude: Sent to the attic, Sara tells herself that soldiers do not complain and bears cold, hunger and scolding in silence.
- Magnanimity: She resolves to behave like a princess when she is poorest and answers Miss Minchin without spite.
- Friendship: She treats the scullery maid Becky as a friend, sharing food and stories through the attic wall.
- Humility: When rich she tells Ermengarde that being clever matters less than being kind.
Plot or Argument
- Chapters 1–5: The show pupil at Miss Minchin's
Captain Crewe leaves Sara at the Seminary with every luxury; she befriends Ermengarde, comforts the screaming Lottie, and discovers the frightened scullery maid Becky asleep by her fire.
- Chapters 6–7: The diamond mines and the birthday
Talk of her father's diamond mines makes Sara the school's princess; at her eleventh-birthday party Mr. Barrow reports Captain Crewe's death and the loss of his fortune, and Miss Minchin turns her into a drudge.
- Chapters 8–9: The attic and Melchisedec
Sara learns to work, go hungry and keep silent; Ermengarde and Lottie climb secretly to the attic, and Sara tames a rat and pretends the attic is the Bastille.
- Chapters 10–12: The Indian Gentleman next door
Sara watches the Large Family and the sick Mr. Carrisford, returns Ram Dass's escaped monkey, and readers learn that Carrisford is the partner who believes he ruined Captain Crewe.
- Chapters 13–14: One of the Populace
Cold and hungry, Sara gives away five of her six buns to a beggar girl; Ram Dass tells his master about the child in the attic, and the two plan a secret kindness.
- Chapters 15–16: The Magic
After a humiliating night when Miss Minchin breaks up the girls' pretend banquet, Sara wakes to a fire, a feast and soft blankets; gifts keep arriving, and she writes a thank-you note to the unknown friend.
- Chapters 17–19: It is the child
The monkey brings Sara into Carrisford's house, her identity is discovered, Miss Minchin is sent away, and Sara and Carrisford arrange for the baker woman to feed hungry children, with Anne as her helper.
Characters
- Sara Crewe, protagonist
A thoughtful, imaginative girl who keeps her courtesy, generosity and self-command after she loses her father and her fortune.
- Captain Ralph Crewe, Sara's father
A loving, open-handed young officer in India who dies of fever believing his money is lost.
- Miss Minchin, headmistress
Proprietor of the Seminary, who flatters Sara while she is rich and works her hard once she is poor.
- Miss Amelia, Miss Minchin's sister
A timid, kinder woman who at last tells her sister the truth about how Sara was treated.
- Becky, scullery maid
An exhausted fourteen-year-old servant whom Sara treats as a friend and who shares her attic hardships.
- Ermengarde St. John, Sara's friend
A slow-learning girl whom Sara helps and who stays loyal after Sara's fall.
- Lottie Legh, youngest pupil
A small motherless child whom Sara adopts as her 'little girl'.
- Lavinia Herbert, rival
An older pupil who resents Sara's popularity and mocks her poverty.
- Mr. Carrisford, the Indian Gentleman
Captain Crewe's partner, ill with guilt and fever, who searches for his friend's daughter and finds her next door.
- Ram Dass, Carrisford's servant
An Indian servant who crosses the roofs to transform Sara's attic in secret.
- Mr. Carmichael, lawyer
Father of the cheerful 'Large Family' across the square, who conducts Carrisford's search.
- Anne, beggar girl
The starving child to whom Sara gives her buns and who later works for the baker woman.
Lessons
A princess inside
Sara decides that being a princess is not about clothes but about behaving graciously, and she holds to that rule in the attic, answering Miss Minchin's insults with silence and treating servants and beggars with courtesy. Dignity is something she practices rather than something she owns.
- What does Sara mean when she says she can be a princess inside?
- Why does she stay polite to the cook and to Miss Minchin when they are unkind?
- Is it harder to be gracious when you are rich or when you are poor?
Giving when you are hungry
In the bun shop Sara is starving herself, yet she gives five buns away because the beggar girl is hungrier. Burnett shows that generosity is tested most when it costs something, and the baker woman's later kindness to Anne grows out of that one act.
- How many buns does Sara give away, and how many does she keep?
- Why does her hand tremble when she puts down the fourth bun?
- What does the baker woman do because she saw what Sara did?
Imagination as courage
Sara turns the attic into the Bastille, a rat into a father with a family, and a bare table into a banquet. Her stories are not lies to escape the world; they are a way to bear it bravely and to share comfort with Becky, Ermengarde and Lottie.
- What games of pretending does Sara play in the attic?
- How do her stories help Becky and Ermengarde?
- When does pretending help us to be brave, and when could it go wrong?
Kindness that crosses the wall
Ram Dass and Mr. Carrisford help Sara in secret, without wanting thanks, while Sara herself befriends Becky across the attic wall. The book pairs kindness from above with kindness from below, and both are needed for the happy ending.
- Why do Ram Dass and Mr. Carrisford hide who is sending the gifts?
- How does Sara thank the unknown friend?
Context
The novel belongs to the late Victorian and Edwardian world in which British officers and businessmen in India often sent their children home to English boarding schools. Small private 'select seminaries' for young ladies were common in London, and their fortunes depended on fees from well-to-do parents. Burnett sets her story in a London square of tall, joined houses with servants' attics under the roofs, and draws on the period's fascination with diamond and gold mining ventures.
Composition
Burnett first wrote the story as the novella Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's, serialized in St. Nicholas magazine and published as a book in 1888. She adapted it for the stage in the early 1900s, adding characters such as Becky's fuller part and Ram Dass, and then rewrote it as a full novel, published by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York in 1905 as A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Told for the First Time.
Reception
The novel joined Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Secret Garden as one of Burnett's lasting books for children and has been reprinted, illustrated and filmed many times, including a 1917 silent film with Mary Pickford and a 1939 film with Shirley Temple. Readers have long admired Sara as a heroine whose goodness is shown in hard circumstances rather than simply rewarded.
Comparisons
- the-secret-garden
Burnett's later novel also brings an India-born child to England, but Mary Lennox begins sour and is healed by a garden, while Sara begins gracious and is tested by poverty.
- little-lord-fauntleroy
Burnett reverses the fortune plot: Cedric rises suddenly from modest life to an earldom, while Sara falls from riches to the attic before her fortune returns.
- pollyanna
Both heroines are orphans who meet hardship with a chosen habit of mind, Pollyanna's glad game and Sara's pretending, and both soften the adults around them.
- jane-eyre
Brontë's Lowood school offers a harsher, older picture of a cold boarding school and a girl's hunger and dignity under a tyrannical master.
- a-christmas-carol
Both books set hunger and cold in winter London against the warmth of food and fire given freely, and both turn on a rich man's change of heart.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“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.”
“"Soldiers don't complain," she would say between her small, shut teeth, "I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war."”
“EVERYTHING'S a story. You are a story--I am a story. Miss Minchin is a story.”
“"She is hungrier than I am," she said to herself. "She's starving."”
“to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people.”
“I--TRIED not to be anything else," she answered in a low voice--"even when I was coldest and hungriest--I tried not to be.”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- How Sara treats Becky, Lottie and Ermengarde while she is rich.
- Sara's games of pretending in the attic, especially the Bastille.
- The monkey, Ram Dass and the window across the roofs.
- What Sara does with the fourpence she finds.
- Who is sending the Magic, and why it stays secret.
Key terms and names
- Seminary
- An old word for a private school; Miss Minchin's is a boarding school for girls.
- Scullery maid
- The lowest servant in a kitchen, who scrubs pots and carries coal, like Becky.
- Bastille
- The old Paris prison; Sara pretends the attic is a cell there.
- The populace
- Sara's princess word for ordinary poor people, whom a princess should help.
- Brain fever
- An old name for a serious illness with high fever and confusion, which Mr. Carrisford suffered.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension Why does Captain Crewe bring Sara from India to Miss Minchin's school?
- Comprehension What news comes during Sara's eleventh birthday party, and what does Miss Minchin do next?
- Comprehension Who is the Indian Gentleman, and why has he been looking for a little girl?
- Interpretation Why does Miss Minchin dislike Sara even when Sara is polite and clever?
- Interpretation How is Sara's pretending different from telling lies?
- Interpretation Why do you think Burnett lets Miss Amelia speak up at the end?
- Big Question Can someone be truly noble if no one else knows it?
Faith Connections
- Isaiah 58:7 (Scripture)
Deal thy bread to the hungry: Sara gives her buns to Anne, and later arranges bread for many hungry children.
- Philippians 4:11-12 (Scripture)
Paul knows how to be abased and how to abound; Sara keeps the same character in the sitting room and the attic.
- Matthew 6:3-4 (Scripture)
Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: Ram Dass and Carrisford give in secret.
- Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (Great Conversation)
The wheel of Fortune that lifts and drops Sara cannot take away the goods of the soul.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: True nobility is a way of behaving, and it is proved by hardship rather than by wealth.
Rhetorical device: reversal of fortune. The birthday party, with its last doll and its feast, is cut off by Mr. Barrow's news, so that Sara's fall happens in a single scene.
Debate: Resolved: that Sara should forgive Miss Minchin.
Memory Work
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.
to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Explain how Sara stays a princess inside during her poverty, using the bun shop and one attic scene as evidence.
Comparison with The Secret Garden: Compare Sara Crewe and Mary Lennox: how does each girl change, or not change, after she comes to England?
Medical Lens
Illness drives the plot. Captain Crewe dies in India of what the solicitor calls jungle fever and business troubles combined, a typical late-Victorian way of joining tropical fever to mental strain. His partner Mr. Carrisford suffers 'brain fever', the period's catch-all name for a delirious illness brought on by shock and worry; Mr. Carmichael reminds him that he was strapped down in a hospital raving, and Carrisford recalls that he had not slept for weeks and saw mocking shapes in the air. Readers sometimes read his long invalidism as nervous collapse from guilt, but that is an interpretation; the novel itself keeps to the vocabulary of fever. The attic chapters give a plain account of chronic hunger and cold in a child servant's life, and Becky's exhaustion and Sara's thinness are noticed by the cook, the pupils and the baker woman. The secret gifts of fire, blankets and hot food work almost as a course of nursing. Sara's grief for her father is shown through her silent, rigid self-control after the news.
- Chapter 7, The Diamond Mines Again
Mr. Barrow tells Miss Minchin that Captain Crewe died of jungle fever combined with the strain of his business losses.
- Chapter 12, The Other Side of the Wall
Carrisford and Carmichael recall Carrisford's flight, sleeplessness, delirium and hospital confinement with brain fever.
- Chapters 8 and 13
Sara and Becky go to bed cold and hungry; the bun-shop scene shows Sara faint with hunger beside a starving beggar child.
- Chapters 15–16, The Magic and The Visitor
Ram Dass's fire, food and blankets restore the two girls, and Carrisford's own health improves as he takes an interest in the child next door.
Creative Prompts
- Classroom
Turn a corner of the classroom into Sara's attic before and after the Magic: list what is there first, then add the fire, the rug, the books and the feast one by one.
- Fiction
Write the note Sara leaves for the unknown friend, and then write the reply Ram Dass might have wished he could send.
- Essay
Is Sara's pretending a strength or a weakness? Use the Bastille game and the banquet scene as evidence.
- Poetry
Write a short poem in Becky's voice about the girl on the other side of the attic wall.
Further Reading
- Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's, Frances Hodgson Burnett
The shorter 1888 novella that Burnett later expanded into this novel.
- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
Burnett's 1911 novel of another child brought from India to England.
- Waiting for the Party: The Life of Frances Hodgson Burnett, Ann Thwaite
A standard biography of Burnett.
Verification notes
All six quotes were found by exact search in content/texts/a-little-princess.txt (Project Gutenberg #146); capitals for emphasis and double hyphens follow the file. Chapter numbers and titles follow the file's table of contents. Plot details were checked against the stored text. Publication history (Sara Crewe, 1888; a stage version in the early 1900s; Scribner's 1905 novel with the subtitle about the whole story of Sara Crewe) and the film versions are given from standard reference knowledge and could not be re-checked online during writing.
- Exact dates and titles of Burnett's stage adaptation (often given as A Little Un-fairy Princess, London 1902, and A Little Princess, New York 1903).
- Full first-edition subtitle wording of the 1905 Scribner's edition.