When I was about eight or nine my grandparents took me to a Chapters and allowed me to chose a book as a gift. I chose this very edition of A Little Princess. Yet, in my childhood, I never once read the book. I'd wanted the little golden locket that came attached to the cover of the book much more than I'd wanted the actual book.
Two weeks ago, I picked up A Little Princess, in the same edition I had years ago, for $8. Needless to say, I read it this time. (I am however, just a little disappointed that the book did not come with a locket this time).
I watched the Shirley Temple adaptation many times as a child, and read an abridged picture book of the story, so I knew the basics of the story going in. Sara Crew is the daughter of rich Englishman. At the start of the story her father is taking her from India, where she was born, to a boarding school in London. Sara is gifted and good, two qualities which cause her classmates to refer to her as a "little princess." After the death of her father, Sara is left as a penniless, starving, servant girl. Like all fairy-tales, she lives happily ever after, in the end.
It's a sweet, heartwarming story--in many ways a re-telling of Cinderella, but as I read though, I found myself critiquing. Class barriers are very rigid in this story.
The Shirley Temple adaptation paints a somewhat rosier picture. Sara's friend and attic-mate Becky is welcome into Captain Crew's open arms as a daughter in the film adaptation, but in the original story, this is not so. Sara's new guardian invites Becky into his home, not as a daughter, but as a maid for Sara. There is an implicit understanding that Becky is a servant and will always be a servant. In the same way that Sara is always a princess--no matter how rich or poor she is--because she was born a princess, Becky is always a maid or a servant, because she was born into that role.
Regardless of the class politics portrayed, A Little Princess is an excellent book. I wish I'd read it as a child.
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