A Little Princess: in Rags or in Riches

What child doesn't want to be a princess at some point or other, we know we both did! Sara Crewe is a great example to us for how to be a princess, no matter our circumstances, and how we can use our princess power for good. 

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When I was a kid, I loved pink. I loved long flowy dresses. I loved sparkles and jewelry and tiaras. Can you guess what I wanted to be a princess? Princess Primrose actually hi, and welcome to the Literary That Post podcast where we analyze books and see what we can learn from them. I'm Caitlin. I'm a math grad student, but I love English and I love analyzing literature. This is such a tongue twister. And I'm Ashley, an assistant editor for a magazine and a writer. Today we're going to be talking about one of our favorite books from childhood, A Little Princess, which was written in 1905 by France Hodgson Burnett. I really loved it because like you had at the beginning, I wanted to be a princess when I grew up, and I think many go through a princess phase when they are kids. Did you? I did, but I don't think, no, you went through a tree phase. Let's not talk about my tree face. That's not, let's not, let's not talk about my tree face. I, I did go through a bit of a princess phase, but I don't think quite to the extent that you did. Look, I don't think I'm out of my princess face to be honest. No, no. I still wear glitter on my face every day and ribbons in my hair, and I still love long flowy pink dresses, so that is true. Anyway, but no, a little princess is really just a beautiful, heartwarming story, and I think it's impossible to grow out of it, to be honest. I will be reading this book until the day I die. It's just beautiful. So a good place to start when thinking about this book is to ask the question, what makes a princess a princess? And if any of you have watched Princess Diaries two, which is in my opinion, a masterpiece of cinema. Yes, definitely. Um, we have Anne Hathaway telling a group of Little Orphan Girls Now, in order to be a princess, you have to believe you are a princess. And that sounds a little bit cliche, but that's actually kind of the whole point of the book, A little princess, because guys listen to this podcast too about a question might be what makes a person royalty? So there is a specific definition of royalty. You know, we have the royal family, the monarchs, kings and queens, whatever. But there's this longstanding idea that royalty is not just a position, but. I don't wanna say that lifestyle way of acting, but No, no. It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle choice. I choose to be a princess in my lifestyle, but including character traits, like being noble, which means having high moral principles, having humility, listening to those who have less than you, trying to improve the lives of those around you. Defending the weak, standing up for what's right. They have dignity, courage, et cetera, et cetera. So this book looks into this idea of how you act matters no matter what rank you were born into. I have a quote from our main character in the book, Sarah. She says, I'm a princess. All girls are, even if they live in tiny old attics, even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty or smart or young, they're still princesses. So. Looking through this lens of what it means to be royalty. We're gonna be talking about three main things. First one is less of a theme, more of a little history lesson. We're going to be going over some of the British colonization in India. Then we're going to be talking a little bit about the privilege that some people have and how it can actually be used for good. And we're going to be touching on ideas surrounding poverty. Let's go into a little summary of this book. We are going to be pretty much outlining the entire story, missing most of the details. So even if you haven't read this book and you learn what happens in the end, it is still a wonderful read. So let's get into it. We have our main character, Sarah Crew. I think she's seven years old in the beginning. Yeah. She's sent to boarding school in England after having grown up in India. She's very wealthy. Never wanted for anything. Her father, who loves her very much, gives her everything that she wants at this school. She's treated like a princess. She has the best room, the best clothes. She receives special treatment from. She has a French maid. Oh yeah, she has a French maid, everything, but she remains very kind and humble. Like from the beginning we see that she's just this beautiful little girl, beautiful character, and she befriends the outcasts at her school. A girl named Erman Guard who. Really struggles with academics and is bullied for it. And a girl named Becky, who's actually the scullery maid, few years pass and Sarah's father dies when he's overseas. And the headmistress of the school, miss Minchin strips Sarah of all her privileges and forces her to work as a servant at the school because with Sarah's father's death, it's found out that the fortune he had accrued was lost. And so Sarah's status plummets and she receives very harsh treatments from the school. She's often cold, she's hungry. She has to work really hard all day. She lives in the attic with the rats whom she befriends. She even names one Mel Eck. Yet, you know, she endures all of this with kindness and grace, and she's still kind and generous to those who have less than she does. She stays close with Becky and Erman garde, and she chooses to create this imaginary world and see the best in things and bring her friends up rather than wallow in her situation. Long story short, she's restored to her wealth in the end through a series of events that we won't go into. But she's adopted by a friend of her late father and her spirit. The way she interacts with others doesn't change. And she even rescues Becky, who was the scullery maid from her situation. It's kind of a happily ever after sort of story, but honestly, there's so much to unpack from. The events and the ideas. So this book was actually my introduction to the history of British colonization in India. And I think that this book might have been the only time I learned about it and one of the only reasons that I knew that it had happened as a kid. And the history is pretty interesting because. It started out as just a British company. The British East Indian Company was established in India in 1600 and began trading with various Indian rulers, and it gradually gained commercial influence and began setting up various trading posts in different cities in India. And then from the 1760s to the 1850s, they started fighting for control of territory. They legit had their own army like. A company that has an army and through a bunch of different wars and alliances and annexations and taking advantage of the divides between different Indian states, they were able to take control of a lot of territory in India. I. And with this came a whole bunch of different social effects. So the East India company ended up taking the role of ruler of the territory. So once the company took that role of ruler, the dynamics between the British people and the Indian people changed. Before that time, there was some. Albeit limited mixing between British people and the Indian people, but there wasn't this sense of superiority from the British people. But after the company started functioning as a ruler. This idea of superiority of the British people coming into what they saw as this savage and heathen culture. They really brought in this sense of superiority, that they were better, that they were civilized and Christian, and they needed to do away with the Indian cultures and religion and. It's interesting because William Wilberforce, who was a parliamentary leader and fought against the slave trade in England, actually felt Hinduism was a greater evil than slavery. And that was really to do with that sense of superiority and the idea that they had all the answers and everyone else in the world did not. And as a result, India became a source of raw materials and a market for British goods. And it was kind of seen as something to be exploited and taken over. And these ideas of social Darwinism and imperialism really thrived in this culture because it gave them this feeling of they have a right to do this to non-white, non-Christian countries. we will come back to that idea of social dualism a little bit later, So with this came a bunch of social and cultural changes, the British forced a more western way of life onto the culture. British missionaries and officials introduced Western education and legal systems and Christian mission work, and they often did this disregarding Indian traditions, and this ended up fueling a lot of resentment in the Indian people. The whole idea was to remake and reform India into a more western nation. And now you might be thinking, Hey, that's good. They got the benefits of technology and trade and education and Christianity. A couple points about that. When Christianity was brought to India, it was done in a way that reinforced the superiority of missionaries and the shaming and degradation of people who practice their traditional religions. And there were actually laws that were passed that allowed Hindus to convert to Christianity, but forbade people to return to Hinduism, and that was not good. The problem with all of this is that it did a lot of damage. It disrupted the way of life for a lot of people, and it bred intense anger and resentment, which pretty much counteracted any kind of positive influence and. A note on religion. We've talked some about how religion being forced onto a society is never a good thing. In our episode on the book, Elantra, and we talked a lot about how the end does not justify the means, you can't try to save someone by forcing them. It just destroys the message you're trying to share. Anyway, so all of this led up to a revolt in 1857, which was called The First War of Independence, and it was a major uprising by Indian soldiers and civilians against this British rule, and it was sparked by cultural and political grievances. It was. Brutally suppressed, and it marked a major turning point in British rule in India because after that revolt, the Indian government actually dissolved the East India company and took control of India directly. And this happened under Queen Victoria and is referred to as the British Raj or the British Rulership. In the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, educated Indians began organizing. For political rights, forming the Indian National Congress in 1885 and pushing for reform, self-rule and independence, and then that led into Gandhi and his mass nonviolent resistance against British rule. This then led into Britain granting independence to India in 1947. After that, the subcontinent was partitioned into two nations, India and Pakistan, which caused a whole bunch of violence and a whole bunch of displacement out of a lot of people. And a little princess was published in 1905, so it was just during that time when British Rule was pretty entrenched, but the resistance was just beginning. And it's interesting reading this book, how it really diminishes the impact of this British rule. It was just normal at the time, and. In many ways, this book critiques society with themes of poverty and class, but the effect of colonialism, those generational traumatic effects that we talked about a bit more in our episode on Weathering Heights was not really touched on, and Sarah's restoration to her wealth and her privilege at the end of the book actually directly descends from Britain's domination over India and her childhood in India is idealized. She talks about having had Indian servants and an Indian ia. Which is a nursemaid or nanny. And in fact, the only time Indians are mentioned in the book is in the context of servants. It to me seems like maybe this was a bit of a blind spot for France. Hodgson Burnett, and that's interesting because it seems like she genuinely wanted to take on themes of inequality and poverty, et cetera. But she just missed this area, and I think that that's why it's important to be continuously learning and growing your understanding of the world around you. And also when looking at people in history, I think it's important that we neither completely condemn them for the harmful attitudes that they may not have been aware of. Nor completely absolve them of the things that they may have done in their culture. We need to understand that they were a product of their time, but be aware that they could have and probably should have done better. So this makes me wonder what might be some of our blind spots that we have, and I think that maybe one of those blind spots that we have is we don't always recognize the advantages that we might have in our society and. A good word to use to talk about, this is actually the word privilege. Now. Privilege is a word that people. Often shy away from people don't like using the word privilege and conversations around privilege often end in conflict. People have this misconception that having privilege means the following three things. You are a bad person, you are rich, and you have always had it easy. It's more nuanced than that. Across history and literature. We see countless heroes who come from privileged backgrounds and who go through tough times. It's unfortunately true that some have more advantages than others and it's not anyone's choice that that happens, and you might immediately think of white privilege or male privilege, but there are other ways that privilege exists. For example, you have privilege if your parents are still together. Your privilege, if your parents made you lunch for school, your privileged if you were born in a wealthy country. A little princess is a good example of. A book that has a privileged hero. We have discussed colonialism, how it contributes to Sarah's wealth. She's in a private school. She wants absolutely nothing when it comes to material possessions, but she's a very kind and empathetic person. Might be a few reasons why. First of all, you know, the author wanted a likable hero, but she grew up in India, potentially saw poverty and felt the injustice of it. She was raised with a wider worldview and with a compassionate father too. For whatever reason, Sarah's not a spoiled brat who hates on those who have less than she does. Her privilege causes her to be very naive. It causes some of the adults in the story to look at her very cynically. Like Ms. Minchin who says, I guess that's easy for a girl who has everything. See, privilege can be used. In two ways, power or compassion. Unfortunately, using privilege for power is very common today. We see it in domestic violence, patterns in politics, career opportunities, et cetera. But privilege also has the ability to close gaps. While Sarah is still rich in the beginning, she's very kind to Becky, the scullery maid. She treats her as an equal. She invites her into her room to eat cake to talk. She has the freedom as someone in a higher class to extend kindness to someone considered by society as lower. Sarah's also very kind to Herman Guard who struggles. A lot in school and is bullied. Sarah patiently helps her. She doesn't mock her, but she uses her intellectual privilege to uplift her and by intellectual privilege, you know, she was able to learn French at home from her father. Whereas Erman Guard has to struggle through her French books. And so Sarah has had this opportunity of learning at home in a way that Erman guard maybe didn't. And Sarah is also more naturally inclined towards academics than Erman Guard is. Sarah is really smart, but she's also very humble about it. She actually says. Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people. Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked. Sarah also stands up to the injustices that she sees around her. When one of the bullies, Lavinia is really mean, Sarah stands up to her. Sarah's father actually says about her. If Sarah had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, she would've gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing, and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble. And then, you know we have the second part of the story where Sarah is stripped of her wealth and lives in the attic with the rats. As a scholy maid, she says whatever comes cannot alter one thing. 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. You know, she's hungry, she's wet, cold and tired constantly. But yet she has chosen to have a certain attitude towards her circumstances and to still be kind to other people around her. Two, in her words, be a princess.'cause that's what it means to be a princess for Sarah, one time she finds a coin in the street and she buys some buns with it, but. She finds a girl sitting outside the bakery and she gives her five of the six buns that she has bought'cause she still recognizes that. She has more than this girl, and even though she herself is hungry, she still extends that kindness to someone beneath her. Sarah also creates this beautiful imaginative world for her and Becky up in the attic, and even when she's tied and weary, she puts the effort in for Becky because she realizes that Becky has never had or experienced anything like this before. They set up these little dinners together, and Sarah always. Describes what their table would look like, what kind of food they are eating, even though they're eating dry crusts of bread or whatever, what the room looks like and all these beautiful things. And honestly, it really changes Becky's life just to have Sarah in the next room over being kind to her. And when Sarah's restored to her status, she gets Becky out of her situation. We can see that she doesn't leave others in the dust when she's elevated. That being said, going back to the idea that maybe France, Hodgson Burnett had a couple blind spots. Becky goes with Sarah to be her maid rather than her equal. So there were still these ideas of maybe preserving the different ranks of classes. It was ultimately a much, much better place for Becky to be. But it is interesting to note that there was still that idea that the whole master and servant dynamic was preserved in the movie that was made about this book. Becky is actually adopted as her sister. That's interesting that they chose to update that for a more modern audience. Yeah, and it's interesting how society does change and we need to be aware of that. Yeah, for sure. So back to Sarah, we see that she has enormous privilege, especially when paralleled with someone like Becky. Yet she uses it for good, for kindness, and she's able to fight against injustice because she has the resources and you know, all this Fighting for justice is limited because she's a child. It consists on sharing what she has on making a conscious effort to be kind. Thinking through her actions before she acts and speaks, and I thought that was actually really interesting that the author doesn't portray Sarah as this perfect little being for whom all of this comes naturally. She sometimes has to really fight against her circumstances, her hunger, her pain. And put a real conscious effort into how she's going to react. You know, that's a really good reminder for us when we feel discouraged because we can't take on a whole world problem or a whole system problem. It's a good reminder that a little bit can go a long way and can make these ripple changes. Yeah, maybe the world would be easier if people recognized that they have privilege. In multiple ways and use it for good, such as showing empathy for others. It's almost like having this little bit of a superpower that you maybe didn't ask for, and you can use that to make some real change in the world. It's also important to note that privilege is completely separate from character and it's just luck of the draw, as Sarah says in the book, why we are just the same. I'm only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I'm not you and you are not me. The same concept can be applied to a lack of privilege, such as poverty. Yeah. Who is born into poverty and who is not really is just luck of the draw. And there seems to be this subconscious idea that's floating around out there that poverty is a reflection of character, which. Is the result of the idea that you should just have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Meaning if you're poor, you should pull yourself out of poverty by your own efforts. And if you don't or can't, then that's a reflection of your character. You're not brave enough, smart enough, you don't have enough perseverance, et cetera. This is a dangerous ideology. It completely absolves those who are more wealthy of any responsibility to help others, and makes way for the hoarding of wealth to not be questioned. It ties people's value to the amount of money they have and contributes to this idea that we shouldn't help the poor because they deserve to be poor. And I think a lot of the time, this is subconscious. I think that if you asked somebody, then they would not necessarily agree with that statement, but they might have this subconscious. Idea in the back of their minds. And this can lead to disdain for people trapped in poverty and an unwillingness to help them with the resources you might have. And this leads back into this idea of social Darwinism that was mentioned at the beginning. So social Darwinism. A pseudoscientific field, which according to the Encyclopedia Britannica held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence, ruled by quote unquote the survival of the fittest. And this idea, if it's taken to the extreme, can lead to the extermination of one group of people by another, because they weren't strong enough to survive. But in day-to-day life. The most common expression of it is just that the poor deserve to be poor and they don't deserve any help because they are just unfit. And this leads to the idea that welfare programs should be dismantled because it's interfering with this natural process of selection. And a really common expression of social Darwinism I've heard in culture is, well, why should my tax dollars be used to help someone else? There's this idea that if people are poor, it's through their own choosing, which is not usually the case. There's usually a lot of factors that go into poverty. And it's very easy to be trapped within a cycle of poverty because sometimes it can be more expensive to be poor. Hear me out, author Terry prt puts it this way, if you are wealthy, you can afford a really good pair of boots, say costing$50 and they will last you 20 years. But if you can't afford a pair of boots that's that expensive, you'll buy a cheaper pair, say for$10, but they'll give out within six months, and then you'll have to buy another pair and another pair and another pair. In the end, the poor person will have spent a lot more on boots than the richer person who was able to pay$50 upfront to have good boots. And this dynamic is something that traps poor people in poverty. And poverty is actually really hard to escape despite. Factors like hard work and other things. It's not something that can be easily just, oh, you work hard and you won't be poor anymore. There's, it's not nearly as simple as that. There's a really good quote by Anand GI Harris, which says, when we confuse wealth with virtue, the poor can be blamed for their own poverty, and the rich can be seen as deserving of their fortunes. And you know, this leads to the valuing of people based on their wealth. And this has taken on really well in a little princess. The head mistress, miss Minchin, treats Sarah like a pet, the favorite, the princess, until she's stripped of all her wealth. Then she stops treating Sarah like a cherished little girl, and demotes her to servant status, treating her incredibly harshly. It's interesting that the level of quote unquote kindness that's being showed was really based on the class of the person receiving it. And with that comes this idea that. If you're wealthy, you should be respected and treated well. And when you're poor, you should be treated like dirt. And I have to wonder where this attitude came from. And we talked a bit about social Darwinism and how that led to this attitude, but I do wonder how it became so entrenched in our society and how has it even infiltrated religions that are supposed to be about helping poor people. That's something to think about. It's almost as if Sarah is being punished by Miss Minchin for her poverty, which ties back to this idea of poverty being a moral issue. There's this shallowness of Sarah being called a princess at the beginning when she's really rich and the real meaning. Really only comes through when she has nothing and still insists that she's a princess and it's not based on anything other than her actions towards others. So our lovely listeners, what do you think about being a princess or a prince? What do you think about it being about our actions rather than our money? Society sort of glorifies the idea of climbing the ladder, being wealthy, being upper class, not being kind or empathetic because that won't get you anywhere in life. But how we treat other people actually matters most in this world, and also not for the show of others, but just doing it because it's the right thing to do. And not only that, but. That's what makes for a meaningful life. The relationships that we form with others and the community around us, making life better for those around us brings meaning to life in a way that wealth just can't. There was a popular bumper sticker in the 1980s. It said he who dies with the most toys wins, and. I know that's a kind of darkly funny way of looking at it, but it's a good reminder that really we will all die, and it's the people in our life that matter and the impact that we can make in their lives that really matters. And a little princess emphasizes that it wasn't Sarah's wealth that made her a princess. Rather, she's a princess all along because of her kindness and the way that she treats people and the way that she holds onto her own intrinsic value. So let's be princesses and princess in that way. Let's be kind to others. Stand up for those less fortunate than ourselves like Sarah. Let's recognize the privilege that we might have and use it for good in the world. Honestly, it all boils down to Lily James' famous phrase in the 2015 Cinderella. Have courage and be kind. And on that note, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Literary Lamppost. Join us on Instagram and share your thoughts with us. We'll be posting a few community things this coming week, so keep an eye on both our posts and our story. We'd love to hear what you think. We would also love it if you joined us for discussion on Discord. The link for that is in our description. Also, share this podcast with somebody you think would enjoy it. And stay tuned for our next episode, which will be on the book a Little Prince. Subscribe to our YouTube at the literary lamppost, as well as subscribing on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or your preferred podcast platform to make sure that you don't miss any of our new episodes. Thanks for listening and see you next time. This podcast includes brief excerpts from literary works for the purpose of commentary, criticism, and analysis, which we believe constitutes fair use under copyright law. Our theme music was created by Joshua Ibit for exclusive use by the literary Lamppost podcast.