A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

    

Title: A Little Princess
Originally published: 1905
Dates read: 4/25/18-5/4/18
Back to the Classics category: Children's Classic
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett
British-born author of romance novels and children's books. Best known for The Secret Garden, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and A Little Princess. She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and married Dr. L. M. Burnett of Washington D.C. in 1873. Their son died of consumption in 1890. She divorced Burnett in 1898, a large scandal at the time. Famous in her own lifetime, she was often criticized in the press for working, being away from her husband, and the way she raised her son. She married Stephen Townsend in 1900 and divorced him in 1902. She died of heart failure in 1924. (source)

Plot summary:
Sara Crewe, an exceptionally intelligent and imaginative student at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies, is devastated when her adored, indulgent father dies. Now penniless and banished to a room in the attic, she is forced to work as a servant. Then Sara's fortunes change again.

Favorite quotes:
"What I believe about dolls is that they can do things they will not let us know about. Perhaps, really, my doll 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, my doll 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."

"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."

"If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that - warm things, kind things, sweet things - help and comfort and laughter - and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all."

"When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word - just to look at them and THINK. 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. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do."

Review:
This is the first time I'm reading this book and I've never seen the movies. The very blatant message in the book is that a princess isn't a princess because of wealth or the clothes she wears, but a person's thoughts and actions determine if she's a princess. Basically to be kind, polite, and not let anger control you is what it means to be a princess.

To me, the book was rather bland. The story was simple, there wasn't much depth to the characters, and it was predictable. Though I wasn't impressed as an adult, I do think it would a good read for children. At the beginning of the book, Sara, the main character, is 7 and, by the end of the book she is 13. A child reading the book in that age range would probably enjoy the book.

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Frances Hodgson Burnett have the last words:

"Being a princess has only to do with what you THINK of, and what you DO."