A
LITTLE PRINCESS
DATI EDITORIALI
Title: A little princess
Writer:
Frances
Hodgson Burnett
Editor:
Xist
classics
Pages:
177
TIME OF THE STORY
About six years.
PLOT
Sara
Crewe is only seven years old when she leaves her bungalow and her life in
India to return in England and go to Miss Milchin’s Seminary for Young Ladies.
Sara
is a pretty, clever, odd and solemn little girl, she loves the books, her doll
Emily and her tender father.
Her
father, Captain Ralph Crewe, is a young and rich man who loves her little
daughter and entrust her in Miss Milchin’s hands.
When
her papa is gone, Sara felt very alone in the big school, in which she is
treated like a little princess because she and her father are rich people.
She’s
got richly embroided silk dresses, and plumgy caps, and softy cloaks, and downy
showls, and nice little shoes, and pretty sashes, and colourful frocks, and
elegant gowns, and silk stocks and gloves, and handchiefs, and a lot of
magnific things.
Her
beloved doll has got a rich and luxurious wardrobe, too.
Her
companion Lavinia invys her, and snobbs her, pretending Sara is only a silly
child and that her things are absurd and ridicolus.
One
day, a terrible notice comes: Captain Crewe has died, and little Sara is poor
and alone.
She’s
got only her intimate friend/doll Emily and herself.
Miss
Milchin, a cruel, heartless woman, says her that she can stay in the school,
but that she’ll has to work for her living.
From
that moment, Sara has to work hardly, sleep in a terrible attic full of rats
and mices, wear old and shabby dresses, bear orders and scoldings.
Her
old companions don’t speak with her anymore now that she isn’t “Princess Sara”
and that she’s “a beggar”, Lavinia critizes her, Jessie giggles over her
shabbiness and Miss Milchin is stritch and cold.
Sara
is alone, and her heart full of sore would break if it wasn’t for her only
friends: the doll Emily, the dull and affectionate Ermengarde, poor, sweet,
little Becky and the pretty, little, spoiled Lottie.
During
the time Sara passes in the attic she makes friend with a rat, the clever,
gray-fured, bright-eyed Melchisedec.
He
has a family to take care of and Sara fed them with crumbs.
She
speaks with him often, and he stays near his hole in the wall, watching at her
interested, like he understoods what she’s saying.
Sara
is a strong little girl, and has got a big imagination: she likes pretending
things, like that the dreadful attic is the Bastille, Becky the prisoner af the
next cell and Miss Milchin the jailer.
Slowly,
pretending and supposing that things are better than they are in reality becomes
for her a way to bear humiliatons, hunger, cold, and to escape from a world
that seems sometimes too hard for her little hungry body and her suffering soul.
When
she pretends she’s a fairy princess, she can bear everything and everybody.
One
day, in the house of the next door, arrive an Indian Gentleman.
He’s
got a mistery past, people only know that he’s an Englishman who has lived in
India for many time, that he owned diamond mines, but that he has almost lost
all his immense fortune for a bad affair.
He’s
got a terrible brain fever and he’s almost died, but now he’s better.
Sara
grows fond of him because he seems always so ill, unhappy, hopeless, homesick,
restless and sad, and she’d like to help him like she was used to do for her
beloved papa when he was ill.
Sara
doesn’t know that the Indian gentleman is always so restless because he has
rouined his best friend, who had put all his money in diamond mines.
His
friend is died, leaving his little daugher friendless and penniless.
He
doesn’t remember little girl’s name or her age, but only that she’s in a school
somewhere.
He
thinks she’s in a French school in Paris, but he isn’t sure at all.
He’s
always thinking that it’s his fault if the child is ruined and he’d like to
help her.
So
he’s in search of her disperately, hoping to find her to say her that he’s
sorry to everything he’s done and that he wishes to help her.
One
day Sara meets Ram Dass, the Indian gentlman’s Lascar, who has a little,
peppery monkey.
He
grows fond of that poor, pretty, princess-like little girl.
Ram
Dass sees how miserable Sara is e how shabby and poor her attic is, so he speaks
with his master of her conditions.
The
Indian gentleman is sad and restless, so he choses to help that child.
One
night, when Sara awake herself, she finds that her attic is totally changed: it’s
got a glowing fire with dancing flames in the grate, nice pictures on the
walls, a thick rug on the bare floor, soft dawny cushions and a silk coverlet
on her narrow bed, an armchair near the warm fire and a pretty table with a hot
dinner.
Af
first Sara thinks that she’s still dreaming, but when she touchs the things and
wears her new beautiful dress she understands that all this is true.
She
calls Becky, and they together enjoy all that delights, a little afraid that
the next morning the Magic will be broken.
When
they get up, the day after, they see that the things are all here: it wasn’t a
dream! Sara’s dreams have became true!
From
that day, avery times Sara opens the attic door there are new fantastic furniture
or objects that make her comfortable.
Quikly
the once bare attic has got every sort of nice things into: it’s a little
beautiful, warm room.
Though
after all she has to work hardly and to run errands, now Sara knows that when
at night she’ll go into the attic there
will be a filling meal and an alight fire and a
warm and soft bed for her, so she isn’t sad anymore.
One
day, in a book, she finds these words written in the flyleaf: “I am your
friend”.
So
she knows that she isn’t completely alone in the world, and that someone cares about
her a little: this is sweeter than all the other things.
One
night, she hears a scratch from the skylight: she opens it and sees the little Indian
gentleman’s monkey.
The day after Sara
steals out and goes in the Indian gentleman’s house to give the lovely monkey
back to his owner.
The Indian gentleman
askes her some questions: she tells him that her father Captain Ralph Crewe is
died because he has put all his money into his friend’s diamond mines and when
he’s lost his fortune the pain has killed him.
So Indian gentleman
understands that Sara is the child he was in search of!
The Indian gentleman
calls Miss Milchin to say her that Sara won’t return in her Seminary and that she’ll
stay with him.
Miss Milching grows
angry, and she understands that for her cruelness she’s lost her best pupil.
The Indian gentleman
says Sara that he’s got all her father’s money, and that for some good affairs
now they’re tenfold.
From that day in
forth Sara lives in the Indian gentleman’s house.
In a very short time
they become great friends.
The Indian gentleman
(whose real name is Thomas Carrisford, “Uncle Tom” for Sara) is a new man, he
recoveres totally from his long illness and becomes a happy, smiling man, full
of good thoughts, joy and optimism.
He dearly loves Sara,
which becomes the little daughter he has never had.
Sara grows fonder and
fonder of him, too, because he reminds her her past papa.
She is his “Little
Missus” and quikly he becomes her best friend.
Together they read,
speak and remember the past, so they lifes full themselves of happiness and
cheerfullness and joy.
Now that she’s rich
again, Sara can do avery sort of good things to children who are as poor and
hungry as she was.
Becky becomes her
personal maid, so that now she isn’t hungry or cold or scold anymore, then Sara
says to a bun-woman to give hot-smoking bread to hungry children in cold or
foggy or muddy days, and that she’ll pay for them.
PERSONAL COMMENT
I liked this book
very much.
It’s delicate, sweet,
exciting and the story is deep.
Through Sara and her
disaventures, Frances Hodgson Burnett critizes the society of her time and
wants to teach children – and at people of every age, too – how important
kindness, sweetness and imagining are.
Sara is very similar
to me: she loves books and loses herself into them, she likes telling stories,
she enjoys studing and teach to people and she likes pretending things that
make seem the world better.
She is more gentle
and good than me, to speak the truth.
I liked Becky, too.
At the beginning,
she’s afraid, lonely and hungry, but when she meets Sara she understands that
kindness and laughters are as filling as pieces of cakes.
I didn’t like
Ermengarde, she’s too dull, but I liked Lottie because, though she is spoiled
and she’s a cry-baby, she needs a mamma, and in Sara she finds a very lovely
one.
Finally, I hated Mrs.
Milchin and Lavinia, I felt sad for poor silly Miss Amelia, and I loved Sara’s
father.
This book is beautiful,
and I found in it emotions that I felt only when I read it in Italian, years
ago.
