A Little Princess
One of the most beautiful and earliest books I remember my mother reading to me was A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It’s about a wealthy little girl whose mother is gone and she is raised by a doting father who only wants the best for her. So he sends her to boarding school so she can meet and play with other little girls. Sara is a “queer” (it doesn’t mean then what it means now. She is not homosexual. Back then, the word just meant unusual) because she prefers to read rather than play with other girls. Still, she manages to make playmates and companions.
Sara has everything handed to her. As many frocks (dresses) as she wants, all the dolls she could ask for, and a suite of rooms where she can have tea parties with her friends. She naturally would be spoiled but instead she’s very polite. Still, she has to wonder if she is only this way because she hasn’t had any ‘trials’ yet. When I read this for the first time (at six or seven), I wondered to myself “Who cares? Who thinks this much?” As I grew older and more introspective, I realized what an important question it is. And that we should each ask ourselves this same question.
Sara has a big birthday party where she gets “the Last Doll” because Sara is getting too old for dolls (in her own opinion). During the party, the hard-hearted head of the boarding school Miss Minchkin learns that Sara’s father has passed away after investing all his money into diamond mines which turned out to be a pipe dream. Miss Minchkin is left without pay and, very angry, she turns Sara into a little servant. Sara is forced to dress in clothes too small, live in the freezing attic, and educate the younger students. She is starving and lonely. She realizes these are the trials and that she must whether this.
Though she has no idea, things are about to get better. It turns out her father went into business with the partner and this partner has been looking for Sara. Not only that but the diamond mines actually were real this entire time making Sara a million times more wealthy than she had ever been and leaving Miss Minchkin looking heartless indeed.
This book reminds me of the phrase “’I’m going to make you happy,’ said Life, ‘but first I’m going to make you strong,”. It is my experience that you usually have to go through hell to get to the sunny spots on the other side. Every few months my life will have an upheaval in the form of a manic episode or a depressive episode or a patch of rough OCD. Sometimes I will have to be watched by my parents, even needing to shower under supervision or sleep with my mom in her bed. It gets me down. But these are the very trials Sara was talking about. I don’t want diamond mines. I don’t want dolls and frocks and I don’t need a way out of poverty because I have everything provided for me. I just want the depression to abate and to feel at peace with myself.
Not only did I feel like a character in a novel, I wanted to be a character in a novel. So I wrote my memoir. It’s about ruined friendships, betrayed trust, mental illness, and staying brave on dark February nights when everyone has left you and all you have at your feet is a broken flowerpot. Not to be dramatic or anything.
I also want, to thank my mom for sharing this book with me. Growing up we read together every day and I know that if I approached her with a book today and said, “Mom this book inspired me/ it’s really funny/ I think you’ll really like it,” she would read it with me. Two years ago we read the entire Harry Potter series together even though she really doesn’t like fantasy. I look forward to sharing more of my own writing with her. If she hadn’t read so much to me as a kid, I wouldn’t be the writer that I am today. And if I wasn’t a writer I wouldn’t have gotten through the “trials”. Writing has saved me. For Sara it was the knowledge that deep down she was always “a little princess”.
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