SuitabookA Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Reading
- If the racialised language comes up, pause to distinguish the characters’ attitudes from respectful language today. You could also check in during the story’s bereavement and hardship.
- Themes
- Imagination and kindness: Sara invents stories to sustain herself and entertain her friends, and shares what she can with others. Sara’s storytelling helps sustain her and entertain her friends; her generosity also affects those around her.
- Hardship and class: Sara moves from a life of comfort into poverty at the school, while the story contrasts wealthy possessions with the deprivation of poor people in London. The contrast between wealthy comforts and poor Londoners’ deprivation highlights differences in living conditions; the story places goodness above possessions.
- Racialised language: The story includes racialised language about a neighbour and in recollections of Sara’s life in India. Racialised language and an outmoded perspective appear alongside the story’s emphasis on Sara’s goodness towards others.
- Worth knowing
- The story includes a parent’s death, harsh treatment by the headmistress, and poverty involving hunger and cold. It also contains racial stereotyping in references to a neighbour and to Sara’s time in India.