Genre: Historical Fiction/ Children's Literature.
Sara Crewe wins the hearts of readers with her resilience and stoic demeanor even in the face of adversity.
Born and brought up with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, she knows no wants and needs courtesy her extremely doting father Captain Ralph Crewe who more than makes up for the absence of maternal love in Sara’s life. She lives enveloped by luxury in India and at seven years of age has to leave for London as the hot and humid climate turns out to be not so favourable for her.
Sara’s stay at the Select Seminary run by the stern proprietress Miss Minchin is frought with many ups and downs as life throws many curve balls at poor Sara. A gifted, intelligent girl beyond her years, Sara becomes the cynosure of admiration and the envy that comes along with it in equal measures.
Sara is also the pupil of honour as her opulent father has loaded her wardrobe with silks, velvets, muffs, furs, hats and shoes and along with it paid for her boarding at a premium parlor room with a personal maid, a carriage and a pony. Her parting gift is a doll whom she calls Emily.
School life is replete with the class bullies Lavinia and Jessie whom she stands up to, defends the duller and smaller ones from their barbs and jostling which in turn earns her a deep friendship with Ermengarde and a four year old tot called Lottie who has 'no mamma' and to whom she becomes an adopted mother resulting in a deep kinship forming despite her own odds.
She is made much of and called Princess Sara because she has all the gracious ways of royalty, empathy for everyone she comes across including a scullery maid Becky who is ill-treated by Miss Minchin and the head cook for the drudge that she is and living on charity in the school attic.
Miss Minchin secretly detests the kind hearted Sara and when on her eleventh birthday, news of Captain Ralph Crewe’s demise due to jungle fever and a massive loss of fortune invested in diamond mines reaches the school, Miss Minchin sheds all her veneer of false politeness and snatches the parlour room back, dismisses the personal maid and takes possession of all of Sara’s expensive clothes and gifts leaving her only an old black frock and her doll Emily.
Relegated to the school attic without even a blazing fireplace for her boarding, her friends are heartbroken to see a sad turn of events but Sara remains ever so strong in mind and spirit, never once blaming her destiny but taking everything in her stride with a courage never before seen in a eleven year old.
Dismissed as a pupil, Miss Minchin exploits the child making her run errands for the school kitchen in pounding rain, blazing sunshine, sloppy squelching streets or harsh winters. Half-fed, Sara never once complains but pretends she is a princess. This imagination goes a long way in earning the respect of Ermengarde and Lottie who come to visit her often in the attic after lights are out. Becky becomes a staunch friend whom she calls ‘prisoner in the next cell’ and both of them live in a world of their own with Sara reading out to her or telling her stories.
To cut a long story short, Carmichael who was the business partner of Ralph Crewe wherein he had faced a major loss in the diamond mines is in search of the orphaned daughter and as luck would have it, buys the very house next to the school Sara works as a scullery maid.
After a long spell when the reunion happens, Carmichael is enraged at the treatment meted out to Sara and pulls her out of the school along with Becky, sternly admonishing Miss Minchin and adopts her into a comfortable life again. There is a happy ending for Sara who never once in the face of dire straits forgot her grace, manners and values of sharing, kindness and belief in the magic that would turn things around for her.
A heart tugging story as this had some great takeaways:
"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."
"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."
"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."
"What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else."
"Adversity tries people, and mine has tried you and proved how nice you are."
"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 thing, help and comfort and laughter and sometimes, kind laughter is the best help of all."
"Somehow, something always happens just before things get to the very worst. It is as if Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worse thing never quite comes."
And so it goes to say that these pearls of wisdom embedded in this enchanting tale written in the early 1900's with a timeless treasure of words and classy vocabulary will remain as my keepsake for a long, long time to come.
©️ Sangeetha Kamath
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