A Little Princess

“It was respectable and well furnished, but everything in it was ugly; and the very armchairs seemed to have hard bones in them.”

When Sara Crewe arrives at the Seminary for Young Ladies, she thinks that the house resembles the schoolmistress, Miss Minchin. Frances Hodgson Burnett personifies the house and its furnishings with her word choices—the armchairs appeared to have “hard bones” in them and “the red cheeks of the moon face on the tall clock . . . had a severe varnished look” (7). With the adjectives “hard,” “respectable,” and “ugly,” Burnett foreshadows Miss Minchin’s character: externally respectable but internally unkind.

“A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her green-gray eyes as if she had just recognized some one she was intimate with and fond of.”

Burnett describes the moment that Sara finds her ideal doll: Sara’s expression is that of someone who just recognized a friend. Sara attempts to deal with the upcoming separation from her beloved papa by imagining a doll named Emily who will serve as her intimate friend. The episode shows The Power of the Imagination as Sara’s strong imagination gives her the feeling that she knows the doll the moment she sees her in the shop window.

“‘No,’ she answered. ‘I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.’”

Sara’s mother died when she was born; consequently, Sara has a very close relationship with her father. Sara is also an avid reader. When Sara’s papa is about to part with her and return to