A Little Princess

The power of the imagination is a major theme of A Little Princess. Sara Crewe uses her exceptional ability to imagine to comfort herself and endure harsh treatment as well as to help others. Sara attempts to deal with her upcoming separation from her beloved papa by imagining a doll named Emily who will serve as her intimate friend. When Sara finds her ideal doll in the shop window, her strong imagination enables her to feel as if she and the doll already know each other: “A flush had risen to her face and there was an expression in her green-gray eyes as if she had just recognized someone she was intimate with and fond of” (12). During Sara’s separation from her father, she relies on pretending that her doll Emily is alive, with the ability to hear and understand what Sara confides in her. Sara enjoys imagining that all dolls secretly read, talk, and walk when humans leave the room; they return to doll-like stillness when people return.

Sara helps her friends Ermengarde, Lottie, and Becky by utilizing her imagination. When Ermengarde struggles with her lessons and has difficulty recalling what she reads, Sara tells her vividly imagined accounts that enable her to remember: “She plunged into the gory records of the French Revolution, and told such stories of it . . . that there was a delightful thrill in listening” (188). Consequently, Ermengarde will not “forget Robespierre again” (188). Sara quiets and comforts the motherless Lottie with her lovely stories about their deceased parents in heaven: “Whatsoever story she had begun to tell, Lottie would no doubt have stopped crying; but there was no denying that this story was prettier than most others” (48). Finally, Sara uplifts and inspires the small, overworked servant girl Becky with her spellbinding stories of princesses and mermaids, giving her a restful escape from her harsh life.

Sara gains far more admiring followers through her inventive storytelling than with her luxurious possessions or her academic achievements as a “show pupil.” When Sara begins to imagine wonderful things, she unconsciously dramatizes them with her movements and voice; she sees and lives the adventures she is relating. Sara states that her story seems more real to her than her surroundings while she is telling it: “Her trick of pretending things was the joy of her life” (63). However, the shock of the news of her father’s death and her alteration of circumstances temporarily stuns Sara’s imaginative power: “It had not worked for her at all since her troubles had come upon her” (108). When Ermengarde proves to be a loyal friend and asks Sara if she can bear living in the attic, Sara’s imagination revives, and she answers that she can tolerate it if she pretends that the attic is a place in a story. Sara then imagines she is a longtime prisoner in the Bastille, Miss Minchin is the jailer, and Becky is the prisoner in the next cell.

Sara survives Miss Minchin’s harsh treatment by pretending that she is a royal personage in disguise. When she is ravenous with hunger, she imagines finding a coin near a bakery. Suddenly, Sara experiences her dream as a reality when she discovers a fourpence next to a baker’s shop. After deciding to give almost all her purchased buns to a girl who is begging for food, Sara supposes that she has a “magic bun,” so a bite of it “was as much as a whole dinner” (172). Eventually, Sara’s vision of having comforts in her attic room is overheard by Ram Dass, enabling her imagination to be transformed into reality, so that Sara feels as if she “‘might wish for anything—diamonds or bags of gold—and they would appear!’” (221).