Summary
The novel begins with Sara Crewe, a seven-year-old girl, riding a cab through the dark streets of London with her father. Captain Crewe is part of the British Colonial infrastructure in India, where he has raised his child, and Sara feels alienated and confused in England. Furthermore, Captain Crewe is heartbroken by the thought of parting from his sensible, wise daughter: the two are evidently very close. However, they will soon be separated—they have come to England in order for Sara to begin her education at Miss Minchin's Seminary for Young Ladies, a prestigious girls' boarding school. After bringing Sara to school, meeting with the administration, and spending several days in London with his daughter, Captain Crewe will return to India alone. Both father and daughter have dreaded this moment for years, but Captain Crewe wants his daughter to receive a good education. They arrive at the imposing school building and meet the headmistress, Miss Minchin, who is solicitous and manipulative. She is, the narrator hints, primarily interested in Sara because of her family's wealth. Sara immediately dislikes Miss Minchin, and reflects that the headmistress is as ugly as Sara herself—although the narrator explains that Sara is not ugly, but merely believes herself to be so. Sara mentions a doll of hers named Emily, and her father explains to Miss Minchin that Emily does not yet exist—Sara has merely decided to buy and befriend a doll, who she will name Emily. Over the next few days, the Crewes go shopping for lavish clothes for Sara, and find Emily, a luxuriously realistic doll with whom Sara immediately falls in love. They even buy a custom-made wardrobe for Emily: Captain Crewe clearly cannot resist spoiling his beloved daughter. In fact, Miss Minchin and her kinder sister Amelia, who also works at the school, are surprised that Sara does not act entitled, as one might expect of someone with her privileges. When her father says farewell to her at the end of the chapter and leaves to return to India, she does not cry or throw a tantrum. Instead, she is quiet and somber.
Soon afterward, Sara begins her lessons at the school. On her first day of class, all eyes are on her. Other students know that she is extraordinarily wealthy and that she has expensive clothes and even a maid of her very own, a French woman named Mariette. In fact, two students, named Lavinia and Jessie, gossip about her luxurious lifestyle while they wait for class to begin. Sara is unaware that she is the center of attention. She has spent most of her free time talking to her doll, Emily, and chatting with her maid. Miss Minchin herself enters the room and asks the students to greet their new peer. Miss Minchin also tells Sara that, since her father has hired a French maid for her, she assumes he intends for her to learn French. When Sara mildly assures her that her father simply thought Mariette and Sara would get along, Miss Minchin tells Sara that she is spoiled. Sara—whose mother was French and whose father continued to speak French to her after her mother's death—already speaks the language, but is too shy and polite to explain this. When Monsieur Dufarge, the French teacher, enters the room full of students to greet his newest pupil, Sara notes his kind manner and explains her situation to him in fluent French. Miss Minchin, who is insecure about her own inability to speak French, scolds Sara for failing to explain herself fully. Feeling embarrassed in front of the giggling students, she starts to resent Sara.
During the rest of the class, Sara watches a student named Ermengarde St. John. Ermengarde is chubby, awkward, and hopeless at speaking French, and Sara feels quite defensive of her, especially when Miss Minchin scolds her and when the other students laugh at her. After class, Sara introduces herself to Ermengarde, who is surprised that the exotic new student is interested in her. A brief dive into Ermengarde's perspective reveals that she is known as the school's academic underachiever, and that her insecurity is heightened because she has a very intelligent father. Sara invites Ermengarde to her private playroom, explaining that her father has paid for it because she likes to make up stories and tell them aloud to herself. Ermengarde is in awe of Sara, and Sara is charmed by Ermengarde. Sara confides in Ermengarde, introducing her to her doll, Emily, and describing her sadness at being separated from her father. Before their playdate ends, they agree to be friends and help one another.
As Sara's first schoolyears pass, she is happy enough. Miss Minchin praises everything she does because of her wealth, but Sara has enough sense and humility not to let it go to her head. However, as Ermengarde points out to Sara, not all of their fellow students are as kind—the older Lavinia, for instance, is a bully who insists on getting her way. Lavinia envies Sara because she gets her way—not because she is feared, but because she is beloved. Younger students are especially fond of Sara, who even hosts tea parties for them in her room: when Lavinia slaps a four-year-old named Lottie, the school's youngest pupil, Sara comforts her. For a time, the narrative cuts away from Sara and shows a conversation between Lavinia and her friend Jessie, and while Jessie is somewhat susceptible to the new student's charms, Lavinia maintains her skepticism and dislike.
Lottie, however, only grows more attached to Sara. She is prone to tantrums, and, having lost her mother before coming to the seminary, knows how easily she can get her way by soliciting others' pity. One day Sara passes the room in which she is wailing and yelling about her motherlessness while Miss Minchin and Amelia Minchin watch helplessly. Miss Minchin is too cruel and Amelia too hapless to make Lottie stop, so, when Sara offers to help, they accept with relief. Sara waits for Lottie to announce once again that she has no mother, and then explains that her own mother has also died. This catches Lottie's interest, and Sara spins a whimsical tale about how their mothers are together, watching over them in a wonderful place full of flowers. Sara offers to be a mother figure to Lottie during their time at school, and Lottie eagerly agrees and stops crying.
Analysis
When Sara gets to school in London, her understanding of reality is flipped: while she has always been part of a British ruling class in India, she is suddenly an outsider in the nation of her ancestry. Of course, she remains wealthy, and her foreignness earns her a certain mystique among her schoolmates, but her upbringing in Britain's faraway colony has granted her high status in India and made her feel supremely out-of-place in London. Readers might also note how blithely Burnett addresses the topic of colonialism. While modern audiences are likely to recognize the cruelty and oppressiveness of the colonial structures from which this novel's protagonist benefits, India and its people, in this narrative, remain largely an exoticized idea rather than a concrete or nuanced reality. Even Sara's father, the only element of her life in India who is actually present within one of these scenes, is a somewhat unreal figure: Sara adores him so completely that he represents an ideal of love, protection, and wealth as much as an individual character.
Of course, Sara's own perspective limits the reader's impressions only to an extent, since Burnett makes use of a third-person omniscient point of view. This allows her to relay information to the reader concerning Sara's reputation without making Sara herself appear egotistical, or overly concerned about her own popularity. After all, since two of Sara's most prominent characteristics are kindness and innocence, Burnett needs a way to portray her character's kindness without diminishing her innocence. She does this by describing the thoughts and conversations other characters have about the protagonist, all while Sara herself remains blissfully unaware. For instance, Burnett lets readers listen in on Lavinia and Jessie's conversation about Sara, and clues us into Miss Minchin's secret resentment of her star pupil. Burnett, for her part, is able to offer judgment or censure of unkind characters like Miss Minchin, whereas Sara herself might be likely to extend the benefit of the doubt. These moments also provide dramatic irony, letting readers know about potential conflicts and challenges Sara may face later in the book. Though Sara is generally well-liked, several powerful members of the school community are clearly eager to put her in her place, and Sara herself is unaware.
Sara, for her part, cares little about what Lavinia and Miss Minchin think of her. She is generally uninterested in the mundane facts of school life, preferring to escape into her active imagination. For Sara, imagination is not a mere game or eccentricity, as her detractors tend to believe: it is a source of great strength, allowing her to maintain empathy and self-control even when faced with unsettling conditions. Therefore she copes with her separation from her father, for instance, by acquiring a doll who she treats as an imaginary friend. Though she relishes the privacy that imagination grants her, particularly within the shared space of boarding school, Sara thinks of storytelling and pretend play as a way to share and express solidarity with others. For this reason, she introduces Ermengarde to Emily and tells a comforting story to the orphaned Lottie. Not everyone, though, is treated to the fruits of Sara's imagination. Cruel and status-obsessed Lavinia, among others, sees evidence of it only from the outside. Instead, Sara reserves both her imaginative prowess and her attention for those who seem troubled or unappreciated. This includes Ermengarde, who is widely considered stupid, and Lottie, who is so young as to be beneath the notice of most students. Perhaps because she is an outsider in a sense despite her wealth, having grown up far away, Sara naturally sympathizes with the maligned and powerless. Sara, to a degree, is a romanticized child figure common across the English-language children's literature of this period. She is kind, respectful, and disciplined, but with an extremely active fantasy life that allows her to rebel privately without causing difficulty for others. In fact, readers who are more accustomed to the children's literature protagonists of the twenty-first century might find Sara unrealistic. Sara's personality, though, may be intended for didactic purposes as much as for faithful portrayal of reality. Many writers of this era aimed to present idealized childhood characters who could model appropriate behavior for real children of the same class or gender, while still remaining entertaining. While boys in literature of this time may have been more likely to model the empire-building characteristics of adventurousness, bravery, and strength, female protagonists like Sara show how to properly prepare for life in the domestic sphere. Sara, who is described as motherly and patient, is a perfect example of this domesticity.
