Summary
Sara's new life begins right away. She spends her first sleepless night in the attic trying to process the news of her father's death and listening to the scurrying of rats and mice. The next day, she is told to sit with the small children at breakfast and keep them quiet. The other servants enjoy ordering her around, and while at first she thinks that her good attitude and helpfulness might make them like her more, they continue to treat her badly. Though she is required to help teach French to other students, she only gets to learn at night, in deserted classrooms. She becomes increasingly isolated from her schoolmates, partly because they feel awkward around her and partly because she has so little time to interact with them, largely by Ms. Minchin's design: the headmistress does not want Sara to talk to them about her life and inspire sympathy. She is comforted, though, by three people. The first is Becky. They don't get to talk much when they're working, but Sara feels better knowing that Becky is nearby, and Becky helps Sara get ready before her long days of work. Ermengarde, too, remains by Sara's side. At first, Sara basically forgets Ermengarde, who is dull and quiet enough to be forgettable. One day, Ermengarde runs into Sara and asks whether she is "very unhappy," and Sara, feeling insulted, gives a curt answer and storms off. Ermengarde becomes quietly miserable, and, one night, Sara discovers that Ermengarde has snuck into her attic room and is waiting for Sara's return. The girls reconcile after each one realizes that she interpreted her friend's awkwardness and sadness as hostility. Making up with Ermengarde allows Sara's temporarily stunned imagination to start working again, so that when Ermengarde asks how Sara can bear living in the attic, Sara resolves to pretend that she is a prisoner in the Bastille. Sara also claims that her trials have made her judgmental of Ermengarde, proving she is not good at heart, while Ermengarde's pain has shown her truly brave and generous nature.
Sara's final source of comfort is Lottie. Lottie, worried about her adopted mother, wants to know where Sara lives now that she has abandoned her room. Sara avoids telling her, but Lottie finds the room anyway after overhearing some useful gossip about Sara. She sneaks into the room, shocking Sara, and is upset by its drabness and bareness. Sara comforts her by describing how exciting it is to live in an attic, since she can see chimneys and birds, and since it feels like a separate world. The two girls look out of the window together, and to Lottie the view feels almost magical. Sara notes an attic window directly across from her, and tells Lottie that she wishes another girl lived in that attic, since they would be able to talk to one another through their windows. The girls feed crumbs to a few sparrows, and Sara vividly describes to Lottie how beautiful the room would be if it was well-decorated. This soothes Lottie, but when she departs, Sara feels even more desolate than before. However, she catches sight of a rat in her room and feels pity for it, realizing that rats are objects of disgust. The rat, for his part, is afraid of Sara: Burnett informs the reader that he has a hungry family living behind the room's walls. Eventually, though, he is convinced of her kindness. Burnett speculates that all creatures, even rats, are able to understand and empathize with one another beyond language, so that the rat knows how trustworthy Sara is. Soon after, Ermengarde drops by and is surprised to see Sara feeding the rat crumbs and affectionately calling it "Melchisedec." Sara convinces Ermengarde that the rat can be trusted, and explains to her friend the elaborate system of communication she and Becky have created by knocking on their adjacent wall to send messages. Ermengarde is struck by how much Sara's life resembles stories she has heard, to which Sara responds that "everything's a story."
While Sara once earned stares and positive attention every time she went out, now, when she leaves school to run errands, she looks so shabby that people barely notice her. However, she likes watching other children, especially those belonging to a family that lives near the school. She dubs them "the large family," because they have so many children, and privately gives each child an aristocratic-sounding imaginary name. One member of this family, a small boy Sara calls "Guy Clarence," is emotionally affected by stories he hears about a wealthy child giving poor children food, gifts, or money to help them. He has a sixpence piece and longs to give it to a less fortunate child, especially since it is Christmas time, and the disparities between rich and poor are on display even more than usual. One day he sees Sara and insists on giving her his sixpence. She refuses, at first, and the boy's sisters are struck by the fact that she talks like a wealthy child. Eventually, seeing that the boy (whose real name is Donald) wants to share his money, Sara swallows her pride and takes the sixpence. Afterward, this family becomes intrigued by Sara.
One day, Sara feels so lonely and desperate that she loses her temper at her beloved doll, Emily, and knocks her to the floor. She apologizes to the doll afterward, noting that it is not in Emily's control that she is only a doll, but she is shaken by her own loss of control. Shortly after, she is excited to see a moving van at the house next door. She hopes that someone will appear in the attic window of the house for her to talk to. She does not know who will be moving in, but feels heartened when she sees the person's furniture, which reminds her of the decor she used to see in India. Becky soon reports that the house's new owner is an Indian man, and that he "worships idols," though Sara is doubtful of this second claim. When the man moves in, it is clear that he has brought no family with him and that he is very rich, but very ill. Not long after, Sara is watching a beautiful sunset through her window when she sees a face appear in the attic window of the house next door. She believes that the face belongs to a "Lascar," an Indian manservant. The man is holding a monkey, who slips between the windows into Sara's room, making her laugh. Sara greets the man in "Hindustani" (what would now be called Hindi), and he is evidently relieved and excited to hear his own language so far from home. He replies, telling her that his name is Ram Dass, that the monkey will not harm her, and that he can come fetch it himself if Sara will allow him to cross the space between their windows and enter her room. She consents, and Ram Dass, entering her room, treats her politely in spite of her barren surroundings and tattered clothes. She realizes how much has changed from her days in India, when she was treated with respect bordering on reverence, but resolves to maintain her princess-like self-control. Indeed, one day when she is helping younger students with French, she laughs out loud thinking about how she would avenge herself on her oppressors if she was a real princess. Miss Minchin demands to know why she is laughing, prompting Sara, in front of her classmates, to calmly announce that Miss Minchin does not "know what (she is) doing." The students in the room are shocked and amused by the fight, while Miss Minchin is made momentarily powerless by Sara's bravery.
Meanwhile, Sara feels increasingly affectionately towards the man next door—Ram Dass's employer—though they have never spoken. Like Sara's father, he is English by birth but has spent his recent years in India. Also, like Sara's father, he is suffering from a mixture of illness and financial troubles stemming from dealing with diamond mines, which Sara learns from overhearing other servants' gossip. Sara imagines that, even though the man next door cannot speak to her, he can somehow feel her well-wishes and sympathy. Meanwhile, two girls from the "Large Family," named Janet and Nora, make regular visits to the lonely man, who has a soft spot for children. Janet tells the man, whose name is Mr. Carrisford, about her encounter with Sara, and Ram Dass shares the story of his monkey climbing through Sara's window. Altogether, these tales intrigue Mr. Carrisford, and, troubled, he mentions his concern for Sara and other poor children to Mr. Carmichael, the father of the "Large Family." The reader witnesses a surprising conversation between Carmichael and Carrisford, in which it becomes clear that Carmichael is desperately looking for the lost daughter of his old friend, the late Ralph Crewe—that is, he is looking for Sara. He believes her to be in school in Paris, since her mother was French. He has a large fortune to bequeath her, and is wracked with guilt over being unable to find her, since he knows she may be suffering. Though Crewe and Carrisford were close friends and business partners, Carrisford can barely remember anything about Sara, including her name and the name of her school, since he was suffering from "brain fever" at the time of Crewe's death and since Crewe only referred to his daughter by the pet name "Little Missus." Sara, meanwhile, is on her side of the wall, lamenting her orphanhood and routine humiliation to Melchisedec and completely unaware that she is being sought after.
Analysis
Perhaps the most consistently touched-upon theme in this novel is the utility of imagination. For Sara, imagination is no mere escape. It allows her to stay strong enough to survive, and, far from isolating her within a mental world of childlike whimsy, gives her the tools she needs to stand up to the villains in her life. For this reason, Sara's use of princesses as both fodder for fantasy and as a metaphor for dignity in the face of hardship allows her to steal some of Miss Minchin's otherwise unquestioned power. However, the events of this chapter also ask readers to examine the limits of imagination and empathy. When "Guy Clarence" from next door is moved by a story to give his sixpence to Sara, his intentions are good, but the empathy he gains from his story is not actually very helpful. For one thing, Sara finds his offer humiliating, and only accepts it out of kindness. For another, the money he gives is more of a gesture than a substantial sum, and isn't enough to change Sara's circumstances. This isn't to say that he isn't a kind or sympathetic character—only that Burnett represents imagination and empathy as tools requiring logic, discipline, and toughness as well as raw emotion.
Miss Minchin, in spite of her small-mindedness, is well aware of the power that a good storyteller wields. For this reason, she inhibits Sara's ability to speak with other students, realizing dimly that a storyteller as gifted as Sara might be able to provoke empathy and possibly even righteous anger among her classmates. To an extent, Miss Minchin succeeds. However, a few factors get in her way. Firstly, friendship is a powerful force in this novel, so much so that Lottie and Ermengarde risk their own safety to visit Sara and to hear her story. In these moments, both telling and hearing stories becomes a brave and deeply important act. Secondly, Sara is such a devoted storyteller and listener that she will always find an audience. Therefore, relegated to a rat-filled attic, she simply makes friends with the local rats and birds. In this way, she actually expands her own powers of empathy, and is able to help even those she once maligned, like Melchisedec. Burnett's thesis here seems to be that, if you are a truly open and generous person (a princess, metaphorically speaking) then trials and challenges will only expand your generosity.
In spite of this book's emphasis on treating the less-fortunate with humanity and openness, readers are likely to note that Burnett's descriptions include some fairly consistent racism. These racist portrayals are by no means unusual by the standards of children's literature from the period, but they're still worth discussing. Though early in the novel, Burnett describes Sara's upbringing in India through a somewat exoticizing lens, it isn't until chapter eleven that a non-white character is introduced. This character is Ram Dass, who is represented as well-meaning but rather simple. Like the other Indian characters in the book, Ram Dass's main desire is to cater to Sara, a white child who spent her childhood in India as part of the oppressive British colonial presence there. This novel rather blithely describes the total reverence with which Sara was treated by her servants back home, neglecting to touch on the fact that, in reality, these servants would have been forced to serve Sara's family through a complex system of economic and military domination, and probably would not have been uniformly thrilled to do so.
Another aspect of this novel which might dismay contemporary readers is Burnett's portrayal of nonstandard English speech. On the one hand, the way that Burnett evokes accents like Becky's can be a fascinating glimpse into the way everyday people spoke in turn-of-the-century London. On the other hand, even in a book that emphasizes nonjudgmental treatment of others, readers will likely note a certain condescension when it comes to lower-class or nonwhite speech. Ram Dass's brief monologue in chapter eleven is paraphrased rather than relayed word for word, but even in its summarized nature, it is somewhat stereotyped and exaggerated. For instance, Ram Dass seems to speak about himself in the third person, and his dialogue is effusive, reinforcing the idea that he is overjoyed to serve European children. Becky, meanwhile, is another character portrayed positively but through a rather stereotyped lens. Becky's speech is interesting and richly textured, and, because she speaks in a working-class London dialect rather than in Sara's standard English, her speech includes features such as dropped "H" sounds at the start of words and additional "R" sounds added between vowels. Even Sara, who is generally a paragon of open-mindedness, seems to equate her friend's accent with a lack of education and knowledge. For this reason, when thinking about her own need to continue learning, she muses, “I am almost a scullery maid, and if I am a scullery maid who knows nothing, I shall be like poor Becky. I wonder if I could quite forget and begin to drop my H’s and not remember that Henry the Eighth had six wives.”
