Article #146-1 | Gutenberg Articles

Excerpt

Excerpt from A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Of course the greatest power Sara possessed and the one which gained
her even more followers than her luxuries and the fact that she was
"the show pupil," the power that Lavinia and certain other girls were
most envious of, and at the same time most fascinated by in spite of
themselves, was her power of telling stories and of making everything
she talked about seem like a story, whether it was one or not.

Anyone who has been at school with a teller of stories knows what the
wonder means--how he or she is followed about and besought in a whisper
to relate romances; how groups gather round and hang on the outskirts
of the favored party in the hope of being allowed to join in and
listen. Sara not only could tell stories, but she adored telling them.
When she sat or stood in the midst of a circle and began to invent
wonderful things, her green eyes grew big and shining, her cheeks
flushed, and, without knowing that she was doing it, she began to act
and made what she told lovely or alarming by the raising or dropping of
her voice, the bend and sway of her slim body, and the dramatic
movement of her hands. She forgot that she was talking to listening
children; she saw and lived with the fairy folk, or the kings and
queens and beautiful ladies, whose adventures she was narrating.
Sometimes when she had finished her story, she was quite out of breath
with excitement, and would lay her hand on her thin, little,
quick-rising chest, and half laugh as if at herself.

"When I am telling it," she would say, "it doesn't seem as if it was
only made up. It seems more real than you are--more real than the
schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people in the story--one after
the other. It is queer."

Explanation

**Detailed Explanation of the Excerpt from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett**

This passage from A Little Princess (1905) captures the magnetic charm of its protagonist, Sara Crewe, focusing on her extraordinary gift for storytelling. The novel, a revised and expanded version of Burnett’s earlier serial Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin’s Boarding School (1888), is a coming-of-age story that blends realism with fairy-tale elements, exploring themes of imagination, resilience, poverty, and inner nobility. Sara, once a wealthy and pampered student at a London boarding school, later endures hardship after her father’s death leaves her penniless. Yet, her rich inner world—fueled by her storytelling—sustains her and enchants those around her.

This excerpt occurs before Sara’s fall from grace, when she is still the school’s privileged "show pupil." However, her power lies not in her wealth but in her vivid imagination and ability to transport others through narrative. The passage is significant because it foreshadows how her storytelling will later become a coping mechanism during her suffering, reinforcing the novel’s central idea that true wealth is internal.

Key Themes in the Excerpt

The Power of Imagination and Storytelling
- Sara’s storytelling is presented as a near-magical ability, one that transcends her material advantages. While other girls envy her luxuries, it is her creative power that truly captivates them.
- The passage suggests that stories are a form of escapism—not just for Sara but for her audience. They allow her to live in a world more real than her own, a theme that becomes crucial when her circumstances worsen.
- Burnett, known for her idealistic yet melancholic style (seen also in The Secret Garden), often portrays imagination as a survival tool for children in harsh realities.
Envy and Fascination
- The contrast between Lavinia’s envy and the fascination of the other girls highlights how Sara’s gift is both admired and resented. This duality reflects the social dynamics of the school, where Sara’s uniqueness sets her apart.
- The phrase "most envious of, and at the same time most fascinated by" suggests that even those who dislike Sara cannot resist her charm, underscoring the irresistible allure of creativity.
The Blurring of Reality and Fantasy
- Sara’s storytelling is so immersive that she loses herself in it, declaring that her tales feel "more real than you are—more real than the schoolroom."
- This dissociation from reality is both a gift and a vulnerability. Later, when Sara is reduced to a servant, her stories become a refuge, but they also risk making her seem out of touch with her suffering.
- The line "I feel as if I were all the people in the story—one after the other" suggests empathy and transformation, key traits that define Sara’s character.
Performance and Authenticity
- Sara’s storytelling is theatrical—she doesn’t just tell stories; she embodies them through voice, gesture, and expression. This performative aspect makes her narratives visceral and alive.
- Yet, there’s an innocence to her performance: "without knowing that she was doing it" implies that her artistry is instinctive, not calculated.

Literary Devices and Stylistic Choices

Imagery and Sensory Language
- Burnett uses vivid visual and physical descriptions to convey Sara’s transformation while storytelling:
  - "her green eyes grew big and shining, her cheeks flushed"
  - "the raising or dropping of her voice, the bend and sway of her slim body"
- These details immersive the reader in Sara’s performance, making us see and feel the stories as her audience does.
Metaphor and Simile
- The comparison of Sara’s stories to something "more real" than her surroundings is a paradoxical metaphor, emphasizing how imagination can feel more tangible than reality.
- The phrase "hang on the outskirts of the favored party" uses spatial imagery to depict the social hierarchy among the girls, with Sara at the center.
Dramatic Irony
- The reader knows (or suspects) that Sara’s wealth and status are temporary, making her current power as a storyteller bittersweet. Later, when she is poor, her stories will be all she has left.
- Her declaration that stories feel "more real" than the schoolroom is ironic because soon, her real life will become harsher than any fairy tale.
Free Indirect Discourse
- The passage shifts between third-person narration and Sara’s direct speech, blending her inner thoughts with the narrator’s observations. This technique humanizes her and makes her subjective experience feel immediate.
Repetition for Emphasis
- The repetition of "more real" reinforces the intensity of Sara’s immersion in her own narratives, making it a defining trait of her character.

Significance of the Passage

Characterization of Sara
- This excerpt establishes Sara’s defining trait: her imagination. Unlike other girls who rely on material wealth or social status, Sara’s power is internal and creative.
- Her physical and emotional intensity while storytelling (flushed cheeks, quick breath, dramatic gestures) shows that she is not just a passive dreamer but an active creator.
Foreshadowing
- Sara’s ability to lose herself in stories foreshadows how she will use imagination to endure hardship. When she is later forced to live in the attic, she pretends she is a princess in a dungeon, turning suffering into a narrative.
- The envy of Lavinia also foreshadows future conflicts, as Lavinia will later mock Sara’s poverty, making her storytelling seem like delusional escapism.
The Role of Stories in Childhood
- Burnett, writing in the Victorian/Edwardian era, reflects the Romantic ideal that childhood is a time of wonder and imagination. Sara embodies this, but the novel also challenges it by showing how harsh reality intrudes.
- The passage suggests that stories are a form of resistance—against boredom, cruelty, and even poverty.
The Dual Nature of Imagination
- While Sara’s storytelling is a source of joy and connection, it also isolates her in some ways. Her declaration that stories feel "more real" than people hints at a potential disconnect from reality, which could be seen as both a strength and a weakness.

Connection to Broader Themes in A Little Princess

Inner vs. Outer Wealth: Sara’s storytelling proves that true richness is not financial but imaginative.
Resilience Through Fantasy: Her ability to reframe her suffering as a story helps her survive.
The Magic of Kindness and Creativity: Even in darkness, Sara’s stories bring light to others (like her friendship with Becky, the scullery maid).
The Fairytale Structure: The novel itself mirrors a fairy tale, with Sara as a princess in rags, and her storytelling as a kind of magic.

Conclusion: Why This Passage Matters

This excerpt is not just about a girl telling stories—it’s about the transformative power of narrative. Sara’s ability to make the ordinary extraordinary is what makes her both beloved and envied, and it’s this same power that will sustain her in hardship. Burnett uses lush, immersive prose to show how stories are not just entertainment but a lifeline, a way to reclaim agency in a world that seeks to diminish her.

In a broader sense, the passage celebrates the artist, the dreamer, the child who refuses to be confined by reality. It asks: What is more real—the cruelty of the world, or the stories we tell to survive it? For Sara, the answer is clear: the stories win. And in doing so, she inspires others to see the world differently, proving that even in darkness, imagination is light.

Questions

Question 1

The passage suggests that Sara’s storytelling transcends mere entertainment by functioning as a form of ontological displacement—an act that temporarily replaces her perceived reality with an alternative, more vivid one. Which of the following best captures the psychological mechanism underpinning this phenomenon as described in the text?

A. A deliberate escapist strategy to avoid confronting the monotony of boarding school life, akin to daydreaming.
B. An involuntary, immersive dissociation in which the boundaries between narrator and narrative collapse, rendering the fictional world hyperreal.
C. A performative act of self-aggrandizement, where Sara consciously amplifies her gestures to cultivate an aura of mystique among her peers.
D. A coping mechanism rooted in childhood trauma, where storytelling serves as a defensive regression to a safer, imagined past.
E. A socially reinforced delusion, sustained by the adulation of her audience, which validates her distorted perception of reality.

Question 2

The narrator’s description of Sara’s physical transformations while storytelling—"her green eyes grew big and shining, her cheeks flushed, and [...] she began to act"—serves a dual rhetorical purpose. The primary effect of this imagery is to:

A. underscore the embodied nature of Sara’s creativity, where her storytelling is not merely verbal but a full sensory and kinetic experience that blurs the line between art and lived reality.
B. highlight the performative absurdity of her behavior, framing her as a precocious child whose dramatic flair borders on the theatrical and thus undermines her credibility.
C. contrast her vibrant, animated state with the passive, envious stagnation of girls like Lavinia, reinforcing a moral binary between creativity and resentment.
D. foreshadow her future physical decline, where her current vitality will be replaced by the gaunt exhaustion of poverty, making her stories a bittersweet remnant of her former self.
E. evoke a Gothic tone, where her flushed cheeks and shining eyes suggest an almost feverish, supernatural possession by the tales she weaves.

Question 3

The phrase "more real than you are—more real than the schoolroom" is not merely a childish exaggeration but a revelation of Sara’s epistemological stance—one that prioritizes subjective intensity over empirical reality. This perspective most closely aligns with which of the following philosophical or literary traditions?

A. Platonic idealism, in which the forms (or essences) of things are more real than their physical manifestations, and Sara’s stories access a higher truth.
B. Romantic primacy of emotion, where the authenticity of an experience is measured by its emotional resonance rather than its factual correspondence to the external world.
C. Postmodern relativism, which denies any objective reality and instead treats all narratives—including Sara’s—as equally valid constructions.
D. Freudian wish-fulfillment, where the stories represent unconscious desires that, when externalized, feel more "real" because they satisfy repressed needs.
E. Existentialist authenticity, in which reality is not a given but is actively created through acts of imagination and will, with Sara’s stories serving as her chosen mode of being-in-the-world.

Question 4

Lavinia’s envy of Sara is described as being inextricably linked to her fascination, a paradox that reveals a deeper tension in the passage. Which of the following best explains this psychological contradiction?

A. Lavinia’s envy is a mask for her own creative inadequacy, and her fascination is a form of displaced admiration for the talent she lacks but secretly covets.
B. The fascination stems from the transgressive nature of Sara’s storytelling, which violates the rigid social norms of the school, while the envy arises from Lavinia’s adherence to those norms.
C. Sara’s stories act as a mirror, reflecting Lavinia’s own unacknowledged desires for escapism, which she resents because they threaten her self-image as pragmatic and superior.
D. The contradiction embodies the dialectic of power: Lavinia, representing institutional authority (e.g., wealth, status), is both repelled by and drawn to Sara’s subversive power (imagination), which undermines the hierarchy she benefits from.
E. It illustrates the cognitive dissonance of observing a peer who possesses what one simultaneously desires and disdains, resolving only when Lavinia later punishes Sara for her "delusions."

Question 5

The passage’s closing lines—"It doesn’t seem as if it was only made up. It seems more real than you are [...] I feel as if I were all the people in the story"—imply a radical conception of identity. Which of the following interpretations is most consistent with the text’s portrayal of Sara’s relationship to selfhood?

A. Sara’s identity is fluid and protean, constituted not by a fixed "self" but by the successive roles she inhabits in her narratives, suggesting a postmodern dissolution of the unified subject.
B. Her statement reflects a narcissistic inability to distinguish between self and other, a pathological merging that foreshadows her later psychological fragility under adversity.
C. The lines reveal an empathic capacity to fully inhabit others’ perspectives, a moral virtue that will later enable her to connect with marginalized figures like Becky.
D. Sara’s experience aligns with Jungian individuation, where her storytelling represents the integration of multiple archetypes (kings, queens, fairy folk) into a cohesive psyche.
E. The passage frames her as a reluctant mystic, whose stories are not mere fiction but glimpses into a collective unconscious that she accesses involuntarily.

Solutions and Explanations

1) Correct answer: B

Why B is most correct: The passage emphasizes that Sara’s immersion in her stories is involuntary ("without knowing that she was doing it") and so total that the fictional world feels "more real" than her surroundings. This aligns with dissociative states, where the boundaries between self and narrative collapse, and the fictional acquires a hyperreal quality. The text explicitly rejects deliberation ("she forgot that she was talking to listening children"), ruling out A, C, and E, while D introduces unsupported trauma.