Fathers and Princesses

photo: Warner Brothers

The girls have been listening to an audiobook version of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  The story is new to Sunshine and a favorite of Turtle's.  I was struck while listening to bits of it of how wonderfully this story reflects Truth to us.

The book has so many beautiful messages.  Sara has such strength. Once she says, "When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward.  There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in -- that's stronger."  I love when her benefactor secretly fills her room with good things while she is at her lowest, and how then she is able to go about the day that is filled with harsh circumstances, and peevish, vulgar and rude people, yet she is filled with this marvelous secret.  In fact, she can sometimes scarcely keep herself from smiling because of how cared for she is -- she has a friend, she says!
There is, of course, one of the central messages of the book, that being a "princess" is dependent upon one's interior life, one's identity, not what is exterior to oneself.  (The book is even called A Little Princess, not THE Little Princess -- Sara is one of many princesses in the world!)
 "Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing.  If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.  It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it." And she also says, "All women are princesses.  It is our right."

I absolutely love the scene about this from the movie made in 1995:


(Even the camera work, how it raises Sara and lowers Miss Minchin, contributes to how moving this scene is!)

I think that A Little Princess also sends a message about the love of fathers and for fathers.  I attended a talk recently given by Father Jacques Philippe on filial and fatherly love and in it he pointed out that while the love of a mother is more properly understood and valued in our culture, the love of a father is not.  And yet, he pointed out, the father relationship is the primary relationship in the world, because God is a Father and it is He who begets through His great love. First of all, we all need a father and we all have One.  The Father is the one who brings us into being.  He begins us.

So, of course, Sara loves her father.  She says to him, "I know you by heart.  You are inside my heart."   Her father loves her too. Despite his death in the book, I would say that the good things that happen to Sara are still because of her father's goodness and the man, father and friend that he is. His love is reaching his daughter still, through the other good men in the book, father figures, that love Sara too.

I actually like the movie better than the book in some respects because of the return of Captain Crewe, who was wounded in battle and suffers from amnesia.  This portrayal of Sara and her father's reunion brings tears to my eyes every time I see it.



The father's love, and the daughter's identity as a princess are themes that speak Truth to me and I hope to my daughters as well.
"Between the lines of every story there is another story, and that is one that is never heard and can only be guessed at by the people who are good at guessing."