In chapter 15, Sara (and the reader) enters an emotional roller-coaster of an evening. Fresh from the episode of the fourpence, the hot buns, and the beggar girl, she arrives back at the school only to become the target of secondhand rage. The cook has been berated by Miss Minchin--as we later learn, deservedly so for feeding Miss Minchin’s special dinner to her gentleman friend and then blaming the disappearance on Becky. Shit, as they say, rolls downhill.
Reviews: Books
Blog entry
The Emperor's Agent was part of the Historic Fantasy StoryBundle book promotion I recently participated in. It is both an alternate history Napoleonic spy adventure and part of a larger millennium-spanning series about a group of Companions who are reborn together again and again to re-live their fellowship at key points in history. At least, that's the understanding I was able to pick up from this book and a blurb-level familiarity with the rest of the series.
While A Little Princess uses a very omniscient voice, it's also the case that the majority of the novel works through Sara's point of view and her experiences. So it's a bit of a break with the flow for Chapter 14 (What Melchisedec Heard and Saw) to stand entirely apart from her. It occurs to me, though, that in a way, Melchisedec the rat is standing in for Sara's connection to the events.
I think that Chapter 13 "One of the Populace" is my favorite part of A Little Princess. You know that tv commercial a couple years back--I think maybe it was for an insurance company but I could be wildly wrong--showing a long chain of people doing random kindnesses for a stranger in passing, which was witnessed by a third party who was then inspired to do a random kindness for a stranger in passing, which was witnessed...and so forth? Chapter 13 it a bit of that, showing how an act of selfless charity can touch and chance the hearts of others unknown.
This week, I’m going to pause in the chapters and go back to one of the concepts I discussed at the beginning of this series of posts: moral accounting as a literary analysis technique. To reiterate, it’s a concept that came out of the field of cognitive linguistics, and specifically the sort of conceptual analysis of metaphoric structure pioneered by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.
When one has re-read this story as many times as I have, it’s easy to forget that at the beginning of Chapter 12 (The Other Side of the Wall) we haven’t yet learned just who the Indian Gentleman is and why it’s relevant that he will take an interest in Sara. This chapter is something of a deep breath and a regrouping. We get a series of vignettes revealing what an array of characters are thinking about each other--though in some cases without knowing that’s who they’re thinking of.
I approached Kelly Gardiner’s novel Goddess with a combination of excitement and dread. It’s hard not to have mixed feelings when someone tackles the story of a real historic figure with whom one is already in love. In my completely biased opinion, anyone who encounters the biography of 17th century swordswoman and opera star Julie d’Aubigny, Mademoiselle de Maupin and does not fall in love has something wrong with them.
Today’s discussion springs off of the later part of Chapter 11 (Ram Dass) but ranges backward and forward to examine Sara’s concept of what it means to be a princess. After the encounter with Ram Dass, and being reminded of what it was like to be treated as someone rich and privileged, Sara contemplates her current expectations and makes a resolution. “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.”
OK, let's just plunge into this.
Eighteenth-century opera and alchemy and convoluted plots against royalty and improbable romances! There's a lot of alignment with my interests there, so the only question was whether Burgis could pull it off in terms of the story-telling. Short version: yes.
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