Problematic Favorites: A Little Princess - Part 6 Does Sara Like Telling Stories or Not?

[hrj]

That last section of the chapter introducting Ermengarde goes much deeper into Sara’s imaginative storytelling. But it tosses in one of those odd inconsistencies that the story occasionally trips over.

Sara invites her new friend up to her suite of rooms to meet her new doll and Ermengarde asks about how it happens that she has not just her own room, but a playroom all to herself. We can guess that this surplus of space was originally intended to be simply another sign of the ostentatious luxury that marked Sara’s position. But now there seems to be a need to justify the rooms logically, for some reason. So Sara explains that her father arranged it, “because when I play I make up stories and tell them to myself, and I don’t like people to hear me. It spoils it if I think people listen.”

The story plunges straight on into a “pretend” about the doll, Emily being alive and trying to “catch her” moving about the room. Ermengarde is distracted and enthralled by the stories about animate dolls, but we can spend a moment contemplating this very odd claim. Because two chapters later (ch 5) we are told quite explicitly, “Sara not only could tell stories, but she adored telling them.” It makes me wonder whether this isn’t some sort of continuity error that came up when the original story was expanded to novel length. I don’t see any point in trying to integrate the version here in chapter 3. This is scarcely the most awkward of the logical errors we're asked to accept.

The chapter concludes with Sara experiencing a moment of intense homesickness for her father, and explaining how pretending helps her get through her sorrows. The contrast is made with how Ermengarde thinks of her daunting father. I suspect this is part of the regular reminders of how much Sara has to lose, compared with other girls. Ermengarde might possibly be relieved to be orphaned, but the intensity of Sara’s relationship with her father reinforces the fact that he is not just her only relation, but he is her whole world.

Then Ermengarde takes the daring step of asking if they could be best friends, to which Sara agrees with the somewhat odd response that “It makes you thankful when you are liked.” But from then on, Ermengarde is cemented as first among her followers, and Sara is established in a tutoring relationship to her.

Comments

[legionseaglelj.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it's reasonable to see Sara making a distinction between her own immersive fantasies and stories which she's prepared to share with others. After all, one of my feelings about real people fic (other than historical stuff where people are safely dead) is that it's not good manners to share your fantasies about strangers even though having an idle daydream about sailing round the Greek Islands with Benedict Cumberbatch may be just the thing to get one through a dull meeting at work.