A Curious Girl: Princesses

I have a theory that deep down, every girl wants to be a princess. It's undeniable that certain girls want to be princesses, and that truth is really nothing interesting. What's much more interesting is that there are girls who want to be princesses who'll deny it.

When I was small, everyone knew I wanted to be a princess. I didn't like wearing trousers because princesses didn't wear trousers (I ignored the fact that Princess Diana often wore trousers). I liked to pretend I could do ballet, I liked wearing pretty dresses, and I liked pretending I was royalty.

You want to know the truth? Not much has changed... well, certainly I wear trousers all the time, I don't go around demanding to be treated like a princess but I still like wearing pretty dresses and pretending that I actually know how to dance. The thing is it seemed for a while that being a girl is supposed to be about self-hatred of some form or another. You hate the size of your body, so you'll try any diet to reduce it, no matter how unhealthy. You hate the shape of your body so you have surgery. You hate your face, so you wear make-up to cover it, or you have surgery on that too. To be girly seemed to be traitorous to the name of womanhood.

I hate pretty much everything about women's magazines, from the diet-tips to the celebrity voyeurism - pardon me, gossip. Secretly, I wish there was something I did enjoy about them, other than reading them in disgust. (I say secretly because I know I can put my thoughts here where theoretically millions of people could read them, I know you'll be discreet) But they're just so revolting, although to their credit, not quite as revolting as FHM (my sick fascination with rubbish magazines was quelled by FHM when I realised I was looking at porn and not porn aimed at me either).

There's still a secret desire to be a 'princess', though. I do believe that the reason why women (and probably men too) are feeling so confused about the role of our gender is because we've been told by fairy tales that the best princess is patient, kind, loving, grateful and above all, not picky, yet we've been told by militant feminists that the best feminists are very discerning, fighting oppression, wiccan, career-minded and lesbian, and still tradition dictates that we become the proud wives and mothers, mind the house and look after the children, and fashion dictates that we look fabulous, that we should abuse ourselves until we do, and our best role model is the latest somebody in Hollywood before she inevitably becomes a nobody. It reminds me why one of my heroes is Maya Angelou.

Expectations are irritating things. I may not be a dancer or a princess, but sometimes I would really like to be a Cinderella - put on a beautiful dress and ridiculously impractical shoes, and go dancing with a Prince and waltz to something by Strauss. I may not wear dungarees, but I'm still a feminist - not a militant one, just one who'd like to express the radical notion that perhaps we aren't defined solely by gender and to get over it if people don't fit their stereotype. So what if I like pretty dresses? So what if I'm - shock - unladylike!? I think even the most hardened feminist likes to receive flowers occasionally (from her girlfriend ;) ). And as Alanis Morrisette once said, "You treat me like I'm a princess - I'm not used to liking that."

Perhaps all girls really do want to be princesses. Perhaps there's actually nothing wrong with that. It's not about self-hatred to want to dance and to dress up nice - and even put on a little make-up, though I don't personally tend to wear it. Anyone can want a little glamour from time to time.

So there you have it - my stereotype bashing for today. It would probably do feminists (and everyone else) a favour to realise that men aren't solely stereotypes either, no matter what porn is put in men's magazines.

Vaguely linked in with all this was the entry I promised last entry. I read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett and The Secret Garden, by the same, recently. I love both books. You can read A Little Princess on Project Gutenberg free of charge and you can also read The Secret Garden. I can't decide which I like best. On one hand, Sara Crewe is so lovely and dignified, but on the other, Mary Lennox is a great little brat :)

A Little Princess is about Sara Crewe, who's the daughter of a rich young soldier, and when she is seven, is sent to boarding school in England away from her home in India. Both she and her father are very rich and very fanciful, so Sara appears rather overdressed to most of the people at the boarding school, but she's so kind and well-mannered that most people don't mind. There are, of course, a few jealous types - the school's headmistress Miss Minchin begins to dislike her, although she doesn't show it at first. Sara's talented at making up stories, and she tells them to the other girls - particularly her friends Ermengarde (who is slow and unintelligent, but very kind), Lottie (who is a little girl inclined to throw tantrums but is rather attached to Sara), and Becky, who is the scullery maid and treated rather like a slave by the school. Disaster strikes and her father, jointly investing in diamond mines with an old school friend, loses his fortune and his life, leaving Sara friendless, and she is made into a servant like Becky by Miss Minchin, who finally lets her feelings for Sara show. Sara's life becomes miserable - she still has Ermengarde, Lottie and Becky, but she cannot see much of them because she is made to work all the time. Sara survives this life by making up stories and also by continuing a little game she used to play - that she was a princess. When she had been rich the little ones (and the jealous ones) would call her Princess Sara, but now she pretends she is a princess in rags, comparing herself to Marie Antoinette when she was imprisoned. This kind of game helps her remember to be dignified and polite to other people, and even to sacrifice when it hurts. The story has a happy ending for Sara (and not for Miss Minchin). Not to give away the ending, but she does find people who love and care for her, and she takes Becky with her when she leaves the school.

There are lots of lovely bits that I like - I'll quote a few :)

When Sara and Becky first meet, Becky tells Sara that she looks rather like a princess Becky once saw. Sara says how she'd like to pretend to be a princess, then gives Becky some cake and tells her a story. She leaves happy, and this is what Sara thinks:

"If I was a princess--a real princess... I could scatter largess to the populace. But even if I am only a pretend princess, I can invent little things to do for people. Things like this. She was just as happy as if it was largess. I'll pretend that to do things people like is scattering largess. I've scattered largess."

A little later, two rather spiteful girls are talking about Sara's make-believe.

"One of her 'pretends' is that she is a princess. She plays it all the time--even in school. She says it makes her learn her lessons better. She wants Ermengarde to be one, too, but Ermengarde says she is too fat."

"She is too fat," said Lavinia. "And Sara is too thin."

Naturally, Jessie giggled again.

"She says it has nothing to do with what you look like, or what you have. It has only to do with what you think of, and what you do."

"I suppose she thinks she could be a princess if she was a beggar," said Lavinia.

Lavinia later insults Sara's game, which upsets her - but she reminds herself, "If you were a princess, you did not fly into rages." She tells Lavinia that she would like to behave like a princess, which leaves Lavinia a little lost for words - her only comeback falls flat.

Later, Burnett explains Sara's philosophy "If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things--help and comfort and laughter."

Just before Sara is told that her father has died, Lavinia asks her "Could you suppose and pretend if you were a beggar and lived in a garret?" Her response is "I believe I could. If one was a beggar, one would have to suppose and pretend all the time. But it mightn't be easy."

She does indeed survive by supposing and pretending. When Ermengarde and Lottie occasionally visit her attic, she manages to delight them with her pretends even though her life becomes so hard. Her princessly behaviour gives her an odd kind of power, even so.

"Everything you own is mine," [said Miss Minchin].

"Please take it away from me then," said Sara. "I do not want it."

[Miss Minchin] was a woman who liked to domineer and feel her power, and as she looked at Sara's pale little steadfast face and heard her proud little voice, she quite felt as if her might was being set at naught."

There's a fantastic episode later on, in which Sara is imagining what it would be like to be a princess in disguise. Miss Minchin sees her fanciful look, and boxes her ears. Sara, remembering Alfred the Great, actually finds this behaviour funny, and laughs, further enraging the headmistress. Sara explains her thoughts so candidly that she actually frightens the Headmistress.

"She had the imagined future so clearly before her eyes that she spoke in a manner which had an effect even upon Miss Minchin. It almost seemed for the moment to her narrow, unimaginative mind that there must be some real power hidden behind this candid daring."

Miss Minchin sends Sara out, but she leaves dignified.

'Sara made a little bow.

"Excuse me for laughing if it was impolite," she said, and walked out of the room, leaving Miss Minchin struggling with her rage, and the girls whispering over their books.

"Did you see her? Did you see how queer she looked?" Jessie broke out. "I shouldn't be at all surprised if she did turn out to be something. Suppose she should!"

My favourite bit of the story by far is chapter thirteen. Go read it if you read nothing else of the book.

So what is it that really grabs me about that book? I must have read it a few times now. I think it's Sara's compassion, combined with her dignity. It's a rather Job-like story - she loses her riches without warning, and goes from the princess in splendour to the princess in rags. But it hardly changes her - by the end, she understands compassion much more than she did before. She's not sickening though - she does have her doubts as the story progresses, and she fights them. In the original version of the story (Sara Crewe, or what happened at Miss Minchin's - you can also find that online, and there's a copy here), she makes an interesting point that I rather like. "One thing she had decided upon was, that a person who was clever ought to be clever enough not to be unjust or deliberately unkind to any one. Miss Minchin was unjust and cruel, Miss Amelia was unkind and spiteful, the cook was malicious and hasty-tempered--they all were stupid, and made her despise them, and she desired to be as unlike them as possible. So she would be as polite as she could to people who in the least deserved politeness." It was possibly the wrong tone for Burnett to keep it in the final novel, but I rather like it.

I watched a trailer for the film directed by Alfonso Cuaron linked to by the IMDB. I've not actually seen the film, but in the trailer, in which what I presume was supposed the boxing ears scene, Sara bursts out "I am a princess! All girls are!" I found it a rather disappointing rendering - Sara would never say something like that, and certainly not in that imperious fashion - "all girls are princesses" is meaningless sugary pseudo-feminist claptrap. Sara would most probably say that all girls can be princesses, but not that they are. C.S. Lewis lamented in Mere Christianity that the word 'gentleman' has become just another compliment rather than a word with any meaning, so I apologise if what I am about to say is sentimental, but to Sara, the important factor of being a princess may not have been riches or class - but there was an important factor, and that was behaviour. A princess would act with compassion, grace, dignity and respect - which is fair enough, because where is the fun in a fairy story that sounds like this?

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl called Cinderella who was the daughter of a wealthy man. She was nasty and spiteful, and when he remarried and her stepmother made her into servant, she became more nasty and spiteful. She was horrible to everyone, even to her stepsisters who were goodness itself..."

Random word for today: extemporaneous

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