By: Gabriela Yareliz
In life, you will run into a few people who are just like Miss. Minchin, in A Little Princess. They are cruel and mean. They take pleasure in your misfortune, and their aim is to take away from you. They take pleasure in seeing you serve harder, in seeing you in a position that they feel is beneath them.
Yet inside, they are deeply unhappy. They don’t realize that the superficial status and positions mean nothing and that only the heart and character take you places.
They want to see you fail, but they don’t realize it’s the very thing that they hate about you that will continue to carry you through.
These situations are hard. They can be painful and confusing. They can make us angry or bitter. We are human, after all. They can make us judge, when in the end, we all stand before God with no falsities left to hide behind.
It’s comforting to know that God isn’t mocked. That God is at our side, continuously.
You have to understand that A Little Princess was my favorite movie, while growing up. I can recite the movie. I always loved Sara. She was bright, kind, generous— everything that makes a true princess.
I had an incident recently, where a person reminded me of Miss. Minchin in the scene above, where Sara is told she is an orphan, so she becomes a servant, and Ms. Minchin takes Sara’s most prized possession (a locket with her father’s picture in it), and she smugly tells Sara, “ I expect you to remember […] you are not a princess any longer.”
Sara continues to inspire the young girls around her, and she works hard. She never fails to give of herself, even when it costed her the little she had. Oh, that I could learn to be like Sara.
To me, the highlight is Sara’s confrontation with Ms. Minchin.
You have got to see this:
Miss Minchin: Don’t tell me you still fancy yourself a princess!
[laughs]
Miss Minchin: Good God, child, look around you! Or better yet, look in the mirror!
[after a long pause]
Sara Crewe: [confidentially] I am a princess.
Miss Minchin: [in disbelief] Oh!
Sara Crewe: All girls are! Even if they live in tiny old attics, even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young, they’re still princesses – all of us! Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Didn’t he?
Miss Minchin: [furiously, in tears] If I find you up here with any of the girls again, I WILL THROW YOU OUT INTO THE STREET!
***
I want to be like Sara. This character still speaks to me today. I want to always remember who I am, no matter what anyone tells me. Her father told her she was a princess, and she knew it and lived up to it, in the truest sense.
We are who our Heavenly Father has told us we are, and those who tell us otherwise have forgotten who they are and who they can be.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 