We’ll be finishing up A Little Princess this week, and our specific attention to how little girls were particularly
imagined in the nineteenth century as the notion of childhood solidified. You’ll have seen that in many ways,
Sara Crewe is a character who thoroughly embodies certain traditional ideas of what young girls should be like-
Well-spoken, educated in subjects such as French, polite and respectful. But she also displays traits that are
bolder, challenging nineteenth-century ideas about how little girls should be seen and not heard; she has a
quick temper, she speaks up to defend others, she reads many books, she has her own opinions and ideas.
You might say that Sara Crewe is an example of a character who is on the cusp of modernity and of changing
ideas about gender roles, displaying traits that are both stereotypically feminine and masculine, questioning the
rigidity of these categories.
Below are three nineteenth-century pieces of art depicting little girls:
“The Music Lesson”.jpg by Frederic Leighton;
“Sympathy”.jpg by Briton Riviere;
“My Second Sermon”.jpg by John Everett Millais

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