I always get shocked finding out Sarah is white in A Little Princess
But tbh i always saw her as French Desi in my head
I also thought her dad was an educated, Western assimilated Indian and her mom was the French Caucasian
She always was desi in my head
It bothers me whenever they cast a blond e white actress for her
Like even the book i got , they gave her light brown hair in the cover and the ruddiest white girl face ever. "Why are you white??"
Like ok sure let her be white cuz shes ethnically ambiguous but at least keep the black hair??
Bro in the book Sara even had an insecure inner monologue about her color
…Nah because why DOES this sound like a mixed-race child internalizing white beauty standards??”
Only Studio Nippon got it right
I hate how Burnett openly lets Becky be black, most movies maintain that image
But im angry because its only for the fact she has to be used as a character that experiences oppression
Meanwhile Sarah, a privilege girl
Thats ambiguously white or poc
Burnett keeps beating around the bush what her heritage really is like you gave her black glossy hair, large green expressive eyes
And a love for Indian tales, deeply culturally inclined girl and also treated strange for her more open worldview
Like its not written like a white orientalist girl who happened to live in India
The way she talks about it has intimacy, like shes trynna connect with her roots despite living the Western way
A lot of colonial fiction treats India like:
But Sarah’s relationship to India feels emotionally personal. She carries it inwardly. It shapes her imagination, morality, storytelling, emotional sensitivity.
this interpretation feels less like:
“headcanon for representation”
“reading the colonial subtext to its logical conclusion.”
And her father Mr. Crewe is also racially ambiguous they only say British officer who owns a mining business in India
Because the text says “British officer/businessman in India,” but Victorian Britain itself was full of complicated colonial identities:
Western-educated Indian elites
assimilated colonial subjects
people who moved between languages and cultures
So imagining Captain Crewe as an educated Indian man assimilated into British upper-class expectations is not historically absurd at all. In some ways it actually makes the social tensions of the story more believable.
I always imagined Mr. Crewe being played by Dev Patel
And it kind of makes the story dive deeper in the more complex prejudice for successful brown people in Victorian colonialist Britain
But of course its all in Sarahs pov
Shes simply a child to not understand such things
And her case is like the mixed desi experience in a white dominated country.
But the prejudice seeps in the story even if its not explicit cuz a child wouldny notice that
Maybe thats why the girls in her school were extra mean to her and Miss Minchin had always been disapproving and challenging towards her
She was only tolerated because her father was as rich as an Englishman
it reframes Miss Minchin’s behavior in a sharper way.
Because if Sarah is merely a rich white girl, then Miss Minchin’s resentment is mostly class envy.
visibly culturally different
tolerated because of wealth
admired but never fully accepted
then Miss Minchin’s hostility gains undertones of:
resentment toward “outsiders” occupying elite spaces
which fits Victorian society disturbingly well
But nooo this theme is so underdiscussed by readers
Because they assume Sarah is white
“privileged rich girl loses status”
“a culturally mixed child who only had conditional acceptance loses the protection wealth gave her.”
Sarah behaves like someone negotiating identity:
self-conscious about appearance
culturally attached to a place others exoticize
emotionally mature from observing hierarchy
Even the way she clings to dignity and performance (“every little girl is a princess”) can read differently through your lens. It stops being just whimsical optimism and starts feeling like a survival philosophy:
if society refuses to fully recognize your humanity or status, you create inner sovereignty.
But honestly i might be getting jumped by most people for this
But my thoughts are not coming out of nowhere
Idk if Burnett was going for that
Whether Sarah really was just an orientalist white girl
Or shes a desi girl who was raised to assimilate in white British rose life trynna reconnect with her roots
Its all up to interpretation
But like Burnett is a product of her time so Im not getting my hopes up
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