The Pauper Princess - Essay Example

The Pauper Princess Janis lived the kind of life every girl dreamed of. Even though she had never known her mother, she had a father that adored her and made sure she had everything she ever needed. When they were hungry, he would get them something to eat by talking to the guy at the back door of the closest restaurant. When she wanted to play with a toy, all she ever needed to do was ask the man behind the counter at the toy store. Most of the time, though, she and her father would spend their days in the park, where he drew pretty pictures that people came to buy and she took care of him. Her job was to get Daddy whatever he needed to finish his work and especially to watch for one of his breathing fits when he would need his medicine. Best of all, they didn’t even need to worry about their stuff because they didn’t have any stuff to worry about. Janis and her dad were as free as the birds in the sky. When it came time for Janis to go to school, she didn’t want to go where she wouldn’t be able to take care of her father, but her dad made it better like he always did. “Janis, you should never let go of your imagination, but you need to learn their facts and figures so you can let your imagination be as free as you want,” he said, “and then we’ll go out for ice cream.” To make things easier, Janis and her father would meet at their little one-room apartment after school and every day they would go and get ice cream from Daddy’s friend Eddy. By the time she was in fourth grade, her grades were high enough for her to be invited to the magnet school, but that was a live-in school and would mean that she couldn’t go for treats after school with her dad anymore so she didn’t want to go. One day, she came home to find her father in the middle of one of his breathing fits. He didn’t say anything to her, just looked at her with a searching gaze and a look of despair in his eyes that frightened her more than anything. She knew there was no medicine in the house, so she dropped her books and raced off to the closest pharmacy. Janis raced home as fast as she could with her father’s medicine. Although most people would have considered the trash-filled alleys and side streets highly dangerous, Janis knew her way around – and how to avoid conflict with the gang kids in the area. Mostly, it was just a question of mutual respect. She was out of breath by the time she came bursting through the paper-thin door, so it took her a minute to notice the room’s sudden emptiness. It was the silence she noticed first. Other than her ragged breathing, there was no other sound. She should have already heard the gasping, rattling sound of her father’s ruined lungs. Her first thought was a terror-stricken idea of her father not breathing in their apartment, but looking around, other things were out of place. The hat he wore every time he walked out the door was not in the middle of the cardboard table. The blanket he used at night on the couch was gone and so were the clothes he typically had hanging across the armchair. Most importantly, his portfolio, the folder in which he kept all of his drawing supplies and finished work, was gone. Stunned, Janis realized her father was gone, too. He had left her all alone and with nowhere to go but the magnet school they had argued so strongly about. As she stood in the doorway of her ruined life, Janis heard the heavy tread of footsteps on the stairwell behind her and turned to see two men in business suits coming toward her followed by a woman in a trim black dress. “Are you Janis?” the woman asked kindly. Janis could only nod, still stunned. “You’ll be coming with us then.” It was three weeks at the school before Janis felt herself finally starting to come out of the numbness that had engulfed her when her father disappeared. In that time, she had learned never to ask to go outside, never to talk about the fanciful stories she and her father had made up and never to dream about the unicorns and rainbows her father would draw for her in the park. These things were not real and they would not help her get forward in life. But as the numbness wore off, she began to hear the other girls in her dorm at night, crying because they, too, had lost the magic of their former lives. Instead of giving in to her despair any longer, Janis began tiptoeing around the dorm at night, gathering groups of girls and sharing with them the secrets of her imagination, escaping with them from the facts and figures of the school for a little while. She began to see how the facts of the school could be questioned and explored to create new realities for the girls, such as the time she put all those mechanical classes to work to figure out how to unlock the door on their room and they spent the evening on the playground, marveling up at the stars. Unfortunately, when Ms. Taut discovered all the ways that Janis was showing the younger girls how to combine fantasy and fact to escape the dullness of their lives at the school, she became very angry and threw Janis out of the school into the streets. Without her father’s gift for friendship and without her father, Janis didn’t know what she was going to do until one of the little girl’s brothers came along. “Are you Janis?” he asked her carefully. Janis just nodded. “My sister has told me all about how you’ve helped her and the other girls in the school. I work in a printer’s shop and was wondering if you would be interested in writing some of your stories down for him?” When Janis got to the printer’s shop, she discovered that he was one of her father’s old friends and had been waiting for a chance to rescue her from the school. “Your father was dying,” he told her, “and he knew there was nothing you or he could do to prevent it. He hoped the school would give you the support and love you needed but asked me to keep watch in case you ever needed to get out. We have your room all ready for you upstairs. We hope you will consider us your new family.” Critique Much like the Little Princess, this short story is written from an adult perspective attempting to see things from a child’s point of view. The character takes on many of the same attributes as the character of Sara Crewe in that she represents several archetypal figures. She is the Primordial Child because she is never seen to grow beyond fourth grade and she is the Mother as she strives to care for her father and for the other girls at the boarding school. She is the Orphan as she struggles to overcome her desolation and the cruel hardness of the school she attends and she is the Damsel in Distress as she is thrown out into the street with no one to care for her. None of these attributes of her character are as well developed in Janis as they have been in Sara Crewe or in her fairy tale counterparts Snow White or Cinderella. This is in large part because of the limited space in which to create a story. At no point does this character capture the hearts of her audience nor is any clear picture given of her physical appearance that would enable an audience to identify with her on an emotional level. Although the story features a child and remains focused on child-like concerns, it does nothing to appeal to children per se. Instead, it seems primarily written for adults. Like The Little Princess, there is some attempt made to address current social issues in the form of homelessness, poverty, unemployment and lack of adequate health care, but none of these ideas are developed to any great extent. Again, this is mostly due to the confined space for the story. Also like the Little Princess, this story has very little recognition of child psychology reflected in the activities and behavior of the main character. She could as easily be a trapped adult as she is a trapped child. There is no concession for the concepts of law or policy involved in the story and no explanation is given as to what kind of school Janis is taken to. Given her status as an essentially homeless child living in the projects, the knowledgeable adult may come to the conclusion that she is taken to a state school, an idea that is reinforced by the locks on the doors and the extreme focus on learning sustainable skills as opposed to fostering creative pursuits but none of this is made expressly clear. In the end, the story is not very successful as either a children’s story or as an adult call to action. There are elements that can be built on, though, to make it better and to have it meet either of these genres. What would help make the story better is greater space for story development and extensive revision in keeping with the new material. Read More