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Copywork
About This Passage
Burnett opens the chapter by reasoning aloud about how Sara's privileged life might have ruined a lesser child. The parallel conditional sentences, 'If she had been a self-opinionated... If she had been an indolent child', test Sara's character against the corrupting power of being 'indulged and flattered.' The careful, hypothetical syntax makes a quiet moral argument: it is Sara's disposition, not her circumstances, that determines whether comfort spoils or sustains her. Copying this passage lets a student study how an author can use balanced conditionals to weigh a question of character.
If Sara had been a different kind of child, the life she led at Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for the next ten years would not have been at all good for her. She was treated more as if she were a dis...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Give a concise summary of the chapter, then identify the single most consequential moment in it and explain why it matters to the chapter as a whole and what it reveals about Burnett's larger design.
Discussion Questions
- What do Sara's reflection on luck and her rescue of Lottie reveal when you read them side by side, and what larger claim about character does the chapter invite you to make? Defend your reading with details from the chapter.
- The chapter's central event is a four-year-old's tantrum, hardly the stuff of high drama. Why does Burnett give this small domestic scene such weight, and what would a reader miss by dismissing it as a minor episode? Use the chapter's details to explain.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Shrewd and experienced in the ways of society, often putting advantage first.
Item 2
Treated with special honor; regarded as important and superior.
Item 3
Tending to control or command others in an overbearing way.
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Critical Thinking
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