The Brownie and the Princess (1887)

AUTHOR: Alcott, Louisa May
PUBLICATION:  Lulu's Library, Vol. 2. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1901 [1887]. 135-172.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32357/32357-h/32357-h.htm#Page_135
https://archive.org/details/luluslibrary00alco/page/134/mode/2up

Particularly in her writings for children, Alcott implicitly advocates for a moderate and healthy dietary regime, which is predominantly vegetarian and conforms to broad Temperance principles. She consistently addresses the issue of animal welfare, dramatizing the uncorrupted capacity of children to understand and communicate with other-than-human animals. In this story, the refusal of animal flesh is a consequence of the protagonist's harmonious relation with the entire natural world. Though Betty consumes dairy millk, she offers a reformist model of ethical veg*n conduct to Princess Bonnibelle who adjusts her own behavior in response. Betty's insistence on a diet of "brown bread" is reminiscent of both Sylvester Graham's dietary emphasis on whole grains and also the diet of fruits, water, and brown bread favored at Fruitlands, the Utopian community in which Alcott passed her eleventh year.

KEYWORDS: food and diet, animal welfare, moral education, reform, activism, nature

The eponymous “Brownie” of this story is, in fact, a royal gamekeeper's daughter, who due to her family's poverty habitually wears a brown dress and hat, and passes much of her time outdoors giving her a tanned complexion. When the King's daughter, Princess Bonnibelle, meets this simple girl she is deeply impressed by Betty's humble and morally upright ways. These include the refusal of dietary overindulgence, including the consumption of meats, particularly the meat of birds. She considers birds to be her friends, having been given the ability to converse with them by a kind wizard she met in the woods (a passage that highlights the enchantment of nature, a point further emphasized by the fact that the wizard is an owl). When Betty visits Princess Bonnibelle's palace, the girl not only translates several caged birds' complaints about the princess' carelessness, vanity, and overall spoiled ways, but refuses to eat any meat, thus presenting a model of ethical conduct for Bonnibelle:

She would not touch the little birds in the silver dish, though they smelt very nice, but said sadly,— "No, thank you, sir; I couldn't eat my friends." The footman tried not to laugh; but the Princess pushed away her own plate with a frown, saying,— "Neither will I. Give me some apricot jelly and a bit of angel cake. Now that I know more about birds and what they think of me, I shall be careful how I treat them. Don't bring any more to my table (157).

The Queen inquires about the source of Betty's robust good health – "And what do you do to have such rosy cheeks?" – Betty explains it as a consequence of her plain diet: "Eat brown bread and milk, Lady Queen," she advises (163). When the girl finally leaves for home, she again refuses the luxurious foods on display: “All were eating now; and the meat and wine and spicy pies and piles of fruit smelt very nice, and Betty would have only brown bread and milk for supper; but she did not stay, and no one but the pages saw her as she ran down the steps to the courtyard, like Cinderella hurrying from the hall when the clock struck twelve and all her fine clothes vanished” (170). The story highlights the ethical implications of a simple life lived in harmony with nature and based on the refusal to exploit one's fellow beings, whether as caged pets or as flesh for consumption.

 

Last updated on February 10th, 2024

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