The Tale of Despereaux

Book the Third continues to go backward in time—this time with Miggery Sow, a young girl born far from the castle. When her mother dies, Mig desperately tries to tell her to stay, but the former retorts, “what does it matter what you are wanting?” (126). Mig’s father sells her to a man for a red tablecloth, a hen, and a handful of cigarettes despite the girl’s cries. The narrator challenges the reader to keep reading, because “it is your duty” (127) to learn more of Mig’s sad life.

The man who bought Mig forces her to do chores between random clouts to the ears. After years of abuse, Mig’s ears resemble cauliflowers, and her hearing is poor. The less she understands, the more mistakes she makes and the more clouts she receives.

On Mig’s seventh birthday, she sees Princess Pea, “glittering and glowing on the horizon” (131) in a royal procession moving by her farm home. Mig is so stunned by the show of beauty and the opulence that she doesn’t even notice Pea wave. For the first time, Mig experiences hope, like “a small candle had been lit in her interior” (134).