Sugar Bowl (A Series of Unfortunate Events) - History

History

Lemony Snicket's narration has been pivotal in exploring the sugar bowl's relevance to the overall plot. Where the sugar bowl came from and when an item of importance was hidden in it are unclear; however, it is generally agreed that the earliest point in its significant history is referred to in The Grim Grotto and The Slippery Slope. In the former, Esmé Squalor claims that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl from her, but in the latter, Lemony Snicket claims that he stole the sugar bowl from Esmé. Clues in these books indicate that Beatrice was at a tea party held by Esmé when the sugar bowl was taken from her, and Esmé may have then mistakenly deduced that Beatrice was the thief. Esme's house on 667 Dark Avenue had a secret passageway connected to the Baudelaire Mansion, so it is plausible that Esme used it to burn down the property as a vendetta against Beatrice. It is also possible that Beatrice and Lemony worked together to steal the bowl. This may be the crime that Lemony Snicket and Beatrice committed together before her death, as mentioned in 13 Shocking Secrets You'll Wish You Never Knew About Lemony Snicket. However, this crime is more likely to be the murder of Count Olaf's parents.

In The Slippery Slope, Lemony Snicket mentions in a letter to his sister that her "suggestion...that a tea set would be a handy place to hide anything important and small...has turned out to be correct." A sugar bowl is one of the parts of a tea set. Later in the book, Violet Baudelaire notes that a tea set used by Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor is missing an item, implied to be a sugar bowl when Violet later fibs that she and her siblings know the sugar bowl's whereabouts. The man with beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard had searched in the ashy remains of the V.F.D office. It is said that The man with beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard burnt the V.F.D office.

It is also mentioned in The Dismal Dinner that a sugar bowl was passed around at the Baudelaire parents' fourth-to-last dinner party, but it is unclear whether this is the same sugar bowl that was stolen from Esmé.

At some point, the sugar bowl was taken to the V.F.D. headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains. At a point prior to The Slippery Slope, the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard burnt down the headquarters but were unable to recover the sugar bowl; Lemony Snicket states in the narration that a brave volunteer threw the bowl out the window into the Stricken Stream, knowing it would be swept away and be saved from the villains.

In The Grim Grotto, Klaus Baudelaire and Captain Widdershins believed it to have washed into the Gorgonian Grotto, but when the grotto was explored, the bowl was not there; the narration implies that the bowl had been removed quite some time before. It is here that the Baudelaires are told that the sugar bowl itself is not important; it's the contents of the bowl that matters.

In The Penultimate Peril, the sugar bowl was brought to the Hotel Denouement by V.F.D. crows. The plan, on the villains' part, was to capture it by harpooning the crows, but due to the actions of Dewey Denouement, a plan was put in place to prevent the villains from securing it. The volunteers and villains originally thought it had fallen into the laundry room, but the Baudelaires later conclude that the sugar bowl had fallen into the pond. However, in a twist, Snicket implies that the bowl was retrieved from the pond and carried away by taxi shortly before the destruction of the hotel, and that this taxi driver was possibly himself, implying that Lemony currently has the sugar bowl.

In The End, there is a possible mention of the sugar bowl. When reading an extract from A Series of Unfortunate Events (the history of the island at which the Baudelaires arrive), Klaus reads, "Beatrice is hiding a small amount in a vess-". It could be assumed that the sentence would continue as "a vessel for disaccharides." Whether this is a reference to the same sugar bowl that was stolen from Esmé Squalor, or simply that sugar bowls became common in V.F.D. as they proved useful for storage of sensitive items, is not known.

Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography's index entry for the sugar bowl redirects the reader to the entries for 'hiding places' and Lena Pukalie's book I Lost Something at the Movies, a reference to real-life film critic Pauline Kael's I Lost It at the Movies; the link between the latter and the sugar bowl is not explained.