The girl is the daughter of a well-known British Army reservist, who was sent to war, but was deemed dead in battle. As a result of this, a sickening chain of events occur to the girl, starting with the death of her mother.
This book is deemed to be one of Gorey's most morbid tales, as it not only features the death of a child, but the slow, painful death of one, both physically and psychologically.
This work contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: To start off, all of Charlotte's family members are absent throughout the majority of the book. Following that, the teachers at the orphanage don't do anything about Charlotte being bullied due to her being a scapegoat.
- Affectionate Parody: The book was in part meant to be a parody of the French silent film, L'enfant de paris (1913), a film that the author apparently really liked, despite seeing it only once. The primary difference between that film and this book is the presence of a caretaker when the child is whisked away to an abusive owner. Whereas L'enfant has Bosco, who cared dearly for the child in her respective film, Charlotte had no such luck. Also unlike the movie it was based on, it ends on the first act. At that point in the movie, Bosco and the child are running away from people trying to take advantage of a search and rescue prize awarding anyone who finds her, and searching for her father, who didn't die after all. Worse still is that the father being still alive was kept intact for the book, but when she does manage to escape, she ends up nearly blind, and is accidently killed off by her own father.
- The Alcoholic: For the latter half of the story, Charlotte must work for a drunken brute in a dark basement.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Charlotte gets picked on constantly by all of the other children at the orphanage for no apparent reason.
- Anvil on Head: Charlotte's uncle is hit on the head with a piece of masonry, killing him.
- Break the Cutie: As the story progresses, Charlotte is shown to be more and more broken inside. Maybe having her killed off was more of a mercy call than one may perceive.
- Children Are Innocent: This book plays with this trope by having an innocent little girl from a wealthy family deteriorate from the world's evils. Her defenselessness also plays as a big component to this.
- Dad's Off Fighting in the War: What starts the conflict of the book. Things start to go downhill as soon as he is declared dead.
- Damsel in Distress: Self-Explanatory.
- Death of a Child: This books is often considered by Gorey fans to be a lot more darker than The Gashlycrumb Tinies due to the fact that the child in question suffers greatly before her death, and because of the fact that her death is actually shown.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Subverted, as only Charlotte's mother dies for real, and both love her dearly.
- Diabolus ex Machina: This trope is turned Up to Eleven over and over and over again. Bonus points for an ending which seems to be headed towards Deus ex Machina but goes with another Diabolus ex Machina instead.
- Disaster Dominoes: A sickening, yet very unlikely, chain of events occur to the protagonist after her father leaves for war.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Though, to say the titular child is hapless is a MASSIVE understatement.
- Father's Quest: Parodied. The book concerns the pretty and tended daughter of a British Army reservist who is called to duty overseas. Not long thereafter, the mother falls into a "decline" that proves fatal. The daughter gets shunted to an orphanage, which in those days was a legalized hellhole. She escapes, only to fall into the clutches of a "brute" who keeps her prisoner in a basement, making lace in minimal lighting. The father returns home, learns the fate of his wife, and that his daughter has gone missing from the orphanage. He rides his motorcar through the London streets daily, calling his daughter's name in a desperate hope that she'll appear.
- Harmful to Minors: Charlotte had to face the death of her mother on her death bed, right in front of her.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Charlotte is physically and psychologically abused to a ridiculously exaggerate degree by everyone she meets after she is orphaned.
- Innocent Flower Girl: Charlotte is one of these. Unfortunately, that doesn't exclude her from everything that happens to her in the story.
- Jerkass: Just about every character that isn't Charlotte or her parents is one.
- Just in Time: Inverted. The reader is given the impression that this will be played straight when Charlotte's father attempts to find her, just as she has been blinded and wandering the street on the verge of death. He ends up running over her with his buggy instead.
- Kafka Komedy: Charlotte goes through utter hell, which comically gets worse over the course of the book.
- Karma Houdini: None of the villains in the story face any consequences for how they treat Charlotte. At best, the brute who forced Charlotte to make paper roses may have died after going insane, but this is never confirmed.
- Kids Are Cruel: Just ask Charlotte.
- Lonely Doll Girl: Charlotte is implied to be one of these, seeing how her doll Hortense is her only confirmed "friend" in the book. That is until the children at the orphanage tear her apart limb from limb.
- Meaningful Background Event: In almost every panel of the book, some kind of creature is hiding in the background. Each time, a new, more monstrous looking one shows up, sometimes randomly sporting bat wings or extra limbs. These creatures mirror the terrible events in the book.
- Orphanage of Fear: The orphanage that Charlotte is sent to, though this is only played straight for her alone.
- Orphan's Ordeal: Exaggerated. The child protagonist not only loses both of her parents and her uncle, her only other living relative, but she is then sent to an orphanage where she is treated cruelly by the other children and teachers. She then runs off, gets kidnapped and sold to a mentally ill "brute", forced to make paper flowers in poor living conditions, becomes nearly-blind, and finally gets run over by her own father who was desperately looking for her. Made even worse when her father can no longer recognize her from all she's been through.
- Out of the Frying Pan: Just when Charlotte escapes from an abusive orphanage, she falls unconscious, gets kidnapped, and then gets sold to a thug who treats her much worse than anyone at the orphanage ever did.
- Pint-Sized Kid: Charlotte is a pretty tiny kid. She's even shorter than the kids at the orphanage, who are supposed to be around her age.
- Riches to Rags: Charlotte Sophia, the protagonist of the book, starts off living comfortably with her affluent family, becomes an orphan after her father is presumed dead and her remaining relatives die, and eventually lives in poor living conditions in hard labor before her untimely death.
- Sadist Teacher: The teachers at the orphanage that Charlotte is sent to give her harsh punishments. One such punishment was holding a heavy stack of books over her head in humiliation.
- The Scapegoat: Charlotte becomes one when she is sent to the orphanage.
- Troubled Abuser: The brute is implied to be one, as he is said to experience "the horrors" from time to time.
- Uncertain Doom: The last time we see the brute, he "went off his head", and Charlotte somehow escapes from the basement. It is not confirmed whether or not the brute is still alive.
- Undignified Death: The book ultimately ends with Charlotte's ironic death of accidently being run over by her father's buggy.
- Would Hurt a Child: As to be expected from a book titled The Hapless Child.
