| rdfs:comment | - 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 th
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| abstract | - 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 Esmé 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 High Court judges (Count Olaf's bosses) searched the destroyed V.F.D. office after the fire they set to find the sugar bowl, but did not find it, the bowl having been thrown out the window before the fire. 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. In The Unauthorized Autobiography, a letter to Lemony Snicket from the Vineyard of Fragrant Drapes (likely a V.F.D. related place, because of its initials and the use of the Sebald Code in the note) mentions that "all the sugar bowls will be in place". Later, a similar letter can be found to Jerome Squalor about his marriage to Esmé, although that letter is from the Vineyard of Fragrant Grapes. The latter letter also states "that they were unable to provide the sugar bowls your fiance requested in a separate letter," hinting again that the Vineyard is part of the fire fighting side of V.F.D. 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 [of horseradish (or other substance capable of diluting the medusoid mycelium)] 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. However, Pauline Kael has said the word 'it' refers to "so many kinds of innocence" -- Lemony could be referring to an item that proves or embodies innocence.
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