Little Women

[flea]

Tonight is book club, and we read Little Women, which I had never read before. At least, I read Little Women; I rather suspect, from the emails that I received, that precious few of us finished it. In any case, we are watching the movie (Hepburn version, 1933; not the 1949 version with a BLOND Liz Taylor as Amy!) tonight.

I can't decide if I would have loved this as a girl or not. I was a cynical 12 year old, but I did love Anne of Green Gables and things of that ilk. As an adult reader, I am distanced from the text by my understanding of history and knowledge of the Alcott family (my mother volunteered at the Concord Museum for a while; I've been to Orchard House and seen 'Amy's' drawings on the walls.) I can certainly see how many girls at the time, and still today, would love it. I wasn't spoiled for who Jo and Amy marry, though I did know Beth died (is there anyone in the world who doesn't know Beth dies? If so, I'm sorry; you do know now.)

It falls strangely into the two pieces (book one ends at Meg's engagement). The first book is more truly girls' literature - full of promise, and romantic - one is sure that Jo and Laurie will marry. The second book feels a little antifeminist - the trials of Meg as a new wife and mother make her seem very weak and silly; Amy is redeemed from being a brat and snags Laurie, who is both rich and virtuous, showing us the triumph of the ladylike; Jo seems to give up her dreams of being a novelist to look after little boys and a shaggy German academic. The first book is all about the girls and the family and Marmee and the boundless possibility of their adult futures; the second book sees their lives narrow to their relationships with (future) husbands.

Another odd thing is how completely absent the father is, even when he does come back from the war. Bronson Alcott was an oddball; one of the critical essays suggests she left him out because his philosophy would be unpalatable to the mainstream readers she hoped for. My mother has a rant about how completely irresponsible he was as a parent; I guess they nearly starved and froze to death one year when he decided to live off the land (without actually knowing how to.)

Did you read it, as a child or as an adult? Do you love it?

Comments

[holli.livejournal.com]

I tried to read it three or four times as a kid, and never got more than a third of the way through before I gave up. I think the first time I was nine or ten, and the last time I was 12. It's really weird, because I love Anne of Green Gables, and I had no trouble with other Alcott, like Eight Cousins. I even read some of the really treacly, moralizing, heavy-handed kidlit from that era-- Pollyanna and Heidi and Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.

But I would always get a third of the way into Little Women and go, you know what? I do not give a crap about these girls or their gloves or their limes or their hair. And I'd go off and read something else.

[theodosia.livejournal.com]

The Alcott family spent a year at Fruitlands, which is still partially standing as a smallish museum outside of Boston, worth seeking out.

I've definitely never been able to get very far with any Alcott book, and I probably should try again, at least out of historical/literary interest.

[sophiabrooks.livejournal.com]

I have probably read it over 50 times, starting in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I did start out with an abridged edition. I loved everything about it and wanted to name our dog Beth, buy my mother wouldn't let me because Beth died! We compromised on Meg. This is actually how I date when I read the book, because this happened in third grade. As with a lot of my reading, I read the parts when the girls were younger over and over, and then started reading the whole book over and over as I got older.

It isn't my favorite Alcott, however. I still read The Old Fashioned Girl at least once a year. I just want to be Polly.

So, um, yeah, I guess I liked Little Women. (and Five Little Peppers!)

[stephl.livejournal.com]

I am Sophia, almost exactly. (Except I didn't name any pets after the Marches. Though my first cat was named Puff, after the cat in Dick and Jane.)

I had an abridged version until I was out of college (I didn't actually realize it was abridged, because sometimes I am very, very dim). To tell the truth, the abridged version made some very wise editing choices. The unabridged has some areas that ramble, ramble, ramble, and even get a little preachy.

When I was a kid, I read the first half of the book countless times, but the second half didn't interest me. All that marriage stuff was icky. I'm not even sure if I read the second half until I was in college.

I love it, though. Sure, it has flaws, but it's a product of its time to some degree. But there's just something so lovely about it, something so genuine, even when it is at its treacle-y-ist. I re-read it at least once a year.

[sophiabrooks.livejournal.com]

I have to confess I didn't realize the abridged-ness until around college, either. And it did cut a lot of the really boring parts!

[gchick.livejournal.com]

Always hated it. As a kid, I'm not sure which I resented more -- the fact that "my" character (that is, the one with my name) was horribly HORRIBLY dull, or the fact that Jo got so utterly tamed at the end.

For me, it's part of a whole series of girls' classics with the same basic tame-the-tomboy arc. I still catch myself feeling angry and betrayed out of all proportion when I think about them, and also associate them with a lot of unpleasant musty old-lady types cooing about how if I like to read, I must LOOOOOOVE this.

So, issues. Or early part of my feminist awakening. Depends on how you look at it.

[sophiabrooks.livejournal.com]

What is interesting is that I think Alcott was trying to (at least subversively) trying to present a feminist sensibility. She does more so, especially with minor characters, in The Old Fashioned Girl. The heroine, Polly, is not really a tom boy, but does not succumb to the fashion of growing up before her time. Also, when she moves back to the city at 22 to make her living as a piano teacher, she rooms in the same rooming house as an older woman who is sort of a Jane Addams type, and a bunch of young women artists (writers, musicians, sculptors) who are very independent. Two of them also appear to have a 'Boston Marriage', unless I am reading too much into it.

[gchick.livejournal.com]

And (just as interesting) I know all that to be true, and can see it in other Alcott work that I've read (which is admittedly random bits and pieces, since I'm not a big enough fan to really seek her out). But my reaction to LW is so tied up with (1) that feeling of being just gutted by book after book that -- in my utterly unobjective eyes -- more or less character-raped the only interesting people in the book, and (2) the very conflicty feeling I had as a wants-to-please-the-grownups nerd that I was really under some kind of pressure to think this stuff was the greatest thing ever, that I've never been able to read it later with a more rational perspective.

[sophiabrooks.livejournal.com]

I feel a little like this with other things-- but my family didn't really know children's books, I think. My mother bought just about everything and I read it all, however, she loved a) The Old Man and the Sea, b) The Snows of Kilamanjaro, c) Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn and d) all Ayn Rand-- all of which I felt some pressure to have my life changed in the same ways my mother did, when really I wanted to throw them all across the room, especially Ayn Rand!

[stephl.livejournal.com]

the fact that Jo got so utterly tamed at the end.

I guess I'm revealing myself to be extremely conventional, but -- well, even tomboys want to be loved. It's not as though Jo bowed to family/societal pressure to get married -- she loved Prof. Bhaer. I mean, I guess she needn't have married -- she could have been an unmarried author for the rest of her life -- but it doesn't seem to me that she was "tamed" just because she fell in love and got married.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Doesn't she actually give up writing, though?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

No, she gives up writing shocking blood-and-thunder adventure stories. Even by the end of Little Women she's published a few small pieces, and by Jo's Boys (the sequel to Little Men, which is the sequel to Little Women) she is a very well-known, even famous, author.

[gchick.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're terribly conventional -- if anything, I think I'm kind of insane. As I said before, my reaction to the book is very visceral, and I've never really been able to make myself look at it in the kind of calm and analytic light that I was taught to do elsewhere.

That said, yes, I think there's a lot of taming going on there, on a fairly insidious level. The key point to Jo's story for me is that it's so taken for granted that it's an either/or thing. That tomboys want to be loved, I get completely. But the notion that that has to mean a choice between a loveless life and giving up what makes you you? Gutpunch city. If there were some kind of outside pressure on her that she was resisting, or that I could even imagine her resisting in a sort of fanficcy way, it wouldn't suck as much for me as her deciding on her own that marriage = giving up her stories = A-OK.

It's all very much like my feelings about the BtVS S6 ep As You Were. Not so much sane, as my issues having issues.

[smonsterbite.livejournal.com]

I've read it dozens of times, along with the sequels. Loved Jo, thought she was an idiot for not saying yes to Laurie, vaguely resented her settling down.

Have also read Eight Cousins and A Rose In Bloom and other Alcott many many times.

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

I read it, and loved the first half, but never really liked the second half. Partly because as an older sister, I figured Amy was a big brat who didn't deserve Laurie, and I never understood the attraction of marrying the Professor who was like, her dad's age! I might get it more now.

I tried reading the other one (Jo's Boys? or something) and never got into it (though knowing me, I probably read the whole thing and just mean that i never REread it)

[gingerk.livejournal.com]

I am Sophia and Steph. I first read Little Women in an abridged version (the green and yellow Whitman's edition)in the second grade, and I've reread the full version dozens of times, along with just about every word Alcott wrote, except some of the shilling shockers that haven't been collected. The second half of the book is actually a sequel called Good Wives, and was written in response to the enormous popularity of Little Women.

Little Women is still my sentimental favorite, but these days I'm more likely to reread An Old-Fashioned Girl or Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. Almost all of her books are quite feminist for the era; they argue that women should be able to support themselves and have the same opportunities, and that men should learn household skills like cooking and sewing. The best example of this is Work, which was written as an adult novel. It's about a woman who's left with no income and struggles with sewing and other things to make a living. She because an actress, which means she's not accepted in society.

None of the romances in the books are entirely satisfactory, probably because Alcott never married and her father was hardly a model for fiction. His time was all spent talking about transcendentalism and spending their money on quixotic ventures. By her late teens, Louisa was scrounging about for jobs to support the family.

[amy37.livejournal.com]

::sits in the corner with Steph and Sophia and Ginger::

I read it first as a child, and read it now every year or so. Sometimes I read only my favorite chapters. By now, though, I know a lot of it by heart.

I've read other Alcott, but this is my favorite. I know it's sentimental, but there's a lot of stuff in there that's valuable, I think, in what Marmee taught the girls, and it never struck me as overly preachy. As a kid, I was an incurable romantic, so it was fine with me that Jo married -- I liked the fact that Prof. Bhaer knew she was a writer, and that he was poor, and older, and that she loved him anyway. She was really marrying for love, and it always struck me that Plumfield was a real blessing -- a school full of boys getting into trouble!

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

As a child I read the first book and loved it. I never could get to the end of the second book though. I think I quit somewhere around Amy in Europe and I never got to Jo and Mr. Baer (see, I still remember his name, although maybe not hte spelling, but I never got to them being together). ANyway, even as an adult I've never finished the whole thing. I did really like the first part though when I was younger.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

I love this and all works of Louisa May Alcott with a passionate purple passion. I would go on and on if I didn't have a screaming baby and a computer that shuts off at random intervals. Maybe I'll come back and go on and on later when I get the chance.