Top 100 Children’s Novels #47: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

#47 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
43 points

So ahead of her time, it makes you think her father was doing something right. – Susan Van Metre

I still think Jo should have married Laurie. – The Sauls Family

And at last the oldest children’s book to appear on this list makes its appearance (sorry, The Tales of Peter Parley About America fans).

The plot from Anita Silvey’s Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children’s Book reads, “The four March girls – determined Jo, beautiful Meg, saintly Beth, and artistic Amy – experience first the problems of the Civil War years and then the period after the war.  All struggled with character defects (Meg vanity; Jo tempter ; Beth shyness; and Amy selfishness); all deal with the problems created by their family’s poverty.  Without question one of the saddest moments universally acknowledged in children’s fiction comes when Beth dies.  And that, of course, underscores the great strength of Alcott’s work; she brings these characters to life.  But Jo carries the story.  She refuses to accept what society tells her to be.  She is generous and loving, cutting off her own hair to provide money for the family, but she is never a victim.  She finds her own path and becomes what she wants to be, a writer.”

And its origin story?  The Reference Guide to American Literature describes the creation of the book(s) in this way: “Alcott’s purpose in writing Little Women was not to create a nostalgic portrait of an idyllic childhood, though the book is often read as such. She wrote it to make money.” Horn Book’s article “Introduction to the Centennial Edition of Little Women” by Cornelia Meigs goes into a bit more detail on the matter. “In September, 1867, [Alcott] mentions in her diary that Mr. Thomas Niles of Roberts Brothers had asked her for a book for girls. It seems to have been somewhat of a shot in the dark even for him; for her it was even more unpromising than that. She agreed to try, but linked the task so little that she did not go on with it. Other and easier-seeming undertakings were allowed to come in the way and in May, 1867, she sent her father to Mr. Niles to ask him if he would not be interested in a fairy book. Thomas Niles answered firmly that he wanted a book for girls.” And so, dear reader, she did.

The second part of Little Women was originally published in 1869 as Good Wives. Usually that book is paired with the first into one great big Little Women, though. Part one was drawn quite a bit from Alcott’s own life (even to the point where Amy was simply the rearranged letters of Louisa’s actual sister). Elizabeth, Lousia’s sister, died at twenty-three. Louisa was very disappointed when the family broke up. The Alcott girls donated their Christmas breakfast to a needy family once. Louisa won a hundred dollars in a writing contest. The girls often performed their own plays.  It’s all there! I was particularly pleased to find a letter in the May 1903 edition of St. Nicholas from Annie Alcott Pratt, otherwise known to the world as “Meg”. She clarifies a couple points. ” ‘Meg’ was never the pretty vain little maiden, who coquetted and made herself so charming. But ‘Jo’ always admired poor, plain ‘Meg,’ and when she came to put her into the story, she beautified her to suit the occasion, saying, ‘Dear me, girls, we must have one beauty in the book!’ So ‘Meg,’ with her big mouth and homely nose, shines forth quite a darling, and no doubt all the ‘ little women’ who read of her admire her just as loving old ‘Jo’ does, and think her quite splendid. But, for all that, she is nothing but homely, busy, and, I hope, useful ‘Annie’ who writes this letter to you.” It goes on from there. Fascinating reading.

In her critical essay on Little Women in Novels for Students, author Jennifer Bussey explains a lot of the book’s appeal at the time. “Because most characters in children’s books at the time were too perfect, readers were less interested in what eventually became of them. In Little Women, however, readers saw themselves in the pages of the story and longed to know how things turned out for the March girls. Thus, being character driven is part one’s strength.” It’s true. The sermonizing in this book has nothing on the average everyday 19th-century novel of the time. Alcott allowed her characters to be a little more than merely “good” or “bad”.  A novel notion, no?

It’s the honesty of the writing that folks (adult folks anyway) tend to love. In Intent Upon Reading: A Critical Appraisal of Modern Fiction for Children author Margery Fisher writes, “How many family stories there are in which the plot centers round poverty: how few in which you can really smell that poverty. Little Women has a permanent place on the bookshelves of the young because of its sterling honesty.”

There is great lamenting and gnashing of teeth when people discuss the fact that Jo and next door neighbor boy Laurie don’t hook up. I rather like Bussey’s explanation of why that is, though. “While it is tempting to imagine that Alcott wrote for Jo a fate she had hoped for herself, the author’s correspondence proves otherwise. She knew that readers desperately wanted to see Jo marry, but Alcott was unwilling to make the obvious choice of Laurie as a husband. Alcott understands Jo so completely that she cannot allow her to marry Laurie, even though it disappoints most readers. Jo loves Laurie as a brother, not as a husband, and she knows that he does not fully appreciate how important her writing is to her. As his wife, she would be expected to socialize in high society and behave like a lady. Knowing herself well enough to know that the marriage would not be fulfilling, Jo refuses his proposal.” She later goes on to speculate that Professor Bhaer was inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, but that’s neither here nor there.

Download the book here.

• Here are some lesson plans.

• You can join the Louisa May Alcott Society if you’ve an inkling to do so.

A review in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine at the time said of it, “It is natural, and free from that false sentiment which pervades too much of juvenile literature. Autobiographies, if genuine, are generally interesting, and it is shrewdly suspected that Joe’s experience as an author photographs some of Miss Alcott’s own literary mistakes and misadventures.”

The Nation was a little more snide, saying “Miss Alcott’s new juvenile [novel, Little Women,] is an agreeable little story, which is not only very well adapted to the readers for whom it is especially intended, but may also be read with pleasure by older people. The girls depicted all belong to healthy types, and are drawn with a certain cleverness, although there is in the book a lack of what painters call atmosphere—things and people being painted too much in ‘local colors,’ and remaining, under all circumstances, somewhat too persistently themselves.”

Re: The covers – Sing, my pretties!  Sing!

I like to call this next one “guess which one is Jo”.

Seriously, Signet.  I understand why you’d want to use a piece of art in the public domain . . . but FIVE sisters?  What, was this like the Beatles and one got kicked out?  Was she the Gummo of the March girls?

And let us not forget the multiple filmed versions of this book for countless generations. In 1933 Katherine Hepburn was Jo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwcYefo9fc&feature=embed

Elizabeth Taylor played Amy in the 1949 version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejNRBp82_hw&feature=embed

Then came 1978. The big star was Meredith Baxter Birney as Meg, Susan Dey as Jo, and . . . William Shatner as Professor Bhaer? Hoo boy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8a_nS_PyE&feature=embed

The inevitable 1987 Japanese animated series:

And finally, I confess that as a kid who grew up watching Beetlejuice, the Winona Ryder was always my favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL7fstVuGd0&feature=embed

Filed under: Best Books, Top 100 Children's Novels (2012)