Little Women (Chapters 35 - 47) by Louisa May Alcott

Posted by Marzie's Reads December 16, 2019

Little Women (Chapters 35 - 47) by Louisa May Alcott

Welcome to my Book Fairy readathon of Louisa May Alcott's best-known novel, "Little Women." I am participating in the Book Fairy International plan of reading this book in full before the December 25th release of actress and director Greta Gerwig's adaptation of the novel for film. You're welcome to join in with thoughts and comments.

Before we get into the second half of the book, we continue to look at the lives of the Alcott sisters who inspired Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. For this week's installment, I look at Elizabeth, the inspiration for Beth March. The impact of Elizabeth's death, when Louisa May was twenty-six years old, forever changed the tenor and course of Louisa May Alcott's writing. She would spend a decade ruminating on Elizabeth's loss before portraying it in her novel.

Little Women's Beth

Louisa May Alcott's younger sister Elizabeth Sewell Alcott,
originally christened Elizabeth Peabody Alcott, was born in

1835, two and a half years after Louisa. The character of Beth March is almost entirely drawn from the real-life "Lizzie" Alcott. Lizzie was a shy and retiring figure, home-schooled, a great lover of music and cats. She excelled at needlework and kept neat journals that gave little impression of her thoughts and feelings about events. Even her father noted that Elizabeth seldom shared her feelings with others. Just as with Beth March, it was a fateful, charitable act of seeking to help an impoverished German family in 1856 that led to her exposure to scarlet fever. The infection ultimately claimed her life two years later, in March of 1858, just shy of her twenty-third birthday. The last years of her life were a steady and painful deterioration of her health. Louisa May was very close to her sister but said she didn't miss her as much as she thought she would because she was so relieved Lizzie was beyond further suffering. At the moment of her death, Louisa, Abba (their mother), and the family doctor reportedly saw a fine mist rise off her body. Lizzie Alcott's funeral was a quiet affair. Her pallbearers included writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. She was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary in Concord, like most of her family. Many readers and visitors to the Orchard House do not know that Elizabeth passed away mere weeks before the family moved into their beloved Orchard House, where Louisa May penned her most famous work.

Notably, Little Women was published a decade after Elizabeth's death. Yet, the poignant relationship between Jo and Beth March feels as fresh and genuine as if she were still alive while Louisa May Alcott wrote the novel. And how touching is it that the home Louisa May writes about as the March family home is Orchard House? In Little Women, she envisions Beth living happily there for her entire life. In fact, the Alcotts had moved an astonishing twenty-two times in the thirty years before they finally settled in Orchard House.

Little Women, Chapters 35-47

In the second half of Book 2 (Good Wives), we see broad developments in the action of the story. Laurie graduates from college, and when Jo returns home for that celebration, she is devastated twice over by the fact that first, Laurie confronts her with renewed hopes for marriage (hopes that are quickly dashed) and second, that Beth's health has worsened. Jo has saved money from her work as a governess to Mrs. Kirke's children, setting aside funds to take Beth away to the seaside, hoping to provide her with fresh air and relaxation. (In my wrap up next week, one of the things I want to discuss is what an incredible sister Louisa May Alcott was and Jo taking such care of Beth is entirely in line with that.) With Laurie and his grandfather headed off to Europe, and Jo whisking Beth away, Jo's heart is heavy and weighed down even further when really looking at Beth reveals the obvious truth that Beth is terminally ill. The ravages of her scarlet fever are stealing her life away. It's very likely that Beth and her real-life counterpart, Lizzie, had developed rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease, in particular. Beth is comforted that Jo realizes that her death is imminent. She no longer has to go on pretending. All along Beth's admiring Laurie, and Jo and the rest of the family was an admiration of their splendid health and their futures. Returning home, Jo decides to remain to take care of Beth, who dies not long afterward. Amy, who had been encouraged to stay in Europe with Aunt Carrol, feels guilty over not having been there to say farewell to her sister.

Interspersed in this sadness and loss, we see Meg trying to balance being a wife and mother. She struggles to remain an appealing companion for John, and a responsible, if exhausted, mother to DemiJohn and Daisy. Marmee comes to the rescue, and John does come around to more parenting with the children. (The gender role exemplified by Meg's life seems to be the antithesis of what the author herself would aspire to embody.) While Meg is dealing with her marriage, Amy, off in Europe, is contemplating whether she would marry someone she would have to "grow to love" (like Fred Vaughn, for instance) to have a comfortable life. Laurie says such a sentiment seems odd coming from one of her mother's daughters. She and Laurie keep on pushing each other's buttons in a chapter that culminates in Laurie returning to his grandfather in London to do his duty and stop brooding over Jo's refusal to marry him. It's not long after that he must turn around and return to comfort Amy due to the news of Beth's passing. In the midst of their sorrow, Laurie and Amy find themselves falling into a comfortable love with one another. It's not long before they are engaged and, in a great surprise to the March family, married.

Jo, on the other hand, is left alone with Beth's death, Amy and Laurie's marriage, and finds herself missing Friedrich Bhaer. When Bhaer makes a surprise visit to the Alcotts, Jo discovers that there is genuine affection between them. Bhaer spends time with her family and her parents like him. Ultimately, she accepts his proposal of marriage. In spite of their age difference (which was truly nothing in that era), she feels they have a meeting of the minds. Meanwhile, Aunt March passes away and leaves Jo her Plumfield mansion, and Jo plans to start a school for boys there. Cue the prompt for the next novel in Alcott's famous trilogy, Little Men.

Compared to the first three-quarters of the novel, developments in the last 150 pages are rapid. We, as readers, don't linger much, except for the poignant passing of Beth. Looking back, the keen loneliness one feels in Jo after Beth's death seems the sharpest of reasons for her change of heart about marriage. While she certainly needed the right partner, her recognition that she wanted a partner was an evolution throughout Good Wives (Book 2.) It's also interesting that Jo was drawn to someone foreign, from outside the insular community in which the March family lived. Her horizons and dreams are larger even than Amy's, it seems. Speaking of Amy, her marriage with Laurie reminds me that, long ago, this was my first time reading a novel in which I felt that a character married not just a person but an entire family. (The next instance when I had that feeling was when Harry and Hermione married Weasleys.) After all the years of attachment between Jo and Laurie, I always felt that Amy was brave in hoping/believing that Laurie was finally over her sister. And Laurie seemed determined to become a member of the warm March family.

Next week I'll be wrapping up my thoughts on Little Women, cover the life of the May Alcott, who inspired Amy, and look at the recently released Meg and Jo, a thoroughly modern retelling of Little Women by Virginia Kantra.