Little Women (Chapters 24 - 34) 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 Louisa May, herself.                                                                                                                             



Little Women's Jo

"I resolved to take fate by the throat and shake a living out of her."

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, the northwest area of Philadelphia, which may surprise those who think of her as a quintessential New Englander. Her parents, Abigail "Abba" May and Amos Bronson Alcott moved to Boston with their daughters Anna and Louisa in 1834, after a brief period of living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and founded the Temple School. (Abba May was a native Bostonian descended from a prominent Massachusetts family.) Her father's belief in transcendentalism, his attempts at communal living at the failed Fruitlands project, and his poor financial decision-making conspired to place the family in truly grinding poverty for much of Louisa's early life. Their lives changed once she became a successful author. 

Many adult readers wonder how much of Louisa is reflected in her most famous character. While many of Jo March's traits- her headstrong nature, her ambition to become a published author, her admiration for a more masculine lifestyle are those of Louisa May herself, there is a significant difference- Jo March eventually marries, while Louisa herself most certainly did not. In fact, Louisa appears to have enjoyed the freedom of the successful author spinster life so much that when her editor asked her to pen an essay on spinsters, she shocked him by titling her piece "Happy Women." (No, really, you can find it here in Alternative Alcott.) Louisa famously was a tomboy, preferred men's clothes, men's games, and unconventionally, became the breadwinner in her family. She began writing at age eight (at that time, poetry) and embraced her path as a writer for the rest of her life. While influenced by the transcendentalist beliefs of her father, Louisa had a pragmatic streak and wrote lurid fiction under a pseudonym to pull in money in between books. Though her female characters in novels were depicted as being somewhat subservient (as was the gender role for women in that era) to their fathers, brothers, and husbands, Louisa considered herself the equal of any man of similar education. In her lifetime, she was a writer, a teacher, a governess, a nurse during the Civil War, and, most of all, a role model for women's independence. In my wrap up of Little Women in two weeks, I will examine how Jo March eventually veered into the female gender stereotype, unlike Louisa did herself and why she did.

Alcott was thirty-five when her editor suggested she write about girls, spurring her to pen her most famous novel. All 2000 copies of the first printing of Little Women sold out immediately. Her career and financial independence were launched at last. She published thirty books, poetry, and short story collections over the course of twenty years. Louisa died two days after her father, of a massive stroke, at age fifty-five. She was buried on Author's Ridge, in her family's plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetary. Her Little Women has never, in 150 years, been out of print. By any measure, she was the most successful female American author of her era and arguably the most successful American author of the latter half of the 19th century, with only Mark Twain offering a significant comparison of enduring success. Even today, Little Women sits at #5 on Amazon's bestseller list for Classics.



Little Women, Chapters 24 - 34

Chapter 24 opens the second book, Good Wives. The tenor of this second book departs significantly from the first, most notably with Jo. But first, let's look at Meg. The story has advanced three years in time, and Meg March is about to marry John Brooke. The first chapters of Good Wives deal with the setting up of Meg's new household, in a little cottage dubbed "The Dovecote" by Laurie, a reference to Meg and John being like two turtledoves in a nest. Meg, who has been the most conventional of the sisters, has a lot of ideas about what makes for a good wife, including running a clean, tight household that is welcoming of her husband's guests whether she knows they're coming or not. That backfires and leads to a fight at one point. We also see Meg struggling to resist her temptations to overspend when she makes the terrible error of shopping with wealthier friends. (Now, there's a message for people of any gender or era...) Meg and John have some hurtful moments early on in their marriage. Meg's life makes me acutely aware of how little most women of a particular economic status had to do beyond adorning their husband socially and endless housework, unless they could afford help in the home, in which case there was even less for them to do. Once Meg has children, she will be busier, of course. But for intellectual stimulation, there were few things women could explore beyond their own art, music, and reading.

While Meg adjusts to married life, Amy has been maturing and cultivating the approval and affection of Aunt March. Where Jo was incautious and often ungrateful for Aunt March's employing her as a companion, Amy, who succeeds Jo in the position after staying with Aunt March while Beth was ill with scarlet fever, is resoundingly successful. She is congenial enough that Aunt March pays for drawing lessons with a professional artist, and ultimately recommends her to Aunt Carrol as a traveling companion for a trip to Europe. This trip will change the course of Amy's life and art.

Beth, on the other hand, remains in the shadows of the early chapters of Good Wives. Marmee is worried about how withdrawn Beth has become. She is opaque to the reader since we have no idea what the cause for her sadness might be. Jo spends time observing her and for a time, thinks that Beth has fallen in love with Laurie.* This worries Jo, who doubts Laurie will return the affection as she comes to see that Laurie is actually in love with her, rather than Beth. These are feelings that Jo cannot reciprocate. Jo confides in Marmee, who agrees that Jo and Laurie are not a suitable match. Although the financial implications of Jo's honorable decisions are underplayed, given the difference in circumstance between her family and the Laurences, it says so much about her character that she never, even for a minute, entertains the idea of marrying a comfortable friend she doesn't love romantically to live in more comfort. Comfort that might let her write as much as she likes. Instead, Jo decides to venture out in the world and moves to New York City to work as a governess for Mrs. Kirke, a friend of her mother who runs a boarding house. She hopes time and distance will help Laurie overcome his romantic attachment to her. This choice was something I love about Jo as a character.

Once Jo is in New York, we see an incredible segue with her character, however. While working as a governess by day, and writing lurid sensation stories for an editor by night, Jo meets a boarder, Professor Bhaer, who lives in Mrs. Kirke's house. He has moved to New York from Berlin to care for his deceased sister's two sons, as their father was American, and she wanted them educated in America. Jo likes Friedrich Bhaer and begins to study German with him, even though she has little facility with languages. Over the course of two chapters, we see Jo becoming more domesticated than we've seen in the preceding thirty-two chapters. She starts darning Professor Bhaer's socks for Mrs. Kirke, and even more amazingly, she burns her writings after Bhaer pronounces the newspaper printing her stories "bad trash." Jo is embarrassed by her own work and starts to write moral essays instead. She is unable to sell these works, however. She considers writing juvenile fiction, but the potential publisher wants cautionary tales in which bad children suffer horrible consequences, and she cannot bring herself to write such stories. She eventually decides to stop writing entirely, at least until she can find something better to write about. Professor Bhaer has visions of Jo as a wife and mother at the end of Chapter 34. I remember that as an eleven-year-old, I was confused in this passage of the book. How could Jo change so much over the course of two chapters? How did meeting Bhaer change her so much? Is she just going to give up one of her life's goals? Is this what growing up is like, I wondered? Before Jo leaves New York in June, she invites the professor her to come to visit her at home. She wants Bhaer and Laurie, her two good friends, to meet. She is returning home for Laurie's graduation, and you can already see the storm clouds looming on the horizon.

"Well, the winter's gone, and I've written no books, earned no fortune, but I've made a friend worth having and I will try to keep him all my life." - Jo

Next week we will cover the last quarter of the book, wherein there is much sorrow and some joy.



*If you've read the book before, you'll know just how sadly wrong Jo is on this account.

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I love graveyards. I don't find them creepy at all. Author's Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetary is the site of the graves of some of America's greatest 19th-century writers and educators. At this time of year, all these headstones are buried in snow. But here are some photos taken during a milder time of the year.

The Alcott Graves
Sleepy Hollow Cemetary, Concord, MA

Register of National Historic Places

(photograph by upstateherd, Wikimedia Commons)

At the left front, you can see Louisa May Alcott's headstone (L. M. A.) and gravemarker.

The humble grave of Louisa May Alcott

(photograph by midnightdreary, Wikimedia Commons)

Oh, and by the way, the double headstone in the center background of the first photo above belongs to Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt (Meg) and her husband, John Bridge Pratt (John Brooke)...

Headstones of Anna Bronson Alcott Pratt and John Bridge Pratt
by Jen Snoots

Here's the next installment...

This series of posts begins here.

This series of posts begins here.

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