The first volume of Little Women was published on this date—Sept. 30, 1868—and was an immediate, roaring success.
Once, when I was in a writing group of women, all of us just beginning to publish, we went around the room saying what books had made us want to be writers. Little Women was the only one on everyone's list, and for me the first I thought of. I read it dozens of times, growing up, and reread it, not long ago.
I think it’s easy for a contemporary reader to miss how powerfully subversive this book was and is. It's a great example of how the actions of characters can play against the accepted mores of the time. Yes, there are characters who preach (Marmee, nicely; others less so) about the way young women should suppress critical thoughts, envy, ambition, anger, desire, and need. (Really, how much has this changed?) But what the reader remembers is how Jo's actions show the path of daring (warning: plot spoilers ahead): selling her hair to get money to help her mother, writing dramatic short stories and making money at it, walking from Concord to Boston to see an editor, rejecting the rich man she doesn’t love and choosing the poor man she wants.
Once, when I was in a writing group of women, all of us just beginning to publish, we went around the room saying what books had made us want to be writers. Little Women was the only one on everyone's list, and for me the first I thought of. I read it dozens of times, growing up, and reread it, not long ago.
I think it’s easy for a contemporary reader to miss how powerfully subversive this book was and is. It's a great example of how the actions of characters can play against the accepted mores of the time. Yes, there are characters who preach (Marmee, nicely; others less so) about the way young women should suppress critical thoughts, envy, ambition, anger, desire, and need. (Really, how much has this changed?) But what the reader remembers is how Jo's actions show the path of daring (warning: plot spoilers ahead): selling her hair to get money to help her mother, writing dramatic short stories and making money at it, walking from Concord to Boston to see an editor, rejecting the rich man she doesn’t love and choosing the poor man she wants.
Louisa May Alcott, at about 25. Beth, the sweetest and most selfless sister, dies. While this section meets all the Victorian standards for a heart-wringing deathbed (and I cried, every time I read it, as a girl, and sometimes would put it off for a few days, till I was ready), I can’t help but see now that the author kills off the self-sacrificing sister, assigns the domestic one, Meg, a placid marriage, but gives Amy, the selfish, vain one, a life of art and a kind, handsome, rich husband. On rereading, I noticed Aunt March's role much more: she's a sort of Yankee Lady Catherine de Burgh: she claims to want docility from others, but she is herself willful and controlling, and able to be so because she is single and wealthy. Having such a character to battle with—and being stuck tending to her—helps to sharpen and define Jo, as she navigates the difficult path between being selfish and selfless.
Louisa May Alcott herself lived a life with a large share of selflessness. When Little Women was published, she was 35 and in ill-health after typhoid contracted while nursing during the Civil War. To earn money for the family’s support (because none of her philosopher father Bronson Alcott’s idealistic schemes paid), Louisa had from an early age been sewing, teaching, and writing under her own name. By the mid 1860s she was also, under a pseudonym, writing sensationalist stories full of drama (and notably ruthless characters). Little Women paid off the family debts., and Alcott ultimately published 30 books. Little Women (and its successors, like Jo’s Boys) also opened up a category of writing that centered on recognizable American young people coming of age in recognizable American places. Tom Sawyer, 1876, seems to me to owe some debt to Alcott, and the same could be said for the whole rich tradition of American Young Adult fiction.
Louisa May Alcott herself lived a life with a large share of selflessness. When Little Women was published, she was 35 and in ill-health after typhoid contracted while nursing during the Civil War. To earn money for the family’s support (because none of her philosopher father Bronson Alcott’s idealistic schemes paid), Louisa had from an early age been sewing, teaching, and writing under her own name. By the mid 1860s she was also, under a pseudonym, writing sensationalist stories full of drama (and notably ruthless characters). Little Women paid off the family debts., and Alcott ultimately published 30 books. Little Women (and its successors, like Jo’s Boys) also opened up a category of writing that centered on recognizable American young people coming of age in recognizable American places. Tom Sawyer, 1876, seems to me to owe some debt to Alcott, and the same could be said for the whole rich tradition of American Young Adult fiction.
In Concord, I've visited Orchard House, where the Alcotts lived, sometimes on my own and on other occasions with the excuse of bringing visitors. I’m always bowled over by how many people come, from as far away as Japan. And often there are families where the mother and daughter have led the way, and men, who usually have never read Alcott, are there, in tow. I’m always struck by how powerful the draw of a world the writer created on the page can be, how deeply readers feel they “know” the characters, and how often girls identify with the less “good” characters, the artists, Amy and Jo.
In Louisa's chamber, half moon desk at left and a later desk—not very big either—at right. My favorite part of the tour, always, is the bedroom called “Louisa’s chamber.” There, she wrote Little Women at a little half-moon desk, a “shelf desk” built into the wall between two windows, just a small half circle of wood. When I was a girl, I had a copy of the book that included a photo of Alcott, older, famous, at her desk (which seemed to be no more than a shelf, too, but rectangular). It’s the only image of a woman writer I can remember seeing, till many years later, and from it I learned: a woman can write a great book, if she has at least a desk big enough to lean her elbow on and get the job done.
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