Why You Should Read (or Reread) Little Women · 3:00am Aug 18th, 2015
For a very, very long time I’ve been wanting to write about some of the classic children’s (primarily girl’s) books I read growing up. I’ve hesitated, because a lot of my readers haven’t read them, and probably don’t intend to read them. But the desire struck, and I was mentioning it to Bradel, and he pulled rank as one of my contributors.
So, here’s a rather long essay about Little Women. It’s part sales pitch to those who haven’t read it, part book report with analysis of some of what makes the book a classic. There are plenty of comparisons to MLP, because part of my argument is how directly comparable to MLP this book is, and some unique historical context for the book. I hope there’s something in there whether you’ve read the book or not.
I talk about the whole arcs of the characters, so there are general spoilers throughout. But there are two major spoilers that some folks out there might have managed to remain unspoiled on: I put discussion of one of them under a a spoiler tag, and I warned for the other one when I talked about it, just in case you’re into not knowing the big surprises. But the book is available free online over at Project Gutenberg (in a number of formats) so you could just go and read it, if you care that much.
I’ve said before, if you watch MLP:FiM for the characters, you should read Little Women. I don’t know if Lauren Faust ever read it or saw one of the adaptations, though there’s a very good chance she has, but Little Women captured some of the same archetypes of girlhood almost a hundred and fifty years ago. And, being a novel, and written back when people thought kids could actually read, it delves into them with more nuance and follows them as they blossom into mature adult women.
The book begins in a small city in New England during the American Civil War, and is centered on Jo March, a passionate and athletic tomboy who dreams of adventure. Because this is the 19th century, she channels that into writing lurid and melodramatic pulp stories and plays, and hopes to become a writer and see the world. She was, in many ways, Rainbow Dash back when Rainbow Dash would have been expected to wear a corset. At the same time, she’s exceptionally close to her sisters-- of all of them, growing up and moving into their own lives hits her the hardest because her dreams are the biggest. It’s easy to dream big, and harder to achieve it.
(Maybe Spoilers in here? You know, the book is 150 years old, this is kind of silly.)
A modern narrative would be about Jo achieving those dreams. A more conventional 19th century narrative would have been about Jo settling down and learning to enjoy being a wife and mother. Little Women is neither of those things, because the book is semi-autobiographical, and Louisa May Alcott was not a typical 19th century woman.
Louisa May Alcott was the daughter of Bronson Alcott, a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and figure in a Christian movement called Trancendentalism. He was so far left wing that he would still be considered radical by a lot of liberals today-- not only was he trying to integrate the school he started 30 years before slavery ended in the US, and a firm believer in the intellectual equality of women, but he started a commune which adhered to a 19th century form of veganism, refusing to use animal labor as well as rejecting meat, leather, milk, any materials that were the product of slave labor (specifically cotton, silk, and linen,) and root vegetables (because they grew downward. Other vegetables were "aspirational." ...don’t ask me.) It didn’t work because it was a hippy commune, and those never work. But he gave it his best shot.
(An interesting note on this: in the 1994 movie version of the story, there are some kind of painfully shoehorned in bits of “modern values”: Jo arguing that women should have the right to vote, Marmee being against her daughters wearing corsets. This is an interesting case where they weren’t only making the characters look better to modern audiences, they were pulling those things from the intellectual circle that Alcott was a part of. It doesn’t make it feel less embarrassing to me, but it makes it more forgivable. Also: Baby Christian Bale, fresh off Newsies in his hammy historical roles period. And he doesn’t sing in this one, thank god.)
So, growing up in this environment, Louisa May Alcott wasn’t very interested in promoting Good Victorian Values, but she was very interested in morality: what makes a good woman or man, and how can people achieve that without removing themselves from society, because seriously, that hippy commune was no fun. The core story in Little Women is about taming Jo, but not to be a good housewife. It’s about her learning to see more to life than her own dreams, recognize her impact on the world, and direct her passions towards things more important than adventure or fame, which includes a dedication to her family, intellectual pursuits, and the more philosophical christian virtues. Jo moves from clearly Rainbow Dash to a more Twilight Sparkle/Applejack-influenced view of things.
Alcott also purposely made the most controversial shipping decision of all literature so far in service of this message, but we’ll get to that.
If Little Women was entirely focused on Jo, it would still probably be a classic. For the first 100 years of its existence, until second-wave feminism took off, Jo provided a much needed outlet for generations of girls who found themselves not entirely happy in the “girl box,” addressing their concerns pretty directly:
"Really, girls, you are both to be blamed," said Meg, beginning to lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion. "You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, Josephine. It didn't matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady."
"I'm not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty," cried Jo, pulling off her net, and shaking down a chestnut mane. "I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster! It's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy. And it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!"
But as the pluralization in the title suggests, it’s not entirely about Jo. The book is actually fairly episodic, being about Jo and her sisters learning big and little lessons through life.
Meg embodies a more traditional type of womanhood, one that’s out of fashion these days and somewhat missing from the Mane Six. She falls in love young, with a poor but good man, and learns about the partnership and temperament required for a good marriage and raising children. Her stories, especially after she’s married, can sometimes feel a little retrograde, but if you read them carefully that’s because they’re from her point of view. Alcott clearly expects the same considerations and compromises to be shown by Meg’s husband, and some episodes, like Meg learning that she has to trust her husband as a parent and not sacrifice herself at the altar of motherhood, probably ring just as true for some parents today:
Sitting on the stairs outside Meg wondered at the long silence which followed the uproar, and after imagining all sorts of impossible accidents, she slipped into the room to set her fears at rest. Demi lay fast asleep, not in his usual spreadeagle attitude, but in a subdued bunch, cuddled close in the circle of his father's arm and holding his father's finger, as if he felt that justice was tempered with mercy, and had gone to sleep a sadder and wiser baby. So held, John had waited with a womanly patience till the little hand relaxed its hold, and while waiting had fallen asleep, more tired by that tussle with his son than with his whole day's work.
As Meg stood watching the two faces on the pillow, she smiled to herself, and then slipped away again, saying in a satisfied tone, "I never need fear that John will be too harsh with my babies. He does know how to manage them, and will be a great help, for Demi is getting too much for me."
Beth is Fluttershy. In every way, she’s Fluttershy.
Beth was too bashful to go to school. It had been tried, but she suffered so much that it was given up, and she did her lessons at home with her father. Even when he went away, and her mother was called to devote her skill and energy to Soldiers' Aid Societies, Beth went faithfully on by herself and did the best she could. She was a housewifely little creature, and helped Hannah keep home neat and comfortable for the workers, never thinking of any reward but to be loved. Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends, and she was by nature a busy bee. There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for Beth was a child still and loved her pets as well as ever. Not one whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till Beth took them in, for when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her because Amy would have nothing old or ugly. Beth cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, she read to it, took it out to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face and whispering tenderly, "I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear."
Beth had her troubles as well as the others, and not being an angel but a very human little girl, she often 'wept a little weep' as Jo said, because she couldn't take music lessons and have a fine piano. She loved music so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and practiced away so patiently at the jingling old instrument, that it did seem as if someone (not to hint Aunt March) ought to help her. Nobody did, however, and nobody saw Beth wipe the tears off the yellow keys, that wouldn't keep in tune, when she was all alone. She sang like a little lark about her work, never was too tired for Marmee and the girls, and day after day said hopefully to herself, "I know I'll get my music some time, if I'm good."
There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.
Most of her episodes in the story deal with her shyness, or the excessive amount of care she gives to animals and to the poor families in town. The latter leads to her Victorian, too-good-for-this-world death-- one of the biggest tearjerkers in literature, coming close to (if not well in the realm of) melodrama, but also a major turning point for Jo and one of the most memorable parts of the book.
… I mean, I’m not saying Fluttershy should die, but it worked really well here. That’s all.
Amy is probably second in importance to Jo as a character. She starts out as clearly a child, and her story is very Rarity: she’s an artist, she loves the finer things in life, and plans to marry a rich man. But her story takes an interesting turn: as an adult she travels to Europe to study the masters of art. She recognizes that while she’s good, she’s not genius, and probably never will be. She shares this revelation with another character, Laurie (he’s the boy, I’ll get to him in a second,) who’s trying to be a composer, in a “maybe we shouldn’t quit our day jobs” kind of way.
"You have heard all that has come lately. Don't you hear often? I fancied Jo would send you volumes."
"She's very busy. I'm roving about so, it's impossible to be regular, you know. When do you begin your great work of art, Raphaella?" he asked, changing the subject abruptly after another pause, in which he had been wondering if Amy knew his secret and wanted to talk about it.
"Never," she answered, with a despondent but decided air. "Rome took all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt too insignificant to live and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair."
"Why should you, with so much energy and talent?"
"That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try any more."
"And what are you going to do with yourself now, if I may ask?"
"Polish up my other talents, and be an ornament to society, if I get the chance."
It was a characteristic speech, and sounded daring, but audacity becomes young people, and Amy's ambition had a good foundation. Laurie smiled, but he liked the spirit with which she took up a new purpose when a long-cherished one died, and spent no time lamenting.
(Combined with Jo’s plot, there’s a lot of interesting stuff about art and creativity in this book. There’s a kind of elevation of Great Art that conveys Great Ideas or Truth, with a kind of… dismissal of art-as-entertainment as youthful folly. Alcott was probably not a fan of red and black alicorn OCs or video game crossovers.)
Anyway, it turns out that Amy’s day job is trying to land a rich husband, which brings us to…
The Great Shipping Controversy of the Ages (Skip to the line break if you don’t want spoilers)
(Note: Yes, I rank this higher than the Harry Potter shipping wars. That one was huge when it happened, but this has remained a subject of conversation for almost a century and a half. Harry Potter has a lot of catching up to do.)
Theodore Laurence, or Laurie (or Teddy, but only to Jo) is the neighbor to the March sisters. He’s an orphan, being raised by his rich grandfather. He becomes friends with the girls early in the book, especially Jo, whom he treats as an equal and matches in passion (and bad temper.)
Now, here it’s important to note that what everyone knows as the book “Little Women” is actually two books that have been merged into one. The first one ends with the characters as teenagers, and the only romance is Meg’s courtship with the man she’ll eventually marry.
But when it became popular, people demanded more. Especially the shippers, who wanted to know who the girls would marry. And especially the Jo/Laurie shippers, who fully (and pretty reasonably) expected their ship to be canon.
So Louisa May Alcott, who didn’t think romance should be so important to girls, wrote a second book. And within the first few chapters, she sank Jo/Laurie, never to sail again. Laurie professes his love, and Jo turns him down, telling him they’re too immature for each other. Laurie pouts off to Europe, and Jo goes to New York, and things are never the same between them.
In New York, Jo meets Professor Fredrich Bhaer, a much older German philosophy professor working as a tutor (who is in no way dashing or romantic. He is a geek before geeks existed, and well before they were cool.) He challenges her on writing lurid pulp stories, telling her she’s too smart for that, and engages her intellectually. In the end, as part of her maturation, Jo realizes she loves him and they get married and open a school together.
Laurie is sulking around Europe, nursing his broken heart, when Amy comes along, prowling among his rich friends for a husband. She’s disgusted by the mess he’s made of himself pining for Jo, and he’s not much happier with her gold digging, and together they realize that they’re better than this and fall in love.
Shippers were not happy. The shipper grandchildren of those shippers were not happy. It’s a relatively common sentiment among anyone who reads Little Women that A) Jo and Laurie belong together 4evar, B) Professor Bhaer is fine, but Not Good Enough for Jo, and C) Laurie only married Amy so he could be part of the March family, and Amy married Laurie because he was rich and lived next door to her family.
This is why we don’t push creators for our ships, folks. They can troll us in perpetuity.
But really, I understand what Louisa May Alcott was saying with what she did. Laurie and Jo were perfect for each other as teenagers (or even young twenty-somethings.) They wanted the same kind of life, but that was a young life, and neither of them were thinking about what they wanted after that. Laurie just kind of assumed he could take over his grandfather’s business and things would go on the same way, without thinking about the kind of responsibilities they’d both need to take on for that to work and how ill-suited they were as a couple to deal with that.
The relationships they ended up with were suited to their mature personalities, after they’d had responsibilities and learned to handle adult life: Professor Bhear supports Jo’s passion, but also her intellectual growth and challenges her to reach higher in her writing. Amy is more suited to help Laurie as a partner in his business pursuits, making him look good and keeping him down to earth. The relationships they both end up in are loving, but also partnerships built on appreciation and respect more than passion.
Laurie marrying Amy and happening to become part of the March family is still a little creepy. It’s the same reason SpikeBelle is kind of a creepy ship, it can’t really lose the air of “consolation prize.”
End Spoiler
So far I’ve been pretty positive, or at least defended the book, but it’s not without its legitimate problems. The writing itself is not much to write home about. It’s friendly and accessible, but it was written before “show, don’t tell” was invented, so it tends to flow between adverb-y (but impeccably characterized) dialogue and telly exposition. And Alcott seems to have disliked description almost as much as I do, so if you’re looking for beautiful, poetic prose you’ll have to wait for me to get around to my blog on L. M. Montgomery.
A big “Your Milage May Vary” issue might be heavy Christian influence. There’s no fire-and-brimstone at all, but it’s very focused on how one should be always trying to be closer to God and more worthy of Heaven. Reading a bit on Trancendentalism, which is a very mystical and intellectually focused form of Christianity that really informs the book, might help, or just remembering that we’re talking 19th century here; Christianity was the dominant framework in the west. Also, the book is littered with references to The Pilgrim's Progress, a seriously beat-you-over-the-head Christian allegory that was very popular back then. (The main character's name is Christian. It's that subtle.) In some ways the heavy handedness is helpful, because it’s still pretty easy to figure out what they’re talking about even with no knowledge of that story.
But, as I said at the start, I whole-heartedly recommend that anyone who liked MLP:FiM for the characters read this book. The characters here are just as vivid and enjoyable and their lessons and trials and tribulations are just as much fun to follow. On top of that, a novel gives them room to grow and change significantly, and the historical aspect of it offers both a look at similar characters in another time and place, and a view of the genesis of some of the archetypes that inform the show.
As I mentioned at the start, it’s available free on Project Gutenberg, or you can buy it at pretty much any bookstore in the world.
Since this is a Monday blog post, which I hope to do on more Mondays now that Trixie has a bedtime, here's a thank you to my recent subscribers: bats, nemopemba, diremane, First_Down, sopchoppy, Bradel, stormgnome, jlm123hi, Ultiville, Singularity Dream, JetstreamGW, Noble Thought, horizon, Sharp Spark, Applejinx, Mermerus, Proto Trampoline, Quill Scratch, Peregrine Caged, BlazzingInferno, and Jake the Army Guy.
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I love Little Women! It's one of my favorite books of all time. ^_^
My only grievance with Little Women is that every time I see the title, "Pretty Women" gets stuck in my head, and I do not want "Pretty Women" in my head.
Oh, hey! I've actually been meaning to read Little Women soon, since I've been reading classic girls' lit this year. I'm just finishing up The Secret Garden--which is even better than I heard it was--and A Little Princess is after that. But since a download of it is right here for my brand new Kindle, maybe I'll put Women next instead.
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I love A Little Princess, and will be talking about that one sometime too!
I knew of Little Women, though I've never read it.
I didn't realize it was a hundred and fifty freaking years old.
Crazy.
Well, I'm just saying... at least that way she would of had some usefulness to the cast.
i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee222/merc_the_jerk/rules%20of%20nature_zpsqkzf2z41.gif
3328124 So just to be clear, you're against
this being stuck in your head?
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See, I was thinking it was:
3328196 It's a vital point of clarification.
3328183 Yep. (Although I've never seen that version of the show.)
3328215 Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp. How could you possibly go wrong?
I had no idea about the two-book thing. That's awesome, on so many levels. (I guess I've got a bit of a soft spot for shipper-trolling.)
Also, off topic but I love that movie, 3328183! I need to go watch it again when I get a chance... So good. I just wish they'd found a way to get "Swing Your Razor Wide, Sweeny" in there.
Jo/Bhaer was one of the most controversial ships of all time, but it dang well worked. I really don't understand people who ship Jo/Laurie (Joaurie? Jolly? Poet Laurieate?). Maybe it's just hindsight being 20/20 and already knowing It Was His Sled.
But Little Women is nowhere near as cool as the rest of the series. Little Men is so incredibly awesome! Jo's Boys is too. Don't neglect them! (Even if it doesn't work as well for writing about parallels in MLP... or does it? Note: Read Little Men and try to draw out parallels to the CMC...)
Louisa May Alcott: Bringing us a Teddy Bhaer 31 years before toy companies did.
3328691 `
I always had a hard time getting into the sequels, which is kind of odd because with other books (the Anne books, or the Little House books) the later books are some of my favorites in the series. So I know just how you feel, in terms of "yeah, the first book is a classic, but these sequels are even cooler!"
I think in terms of Little Women, it just jumped generations a little quickly for me. In the Anne series it's five books before she has kids, and another two before the focus shifts mostly to those kids, so there's a lot of time to ease into the new characters. But I might have to give the Little Women sequels another try one of these days.
This is ace. I'd never actually heard of Little Women before, but it sounds like something worth reading that's outside my usual subject matter.
Also, reading this reminds me: Ever since I got into FIM, whenever I run into an ensemble cast of characters, I try and match them up with the Mane Six archetypes. It works surprisingly well.
I'm not seeing how Spike/Sweetie is that much creepier than Spike/Rarity. Whenever the latter ship gets brought up, a part of me always feels like The Cinema Snob watching Child Bride, seeing the priest ask if anyone has objections to the wedding, and shouting out "SHE'S TWELVE!"
But it's pretty awesome to hear what behind the scenes shenanigans happened with this classic work of literature that started off life as a mass-market story. Sometimes I talk about classic books on my blog, and I'm going to try and write more like this particular blog post.
3336998 Sparity is currently just as creepy because of the age difference, but that can be overcome via aging up the characters. You have to figure out how to mature their relationship and not have Spike come across as a creepy stalker who was pining for Rarity for a decade, but something like a 10 year age difference shrinks in creepyness the older the characters get.
In both SweetieSpike and Laurie/Amy, you have to lose is the feeling that the guy doesn't really like the girl for who she is: that he would have fallen in love with a sockpuppet if she was related to the girl he really liked, and he would leave her in a second if her sister was interested in him. And that's extra hard for an author, because too much "wow, you are so much cooler than your sister, who won't date me!" can come across either as sour grapes, or as a conspicuous denial. At the same time it kind of has to be addressed somehow because everyone is thinking it.
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You've got a decent point, though I can see a scenario where Spike realizes the differences between Sweetie and Rarity's personalities and decides he likes Sweetie better after all.
Actually, what I really want to see is more stories where Spike hangs out with the CMC. No romance necessary, just kids having fun together.
Interesting. I may read the book. Hadn't planned to.
I feel bad that while I now read thousands of words of pony words every day, I still haven't read a physical novel since high school.