RANDOM JOTTINGS

I can’t remember when I first read Little Women.  It was just there. Part of my childhood. An old copy on a bookshelf and my mum didn’t know where it came from either.  It vanished as I grew up and, as an army child and on the move, disappeared along with my entire collection of Famous Five books and other assorted childhood favourites. When attending a book sale a few years ago I came across the same edition and pounced on it straight away and it is now back on my shelves where it belongs. (See the image on the left)

Louisa May Alcott was asked to write a book ‘for girls’. She wasn’t keen at first. After all, she was Jo March, though we were yet to know this and didn’t think she could write a story they would be interested in. She thought the first few chapters were ‘dull’.  Her publisher agreed. But she continued and wrote steadily for two months “descending into one of her vortexes”, now encouraged by her publisher whose niece had read the earlier chapters and loved it.  His belief in the book became so strong that he encouraged her to sign a contract that would give her royalties on each copy sold instead of a higher advance without royalties.   Bet he regretted doing that…

Well no need to go further. We all know what happened and it sold in thousands and thousands and she quickly had to write the next one and the next one.

The story of the four Little Women was based on Louisa and her sisters and she drew heavily on their life and adventures and it is this reality and naturalness that always makes this book so appealing.  We all have our favourite sister and mine, no prizes for guessing correctly, is Jo.  She is Louisa May Alcott herself who never wanted to get married and always maintained that there was nothing wrong with being a spinster if you led a happy and fulfilled life.  At the time of writing this was NOT what was expected of young women. The positive reaction to Jo March and her popularity with the readers must surely  have reflected the feelings of so many girls of the time.

Meg is the domesticated sister, the one who had no ambition other than to find a husband and to settle down with household and children.

Amy is the spoilt brat, yes she is artistic and dreams of being a famous artist, but in the end she, too, is happy to settle with a handsome, wealthy husband.

Beth. Well, what can one say about Beth? Some think she is too good to be true and she certainly teeters on the brink of nausea, but I have always found her appealing.  Her death never fails to reduce me to floods of tears. If anybody reading this is a fan of Friends who can forget Joey Tribiani so upset when he read Little Women and found out she dies? We laughed but at the same time felt glad that Joey had been so moved by it.

Over the years the book has waxed and waned in favour and one of the fascinating things about this simply wonderful book is the Feminist attitude which dislikes a book being called Little Women and then Good Wives.   Many of them feel that LM Alcott betrayed Jo by marrying her off to Professor Bhaer and yet, at the same time, many felt she should have married Laurie which seems contradictory.   When reading this section of the book I was slightly puzzled. Had none of these critics read Little Men or Jo’s Boys?  Or did they just stop at the end of Good Wives?

Jo’s marriage was the most satisfactory from a feminist point of view. She and Professor Bhaer ran a boy’s school in which they shared an equal partnership in teaching and nurturing. There was no Little Woman being told what to do by her husband – this was a mutual sharing of ideals.  (Louisa’s mother, Adelaide, longed to teach in a school set up by her husband  Bronson Alcott but he would not let her) and Louisa fulfilled that wish in Little Men.   Complaints about Jo March giving up her writing career for marriage also fall on stony ground as in Jo’s Boys she is a famous author hiding from fans who turn up on her doorstep.

“Things always went by contraries with Jo. Her first book, laboured over for years, and launched full of the high hopes and ambition dreams of youth, foundered on its voyage…..the hastily written story describing a few scenes and adventures in the lives of herself and her sisters was sent away with no though beyond the few dollars it might bring, sailed with a fair wind and a wise pilot into public favour and came home heavily laden with an unexpected cargo of gold and glory”

 “the admiring public took possession of her and all her affairs, past present and to come. Stranger demanded to look at her, questions advise, warn, congratulate and drive her out of her wits by well meant but very wearisome attentions”

So as you can see out of the three surviving sisters, Jo DOES have a fulfilling life and her youthful dreams are realised. And we must not forget the masculine aspect of frustrated dreams – Laurie wants to concentrate on his music but has a duty to his grandfather who wants him to take over the family business and has to give up his ambitions though in the later books, married to Amy, we find that he is a mentor to Jo’s pupils and helps them realise their musical abilities.

On the whole, men are absent or on the periphery of Little Women. John Brook, who Meg marries, appears towards the end of the book when he escorts Mrs March to the battlefield to look after her ill husband. Before that he is barely mentioned.

Laurie is on the outside looking in – wistful when he looks through the window and sees the family happy and together. Something lacking in his life.  Then he becomes part of it, an extra Little Woman if you like.

The most striking absentee of course is Mr March himself who only turns up in the final chapter of Little Women.  There are parallels here with Bronson Alcott who was hardly around throughout the family childhood. He was too busy off on his lecture tours abandoning his family with no thought as to how they were going to eat or live in his absence. He would not work to support them but had no difficulty in expecting others to do so. Louisa, like Jo, wrote stories to keep the family going.   Later on, when she was a famous author, Bronson benefited as The Father of LM Alcott, his lecture tours were packed and the money rolled in.   He did not turn it down.  I think he was an incredibly selfish egoist. He has a small part in Good Wives but he is easily forgotten.

I have no problem with that.

One chapter that really made my hackles rise was called Can Boys Read Little Women? The author found that the reaction was that Little Women was a ‘girl’s book’ so that boys could not possibly read it. Girls often read their brother’s books. One of my favourite books is a Victorian children’s book Coral Island by RM Ballantyne. I remember the librarian asking me if I was sure I wanted to read it as it was a ‘boy’s book’.   It was generally assumed that though girls might read boy’s books, it rarely happened the other way round.  The author cites President Roosevelt, Rudyard Kipling and Alexander Woollcott who had fond memories of reading Little Women as a child.  It seems that Alcott’s book was recognised as ‘one of the few girl’s books that all boys will read even if they do it on the sly or in a corner’. (My emphasis).

There are academic and serious aspects to Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy which I found totally absorbing and which made me sit and have a rethink about the Alcott books.  As a contrast to this Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy discusses the various productions on the television and also the films. As I have seen them all, I found this great fun.   Katherine Hepburn as Jo was a tad overwrought, I felt and emphasised the tomboyish aspect of Jo to the nth degree.  But she was wonderful and June Allyson in the later Technicolor film which, in places, was identical to the earlier version, was good in her own way. The actress was regarded as an All American fresh faced ideal woman but I rather liked her portrayal of Jo. Feisty but vulnerable I prefer her to Hepburn on balance.  Of course, we have the odd casting of Rossano Brazzi, a handsome Italian actor playing Professor Bhaer who, as we all know, is no oil painting and rather homespun, but he got away with it. Just.

I did not care for the Wynona Ryder version much. By then the Sisterhood had had an input and, yes I know, no need to shout me down, but it made me rather impatient. I felt they were making a point and in a rather laboured fashion, particularly in the portrayal of Marmee by Susan Sarandon. And Wynona was just wrong as Jo.

The BBC have done various productions but do not linger in my memory save for the fact that one dramatisation had a delightful piece of music over the opening and closing credits which I really loved. Years later I found it was Schubert’s Fifth symphony and every time I hear it I think of Little women – which is no bad thing.

Last Christmas the BBC showed a new American dramatization which I approached with trepidation but found I loved it.  It was true to the story and the characterisation was spot on. Emily Watson an excellent Marmee and the sisters played by unknown, to me at any rate, actors. I found the expanded relationship between the parents irritating but on the whole thought it was real and true to the book.

A few years ago I read  a biography of Louisa May Alcott. I reviewed it here and this wonderful book has given me the urge to revisit it.  It is worth reading for a more full and expanded life story.

I will never tire of Little Women. I have given a copy to my grandchildren and hope they will read it in due course and love it as I do but that is not guaranteed. We have to face up to the fact that modern children have so many distractions and read so differently that books we have loved may be tossed to one side.  I was pleased to see that the author cited Hermione in the Harry Potter books as being based on Jo, which JK Rowling admits to, and as Florence adores those books I might just mention it…

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy is a must have for all lovers of Little Women. I found it immensely readable, academic and absorbing.  I have not touched on many aspects which I flagged up as I read and this post is just a taster of the joys awaiting all of you who are admirers of L M Alcott.  I have just re-read and edited before putting up on Random but feel it is a trifle rambling.

But a friend on Facebook when I said I would probably ramble said ‘Elaine please do’

So I have.