Little Women. Louisa May Alcott
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Jo, was a bit closer to home, as most scholars believe the iconic character is a thinly veiled casting of Alcott herself. In her childhood journals, written at the age of thirteen, Alcott wrote, “I have made a plan for my life, as I am in my teens and no more a child. I am old for my age, and don’t care much for girls’ things. People think I’m wild and queer, but Mother understands and helps me” (Keyser). Modern readers often interpret this “queerness” as latent lesbianism. Although the character Jo marries at the end of her story, Alcott remained a “spinster” until her death. She seemingly explained this choice in an interview by saying, “I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man” (Bronski). Alcott carried on a relationship with Ladislas “Laddie” Wisniewski during the time she lived in Europe and detailed this relationship—generally accepted to have been romantic—in the journals she destroyed before her death. A staunchly private person during her international success, Alcott destroyed many of her correspondences and journals so they would not be republished without her consent.
Alcott’s relationship with Laddie was likely the most important emotional relationship she maintained outside of those with her family. When Alcott’s sister May died in the wake of childbirth, Alcott took over raising the newborn, Louisa, nicknamed “Lulu,” a role that brought unprecedented and unexpected joy to Alcott’s life. She viewed Lulu as her new literary muse, and published a series of tales in her honor, Lulu’s Library. When Alcott reached her fifties, illness plagued her life. Until recently, this illness was thought to be a result of the typhoid fever she contracted during her Civil War service and the ill-effects of the mercurous chloride she was dosed with. However, modern scholars have argued that Alcott suffered from an inherited autoimmune disease, while still others have noted a late portrait of Alcott in which her cheeks are flushed with rash—a sign of Lupus. Whatever illness Alcott suffered from, she traveled frequently in search of doctors and cures before finally settling at Roxbury’s nursing home. Realizing that death stalked her, Alcott willed her nephew, John Pratt, the legal copyrights to her work, stipulating that any royalties be split between himself, Lulu, and Alcott’s other nephew, Fred. In the days before her death, Alcott visited her beloved father’s deathbed. After her father’s death, a heartbroken Alcott died two days later, on March 6, 1888 and was buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.
Although many critics have complained that Alcott’s famous portrayals of nineteenth-century domestic life are sentimental, dated, and poorly organized, her idyllic little women portray sympathetic and complex adolescent characters not simply dependent on formulaic plots to portray morals. Such portrayals profoundly impacted the accepted breadth of juvenile literature, forever cementing Alcott’s legacy in the American literary canons.
AMY HOLWERDA.
2011.
PART ONE
Chapter One. Playing Pilgrims
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
“We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other,” said Beth contentedly from her corner.
The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but darkened again as Jo said sadly, “We haven’t got Father, and shall not have him for a long time.” She didn’t say “perhaps never,” but each silently added it, thinking of Father far away, where the fighting was.
Nobody spoke for a minute; then Meg said in an altered tone, “You know the reason Mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army. We can’t do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don’t,” and Meg shook her head, as she thought regretfully of all the pretty things she wanted.
“But I don’t think the little we should spend would do any good. We’ve each got a dollar, and the army wouldn’t be much helped by our giving that. I agree not to expect anything from Mother or you, but I do want to buy Undine and Sintram for myself. I’ve wanted it so long,” said Jo, who was a bookworm.
“I have planned to spend mine in new music,” said Beth, with a little sigh, which no one heard but the hearth brush and kettle-holder.
“I shall get a nice box of Faber’s drawing pencils; I really need them,” said Amy decidedly.
“Mother didn’t say anything about our money, and she won’t wish us to give up everything. Let’s each buy what we want, and have a little fun; I’m sure we work hard enough to earn it,” cried Jo, examining the heels of her shoes in a gentlemanly manner.
“I know I do—teaching those tiresome children nearly all day, when I’m longing to enjoy myself at home,” began Meg, in the complaining tone again.
“You don’t have half such a hard time as I do,” said Jo. “How would you like to be shut up for hours with a nervous, fussy old lady, who keeps you trotting, is never satisfied, and worries you till you’re ready to fly out the window or cry?”
“It’s naughty to fret, but I do think washing dishes and keeping things tidy is the worst work in the world. It makes me cross, and my hands get so stiff, I can’t practice well at all.” And Beth looked at her rough hands with a sigh that any one could hear that time.
“I don’t believe any of you suffer as I do,” cried Amy, “for you don’t have to go to school with impertinent girls, who plague you if you don’t know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your father if he isn’t rich, and insult you when your nose isn’t nice.”
“If you mean libel, I’d say so, and not talk about labels, as if Papa was a pickle bottle,” advised Jo, laughing.
“I know what I mean, and you needn’t be statirical about it. It’s proper to use good words, and improve your vocabilary,” returned Amy, with dignity.
“Don’t peck at one another, children. Don’t you wish we had the money Papa lost when we were little, Jo? Dear me! How happy and good we’d be, if we had no worries!” said Meg, who could remember better times.
“You said the other day you thought we were a deal happier than the King children, for they were fighting and fretting all the time, in spite of their money.”
“So I did, Beth. Well, I think we are. For though we do have to work, we make fun of ourselves, and are a pretty jolly set, as Jo would say.”
“Jo does use such slang words!” observed Amy, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. “Don’t, Jo. It’s so boyish!”
“That’s why I do it.”
“I detest rude, unladylike girls!”
“I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!”
“Birds in their little nests agree,” sang Beth, the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the “pecking” ended for that time.
“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