It shocks and amazes me to listen to people talk about literature and to hear them say that they have never read “Little Women.” Some make the comment that they wanted to be different from everyone else and so they didn’t read it. Some say they don’t feel the need to read it, since so many movies have been made about it. I say, if you haven’t read “Little Women,” you are seriously educationally deprived.
Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are four sisters growing up in Concord, Mass. They live in a huge, rambling house that is slowly falling into disrepair. Their father is off fighting in the War and they have very little income aside from what Meg makes as a governess and Jo brings in as a companion to Aunt March. Their mother, affectionately called Marmee, holds their family together with a firm but gentle hand.
A rich young neighbor moves in next door, Laurie Lawrence. Jo is immediately taken with him. She has always wanted to be a boy and sees him as a chum. The other girls take to him like a brother, but as the years progress, he begins to see Jo in a new light and proposes. She has never thought of him romantically and turns him down, which he takes very hard.
While the War is not a central theme of the book, it has a far reaching effect and greatly influences the lives of the people at home. When Mr. March returns, wounded but safe, he says little about the War and it remains in the background, but it looms like a shadow over the story.
What I found most delightful about the book was the recounting of the girls’ activities, how they used their imaginations to liven up their lives. They couldn’t afford to go to the ballet or the opera, and wouldn’t have the dresses for it if they could, but they made up their own plays and acted them out, getting costumes from old trunks in the attic. (I’ve often dreamed of having a house like the March’s.) They write their own newspaper and read it aloud to each other in the evenings. They find joy in everything they do and only seldom do they feel sorry for themselves.
Laurie eventually marries, and Jo finds a man who fills that missing part of herself. Each girl settles down to that destiny which was designed for her.
Little Women is based on the life of Louisa May Alcott, with herself as Jo. However, Laurie is a fictional character. It just about broke my heart to find that out, but what are ya gonna do?
I urge, nay, I challenge you to read this book. The movies can only begin to tell the story. However, if you insist on letting the cinema educate you, watch the Wynona Ryder version. It not only gives the most accurate portrayal of the book, but it gives more of the background of the March family itself as taken from history.
(This book was first published in 1869.)