The Endurance of ‘Little Women’
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832. Her novel, Little Women has delighted and instructed readers for generations. For many, it is a favorite book first encountered in childhood or adolescence. Championed by Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir, Theodore Roosevelt, and J. K. Rowling, it is however much more than the “girls’ book” intended by Louisa May Alcott’s first publisher. Here is a brief excerpt from Daniel Shealy’s introduction to Little Women: An Annotated Edition, explaining one reason for the endurance of the novel: it’s afterglow of nostalgia.
With the Civil War ended, readers reveled in the remembrance of a more simple time when family would gather around the hearth at day’s end, content in the haven of their own home. Life in New England was relived and reimagined, from the lithographs of Currier and Ives to John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem Snow-Bound (1866). In Little Women, readers experience life in a close-knit family of four sisters and their mother, set in a past that was quickly disappearing, even for Alcott’s contemporary readers, as the Industrial Revolution took firm hold. Alcott, in a way, doubles the nostalgia as she looks back upon her own childhood. Even Louisa herself claimed that her “Concord days were the happiest of my life.” Here in Little Women, we see the simple joys of young people’s creative entertainment, which is encouraged by adults: the sisters’ play on Christmas Day, their family newspaper and Pickwick Club, the bird-house post office, croquet, cricket, ice skating, boating, picnicking, storytelling. It’s as if Alcott is reminding readers: “Remember, childhood is fun!”
Perhaps the most important fact is that this nostalgic look at New England revolves around family. In the nineteenth century, family stood at the center of American civilization. Through the family, especially the examples of parents, children received nurture from the secure environment of home life. A forerunner emphasizing the importance of family was Horace Bushnell, a Massachusetts theologian, one whom Bronson Alcott had read. In one of his most famous works, Christian Nurture (1847), Bushnell observes how important family is to the development of children: “[The child] is not as yet a complete individual; he has only powers and capacities that prepare him to be, when they are unfolded. . . . Meantime, he is open to impressions from every thing he sees. His character is forming, under a principle, not of choice, but of nurture. The spirit of the house is breathed into his nature, day by day. The anger and gentleness, the fretfulness and patience — the appetites, passions, and manners — all the variant moods of feeling exhibited round him, pass into him as impressions, and become seeds of character in him. . . . The spirit of the house is in the members by nurture, not by teaching, not by any attempt to communicate the same, but because it is the air the children breathe.” Little has changed. A nurturing family, though not always the conventional one conceived by Alcott, remains at the heart of American life. In Little Women, seldom are enjoyable activities performed alone. From the bedtime chorus, accompanied by Beth’s piano, at the end of Chapter 1 to the harvesting of apples at the conclusion of the novel, the happiness of family is celebrated. Sadness, even death, intrudes, but family prevails. In Part I, Jo bemoans the engagement of Meg and John because she fears it will break apart the family she loves so dearly, but by the novel’s final chapter, “Harvest Time,” Jo, knowing that she, too, needs love, declares: “‘I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world.’” Later in that chapter, Jo, now “Mother Bhaer,” creates her own new family (an unconventional one for its time) with her husband, her two boys, and all the students of Plumfield. However, it is Mrs. March, the sixty-year-old matriarch, not Jo, who gives the final benediction in the novel. With her entire family about her, children and grandchildren, she reaches out her arms, crying, “‘Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!’”
Within the March family, the four sisters are given almost equal attention by Alcott, but rebellious Jo remains forever fixed in readers’ memories. With the creation of Jo March, Alcott spins a character out of her own life experiences that soon looms large on the American literary landscape. Impetuous, hot-tempered, fearless, tomboyish Jo immediately captivated readers, and she continues to touch them today. J.K. Rowling (who also goes by Jo) says: “I know I read Little Women when I was eight. . . . Naturally, I whole-heartedly identified with Jo March, she of the burning literary ambition and short temper.” “You see,” she explains, “I was a plain — and that is relevant! You know that is relevant, that isn’t a trivial thing, especially when you’re a kid — I was a very plain, bookish, freckly, bright little girl. I was a massive bookworm and I spent a significant part of my reading looking for people like me.” She found herself in Jo March. Like the author of the Harry Potter series, many female readers connect with Jo, a young, independent woman who cares little for the conventions of society, but who listens to her own creative voice within. Jo is a disturber of the peace — her own and those around her. In many ways, Jo March is an American success story. She becomes the writer she dreamed of becoming. Yes, she gives this up eventually, but Alcott provides her with another dream, one with a social conscience: a school for poor boys. As Jo says in the final chapter, “‘I’ve always longed for lots of boys, and never had enough.’” She may not be the proper female character one would expect from a girls’ book in 1868, but then again Alcott came reluctantly at first into the creative vortex that would result in an American classic that speaks as loudly to its readers now as it did then, and Little Women’s genesis remains a fascinating tale.
