Source of book: I own this.
I have been reading with a couple of longtime online friends. Recently, we decided to read March by Geraldine Brooks, but since a couple of us hadn’t read Little Women since childhood or thereabouts, decided that maybe we should brush up.
I must have been in either elementary school or at the latest junior high, so it has been a really long time for me. I also didn’t particularly like the book back then, so I figured it would be interesting to revisit it as a middle-aged adult and see if I felt differently about it.
In short, everything that irritated me about the book back then still does, but I missed some of the sharp social satire as a child. So, it still isn’t a favorite, but it has its good qualities.
What irritated me? Well, god this book is so freaking preachy! I mean, it is moralizing so much of the time. Relax your commitment to your responsibilities just once and your sister nearly dies! Get pissed when your bratty little sister burns your writings, and she nearly drowns! Have a negative thought and…well, you get the idea.
What I did find a bit more nuanced this time is that the Marches really are human - more so than one thinks at first. Even Marmie has a few cracks.
Also irritating? The Marches are kind of poor, sort of. But they still have a servant. I know this was normal at the time, and god knows I read plenty of books from the era. But this one particularly wallows in the “poor us” vibe a lot of the time.
Another Victorian trope that hasn’t aged well is the “young girl marries man decades older than her.” Maybe this wouldn’t irritate me so much if our politics right now weren’t dominated by disgusting old men with a taste for underaged girls. It’s all so gross that it is difficult even if Jo is in her mid-20s and old enough to make her own choices.
As one friend pointed out, though, a lot of these irritations are due to the fact that Alcott needed to make money. Her publisher wanted Jo to marry, so that’s what she had to do. Likewise for the moralizing - books for girls needed to encourage them to be good little servants of everyone.
And yes, there were moralistic books for boys too - we just don’t tend to read them anymore. Which could have a couple of factors. One, presumably, is that Alcott’s writing is far better than, say, Horatio Alger. Another might be that we have loosened our standards for boys - it is culturally accepted that Tom Sawyer is an acceptable book despite its lack of moralizing - while retaining the “literature for girls must encourage them to be good” double standard. Perhaps both.
There was also another dated issue, come to think of it. What is up with the “I was madly in love with your sister, and, now that she rejected me, I am in love with you” thing? This would make sense in, say, a Jane Austen novel, where marrying for money and connections might make romantic love less of a concern. But nobody is marrying the March girls for their money or connections. Certainly not someone like Laurie, who has plenty of both already.
This was a subject of conversation as we read the book. My wife’s sister is nice enough - I like her - but there is no way we would have worked as spouses. And this is the case for most everyone I can think of. Sisters are not interchangeable (and neither are brothers.)
I will, in the interest of full disclosure, note that my wife’s grandfather was dating her grandmother’s older sister briefly before switching, but my understanding was that it wasn’t a serious situation at that point, let alone an engagement.
Okay, so enough about the stuff that irritated me.
The writing overall is good. It’s not perfect, but the writing definitely transcends the ordinary and elevates the story. The characterization is decent; in the case of Jo it is excellent. There are some gaps, though. Marmie seems too good to be real most of the time. Mr. March almost doesn’t exist, despite being (supposedly) present for the second half of the book. Beth is beatified and lacks personality, in my opinion. Her trait is simply “good,” which doesn’t feel real.
Meg is kind of in the middle. She gets less attention than either Amy or Jo, but she does feel pretty realistic as the Oldest Daughter™, particularly given Mr. March’s general absence as a useful person in the household. Her marriage is pretty believable. (FWIW, because of the particular dynamics of my birth family, I exhibit a lot of the Oldest Daughter traits.)
Jo is, of course, the stand-in for Alcott herself, and it is only natural that she is the main character, and the one everyone likes (or perhaps even wants to be.) She feels so much more real than everyone else (except maybe Amy.)
And Amy, well, she’s complicated. She does grow up as the book progresses, but by god she is a brat at the beginning. (As one with a difficult younger sister, I thoroughly sympathized with Jo on that.) She does appear to grow up, and the real-life May (Amy is an anagram of that) did apparently become closer to Alcott later in life, before her untimely childbirth-related death. But one does suspect that the burning incident must have occurred in real life, because it feels so real and emotionally raw.
The best part of the book, to me, is the social satire. In particular, the send-up of the publishing industry, with its unquenchable thirst for drama and lurid pulp. Alcott’s own experience here shows, and she makes it really hilarious to read about.
Likewise, the failed outing with the rich girls, the class niceties, the trials of having small children, and other details where Alcott seems to have written what she wanted, rather than what her publisher desired are quite good.
So, I would say that I enjoyed the book at many times, and winced at others.
Before I get into my favorite lines, I want to mention that in a post-script, I want to look a bit at Alcott herself, and the possibility that were she alive today, she would identify as transgender or non-binary. I know it is impossible to know for sure when talking about people from past eras, when culture did not have the language to express these things openly. I will note that as the parent of a transgender son, I was struck by how many things Jo says that are word-for-word familiar from my own experience.
Favorite lines - there are quite a few. Alcott could write.
It is difficult to dislike Laurie, who seems to be the rare (relatively) rich kid who is a genuinely decent person. We all know that he should have married Jo (except, as I noted above, Jo/Louisa probably wasn’t cishet - far more convincing than “we are too alike.” Unless you read that a certain way.) This early exchange is great, and feels plausible in real life.
“I’m not Mr. Laurence. I’m only Laurie.”
“Laurie Laurence - what an odd name.”
“My first name is Theodore, but I don’t like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead.”
Jo, of course, hates Josephine, and wants to be Jo. Just like the real life Louisa went by Lou.
I also love this line about the terrible teacher - we all know the sort.
Boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows, but girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen with tyrannical tempers and no more talent for teaching than Dr. Blimber.
And, of course, Aunt March, who I probably would have been better able to charm than Jo - for some reason, older women have generally liked me, a good thing since my legal practice serves a lot of seniors.
Some old people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can sympathize with children’s little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way. But Aunt March had not this gift, and she worried Amy very much with her rules and orders, her prim ways, and long, prosy talks.
Again, we all know people like this. Like both of those. I hope to be in the first category. I do like children, and enjoy spending time with them. We all know Aunt Marches too.
Marmie is, as I said above, too good to be real. But for the most part, her advice really is solid. With a few exceptions, she speaks wisdom. If only more parents did. For example, this advice to Amy:
“It is an excellent plan to have some little place where we can go to be quiet, when things vex or grieve us.”
Another great bit of advice comes after Meg’s marriage, when poor Meg has gotten so bogged down in motherhood that she is neglecting her husband - and more importantly, herself.
“Don’t shut yourself up in a bandbox because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take your part in the world’s work, for it all affects you and yours.”
And lest you think Marmie was all aspiration, she came up with practical ways to take the burden off Meg, including having John take a more active role as a father.
“Besides, you owe something to John as well as to the babies; don’t neglect husband for children, don’t shut him out of the nursery, but teach him how to help in it. His place is there as well as yours, and the children need him; let him feel that he has his part to do, and he will do it gladly and faithfully, and it will be better for you all.”
I never regret that my wife went back to work when we had infants, and I got time with them overnight when she did. A man’s place is with his children too. This was progressive stuff for the Victorian Era.
Back when this book was written, before television or movies, entertainment was a bit different. Emerson, for example, made pretty decent money from his lectures. Ditto for William James. Going to lectures was indeed a thing. Alcott pokes a bit of fun at this.
It was a People’s Course, the lecture on the Pyramids, and Jo rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the Pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.
And, I would be remiss if I don’t mention the great lines about lurid literature. Regarding a story a boy lends her, she says:
[She] soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author’s invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the state of one half of the dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall.
And also, for Jo’s own writing, where she was “already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder.”
That’s gold right there.
Another hilarious line comes in an exchange between Jo, who does not suffer fools well, and Amy, who thinks that poor girls don’t have the luxury of disapproving of eligible young men - the girl only comes off as “odd and puritanical.” Jo’s response is razor-sharp.
“So we are to countenance things and people which we detest, merely because we are not belles and millionaires, are we? That’s a nice sort of morality.”
While I generally felt the romance between Jo and Professor Bhaer was a bit forced, I did find her initial impression of him to be fascinating.
Why everybody liked him was what puzzled Jo, at first. He was neither rich nor great, young nor handsome; in no respect what is called fascinating, imposing, or brilliant; and yet he was as attractive as a genial fire, and people seemed to gather about him as naturally as about a warm hearth.
He was essentially one of those good, genial sorts that made everyone feel relaxed around him. I know the sort, and this really is true.
This observation also rang true for me:
Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety; it shows itself in acts rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations.
A book probably cannot be of a certain era and written by a white person without having at least one wince-worthy passage involving ethnicity. This one is no exception, although it is better than average. Regarding the polyglot that is Paris, there is the description of “Haughty English, lively French, sober Germans, handsome Spaniards, ugly Russians, meek Jews, free-and-easy Americans.” Yeah, not her best work there. Fortunately, this is as bad as it gets, other than a brief mention of a “quadroon” - that’s more dated than bigoted, in context. Alcott actually made a solid effort to avoid the easy and cheap racism of the time - even avoiding the “Irish will steal you blind” thing for her protagonists.
The final quote I want to highlight is this one, after Amy and Laurie get together.
Amy’s lecture did Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward; men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don’t take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit for it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole.
That cuts, but she is all too right, I am afraid.
Anyway, it definitely was interesting to revisit a book this long after I first read it, and see it with new eyes. Even if she could have cut out all the preachy stuff.
Stay tuned for March, which is apparently from the perspective of the father, based on Bronson Alcott, who likely suffered from mental illness, which contributed to his struggle to support his family.
***
Was Louisa May Alcott transgender or non-binary?
This is a matter for debate. It is always difficult to apply modern understandings and terminology to people of the past. Without the vocabulary, judging interior experiences is near impossible.
Was the reason that Dr. James Barry (among other notable accomplishments, performed the first successful cesarian section by a Brit) lived as a man that he wanted the opportunity of being a physician? Or was he transgender? It is easier to be sure in the case of Alan Hart (developed tuberculosis treatment protocols we still use), who lived later and expressly identified as a man.
These are just two that came readily to mind - there are a lot more historical figures who lived as a different gender than they were assigned at birth. How many of these were to bypass unfair restrictions on female opportunity? How many were transgender individuals in an era when the language for that didn’t exist?
Complicating all this is that there are competing groups who wish to claim notable figures like Alcott and Barry and Hart. Feminist women would love to have them as examples of what women can accomplish despite obstacles put in their way. But transgender people would also like to have them as their own. Without the chance to talk to the individuals in question, we have to do the best we can with what we know.
A good start in understanding Alcott is this article.
I personally find the argument that she was transgender to be fairly compelling. At minimum, she would be considered non-binary today, not fitting neatly into the category of female. Here are some of the things that stood out to me.
First, this exchange from Little Women:
Meg: “You should remember that you are a young lady.”
Jo: “I’m not!” “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.”
Beth: “Poor Jo! It’s too bad, but it can’t be helped. So you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls.”
This is exactly the sort of thing I have heard from transgender people, including my child before he came out. “I’m disappointed I am not a boy.” Frustration with female appearance and adoption of male-signalling appearance and gestures.
This also fits with Alcott’s own life. She preferred to go by “Lou,” dressed in male clothing much of the time (except when required by social expectations), referred to herself as the “uncle” to her nieces and nephews, and “brother” to her sisters, as in the book, and, after she virtually adopted her older sister’s children after their father’s death, she referred to herself as their “father.”. She described herself as a “man” and a “gentleman” at various times.
At one time, she dressed as a man for a costume party, and wrote about how thrilled she was that she passed well and was mistaken for male.
Perhaps this quote, though, is the most definitive:
“I am more than half-persuaded that I am, by some freak of nature, a man’s soul put into a woman’s body.”
Draw your own conclusions, but I think that non-binary is the minimum, and probably transgender would be the best description of Alcott.
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