n  n    “Love is a great beautifier.”n  n

The March Sisters.
Marmee.
Laurie.
Hannah.
Mr. Laurence.

What a beautiful journey. What a beautiful family. What a beautiful story.
The book is so simple that every time after i complete it, i wonder whether i missed something. It leaves me wanting to know what led Alcott to write this simple masterpiece.

We have Jo ; a tomboy and an author who has a temper and a quick tongue, although she works hard to control both.


We have Meg ; responsible and kind, has a small weakness for luxury and leisure, but the greater part of her is gentle, loving, and morally vigorous.


We have Beth ; quiet and very virtuous, and she does nothing but try to please others.


We have Amy ; an artist who adores visual beauty and has a weakness for pretty possessions.


We have Laurie ; charming, clever, and has a good heart.


This book is absolutely stunning in its simplicity. Alcott's writing is simple yet beautiful.

n  n    “I want to do something splendid...something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.”n  n

That being said i do have a *ahem* problem with this book. Yep. You guessed it. Actually, I have two problems with this book:
1.  BETHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. NOOOOOOOOOO. I don't remember the last time i cried this much. It was absolutely heart-breaking. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. no no no no no no. Plus the fact that some people call me Joey and this is my reaction every. single. time.
2. I don't give a damn. single. f about what you think. JO ENDS UP WITH LAURIE. LOU LOU ALCOTT DID NOT WRITE ANOTHER BOOK IN THIS SERIES ABOUT JO'S CHILDREN. GOT THAT? Good!
They are perfect for each other and they marry and they have kids and they live happily ever after. THIS IS MY
BOAT
SHIP
YACHT
SUBMARINE
CRUISE SHIP
TITANIC
HILL
OCEAN
WORLD
UNIVERSE
AND IF YOU TELL ME THESE TWO DON'T END TOGETHER YOU WILL HAVE A KNIFE IN YOUR BACK.

Look at me and tell me that these two don't end together!!!




And Jo loves you too. YESSSS. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR WEDDING :)


I stan this. I love this book. I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH.

n  n    “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”n  n

See? Even Lou Lou Alcott is telling to to sail your own ship.......

P.S: Random person who is reading this : Please watch the 2019 movie adaptation.

The book begins:


"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."

There's an undercurrent of anger in this book and I think Louisa May Alcott would have gone much further with it if her publisher had allowed it and if it weren't a children's book.

Louisa herself was fiercely independent and didn't marry. Of course, Jo, her doppelganger and the heroine of the book, did marry. I think the struggle for girls and women to be themselves while following convention is an experience that resonates today. I also think that, ironically, when people today want to return to the simple life, they all forget that there was no simple life. Although youngest sister Amy carries her books to school, writes with an inkwell and fights over pickled limes, her father is fighting a real war fought for ideology and national unity. Martha Stewart has us searching for the "good things" and harkening back to garden bounties but nineteenth century girls and women were nearly bound to the home.

Young boys and girls might find the domesticity in the book offputting but it was necessary for people to have domestic skills or they could not survive. The working poor in the 1860s, like the working poor today, could not afford maids. Louisa May Alcott's family occasionally made money from making and mending clothing just to get by. I think there was just as much screaming as crying going on in the Alcott household, but Louisa tones things down for the March family.

The March family and the sisters made me yearn for my own sisters which never materialized. I also realized that wanting to draw, paint, play music, perform plays and write were interests that I shared with people of another time period. The book itself was written after the Civil War and has a purposeful nostalgic tone.

Jo scribbles in the attic and relishes the time she has to write but she is expected to work as a caretaker for her elderly aunt. None of these girls are independently wealthy and the poverty that Alcott writes about in the book mirrors the poverty of her own life but she softens the reality for her fiction. Alcott's father Amos Bronson Alcott was not a soldier, yet he was often away from home. He was a dynamic lecturer and a revolutionary educator who was disillusioned by public reaction to some of his innovations and was often jobless.

While a good portion of white northerners were against slavery and wanted more rights for black Americans, they did not go as far as the Alcotts did in their support. I wish that she had written more about their anti-slavery positions.
It's also not widely known that Bronson Alcott was shunned for educating black students.

Reading Little Women in fourth grade caused me to work as a historical interpreter at the Orchard House for six years many years later. I visited Fruitlands, the Old Manse, the Wayside and the House of the Seven Gables. I studied transcendentalism and learned about the contributions of Elizabeth Peabody and other great female intellectuals of the nineteenth century. I was forever changed after reading the book and I've reread it too many times to count.

Louisa was a master marketer akin to J.K. Rowling. She also had a strong survival instinct like Rowling. She desperately needed to make money and writing was her one marketable skill. Notably, she was able to write the book under her own name and not use a gender neutral pseudonym.

The book is written for a younger audience and older readers reading it for the first time might not feel a connection with the book because all Victorian children's books were infused with a heavy dose of morality. Girls especially have always been told to endure hardships while remaining happy. My grandmother Ethel, who grew up in the 1930s, told me her mother said to her: "It's easy to be happy when life rolls along like a song. But it's the girl who's worthwhile who will smile when everything goes wrong."

Look, I'm going to be brutally honest here: I read this when I was about 10 and I quite enjoyed it. But reading it at the age of 33? OH MY GOD, THIS WAS THE MOST SACCHARINE SWEET, INTOLERABLE TWADDLE I'VE EVER HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF READING.

All four of the girls are so ridiculously perfect that even when they make the tiny little mistakes that are painted as monumental fuck ups in the book, they're instantly fixed with a sweet smile or a sermon from their mother about women needing to control their anger, or remembering how NICE it is to be poor.

As the girls get older, they become slightly less insufferable but I gave zero fucks about any of their romantic relationships and I just wanted Beth to hurry up and die because she was so perfect and so insufferable and I kind of wanted to punch her in the face.

So. This is really a one star book that gets an extra star because Jo was actually a half way decent character most of the time and up until a certain point in the story, I had a very nice asexual Jo March headcanon going on.