Little Women Sunday
Feb. 13th, 2022 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerLittle Women is flying by! I remembered it being a longer book than this, but when you're doing a chapter a night it zips past. Today we reached the part where the Marches get a telegram informing them that Mr. March is very ill in the hospital, and Mrs. March must come at once, and in order to fund the trip (or rather get some extra funds for the trip) Jo sells her hair - her "one beauty"! - to a barber.
In at least one of the movie versions - I can't remember which - Aunt March refuses to lend the money for the trip, and only Jo's sacrifice of her hair makes it possible for Mrs. March to rush to her husband's side. But in the book, Aunt March gives the money, so Jo's haircut is a gallant but unnecessary sacrifice. There is probably a lesson here about the Inherently Virtuous Nature of Sacrifice in Alcott's fiction: even if giving something up is unnecessary, even if it's actually useless and doesn't help anyone, it's still inherently virtuous.
Maybe it's good training for the days when you have to give up your fresh hot Christmas breakfast to the poor starving Hummel children down the street. (Which is a useful sacrifice that actually does help someone!)
The girls have also just had a conversation about their dreams for their lives. Poor Meg really gets a raw deal, doesn't she? Jo gets her writing fame (and finds it rather a poisoned chalice; but nonetheless she gets it!), Beth gets to stay home with her sisters, and although Amy does not become the best artist in the world she DOES get to travel and study art and marry a rich man... whereas Meg gets none of the things she asks for. No gorgeous mansion, no beautiful dresses, no legions of servants! Just a husband. And John Brooke is fine I guess, but how many girls dream of falling in love with fine I guess?
littlerhymes and I were talking about March sister identification - you have lots of Jos and a fair smattering of Amys and even some Beths (you'd think that as a writer I would be a Jo, but in fact I have always considered Beth my Alcott alter ego), but I don't think I've ever met someone who identifies with Meg, and I think it is, in part, because none of her dreams come true.
In at least one of the movie versions - I can't remember which - Aunt March refuses to lend the money for the trip, and only Jo's sacrifice of her hair makes it possible for Mrs. March to rush to her husband's side. But in the book, Aunt March gives the money, so Jo's haircut is a gallant but unnecessary sacrifice. There is probably a lesson here about the Inherently Virtuous Nature of Sacrifice in Alcott's fiction: even if giving something up is unnecessary, even if it's actually useless and doesn't help anyone, it's still inherently virtuous.
Maybe it's good training for the days when you have to give up your fresh hot Christmas breakfast to the poor starving Hummel children down the street. (Which is a useful sacrifice that actually does help someone!)
The girls have also just had a conversation about their dreams for their lives. Poor Meg really gets a raw deal, doesn't she? Jo gets her writing fame (and finds it rather a poisoned chalice; but nonetheless she gets it!), Beth gets to stay home with her sisters, and although Amy does not become the best artist in the world she DOES get to travel and study art and marry a rich man... whereas Meg gets none of the things she asks for. No gorgeous mansion, no beautiful dresses, no legions of servants! Just a husband. And John Brooke is fine I guess, but how many girls dream of falling in love with fine I guess?
littlerhymes and I were talking about March sister identification - you have lots of Jos and a fair smattering of Amys and even some Beths (you'd think that as a writer I would be a Jo, but in fact I have always considered Beth my Alcott alter ego), but I don't think I've ever met someone who identifies with Meg, and I think it is, in part, because none of her dreams come true.
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Date: 2022-02-14 11:16 pm (UTC)I suspect that Louisa is gritting her teeth and Giving the Readers What They Want, which is all the characters paired off like salt and pepper shakers and having adorable babies! She sneaks in the bit about not relinquishing all artistic hopes or confining oneself to helping others fulfill their dreams of beauty as a salve to her own conscience, which wanted to make Jo a spinster writer.
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Date: 2022-02-14 11:37 pm (UTC)LOLOL
Who will also be DEAD soon. Meg of all people is a single mother! Did Real!Meg ever remarry? I don't remember.
I totally forgot Jo has A BABY at the end of the book under her arm, and he gets kind of tossed around like a football and she's fine with it and of course he was perf OK, because "Jo loved her babies tenderly." In fact as a kid I don't think I realized Jo had any kids of her own at all, which is some interesting denial on Wee Moi's part.
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Date: 2022-02-15 02:37 pm (UTC)And it's striking that she didn't list that dream for herself, although that's probably maidenly modesty rather than actually not wanting it. I'm remembering a bit in one of L. M. Montgomery's Emily books (which is a later time period - I think Montgomery can write about it because the convention is breaking down) where Emily & Ilsa talk about what their marriages might be like, and Montgomery is like "Now this was very wrong of course." A good nineteenth century girl is supposed to seem sternly uninterested in all that sort of thing until He shows up with a ring.
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Date: 2022-02-16 12:23 am (UTC)//facedesk
I bet we all know what Louisa would think of that!
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Date: 2022-03-06 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-03-06 05:52 pm (UTC)