The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

2018 marks the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a novel which became a trendsetter best seller, influencing generations of girls. 

Anne Boyd Rioux's new book Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: the Story of Little Women and Why They Still Matter celebrates the novel's history, legacy, and influence. 

I don't recall when I first read Little Women. I was given a copy of Alcott's later novel Eight Cousins when I was in elementary school. Madame Alexander created Little Women dolls, and in 1960 to 1962 my great-grandmother gifted me Marmee, Beth, Amy and Meg. I never got a Jo or Beth doll for sadly my great-grandmother passed away in 1963. By then, I must have read the book or seen the movie, because I recall thinking that Amy was spoiled and I did not like her. I always liked Jo because she was a writer and at age nine I had decided I wanted to be an author when I grew up. 

my Madame Alexander Little Women Dolls, 1960-62

Meg, Beth, Jo, Amy is more than a nostalgic look at the novel, for Rioux seeks to answer the question of what the novel offers to young readers today. Is it still relevant?

But first, she turns her attention to The Making of a Classic, presenting Alcott 's family and personal history, how they were fictionalized in the novel, how she came to write the novel and its early success. 

Although the novel was inspired by the Alcott's family experiences, it was a very much idealized version of their life. Bronson Alcott held ideals that did not include worldly considerations so that his wife and daughters had to struggle to provide for their daily needs. He may have had episodes of mental instability. Louisa was perhaps a genius, but she also had to write to contribute to the family coffers. 

Alcott never meant to marry off all the March girls, save Beth who dies. But the publisher insisted. Jo was at least allowed to marry on her own terms, and her husband and she run a school together.

This section alone was fascinating for those of us who love the novel.

The various printings of the novel, the illustrators (including those by May Alcott) are also presented.

In Part II, The Life of a Classic, follows the novel's adaptation for the screen and stage--including a musical and an opera--and their influence. I recently viewed the last adaptation, the BBC/PBS television series on Masterpiece Theater, which I very much enjoyed.

Rioux then turns her attention to the novel's Cultural and Literary Influence, including how it has dropped off the literary canon and has been marginalized as a 'girl's book.' And yet the novel had "more influence on women writers as a group than any other single book," Rioux writes, and she quotes dozens of writers extolling its inspiration. Little Women's legacy includes novels such as Anne of Green Gables by L. M Montgomery and Hermonine Granger in the Harry Potter novels by J. K. Rowling. 

Is the novel an idealized version of life, or does it reflect reality? G. K. Chesterton thought Alcott "anticipated realism by twenty or thirty years," while many 20th c writers found it preachy and, in short, too feminine. Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer both loved Little Women, while other feminists rejected the novel.

Is Little Women still relevant today, and why should it continue to be read, is probed in Part III: A Classic for Today. 

In recent years fewer children have read Little Women, and that is in part because educational standards became slanted toward boys and their needs and interests. Even if Teddy Roosevelt liked the book as a boy, today's boys won't pick up a book that is girlish. That's why some writers use initials instead of first names--so the boy readers won't know the books are written by a female! Sadly, few books by women appear on school reading lists.

What is lost when boy don't read about family and community? Have we 'hypermasculinized' boys and condoned intolerance of the feminine?

Last of all, Rioux looks at the role models girls today have, from Disney princesses to the action heroines and warrior princesses, Rory Gilmore to  Girls.

As a novel about young girls growing up, the March sisters offer readers images of what it means to be a girl and the choices girls have.

The novel, Rioux says, "is about learning to live with and for others," and it is about the compromises we make in life.

I highly recommend this book.

Anne Boyd Rioux is also the author of Constance Fenimore Woolson (read my review here) and editor of Miss Grief and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson.

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters

by Anne Boyd Rioux

W. W. Norton & Company

Pub Date 21 Aug 2018 

ISBN 9780393254730

PRICE $27.95 (USD)

“Reading Anne Boyd Rioux’s engaging Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, has made me pick up Alcott’s novel yet again with renewed insight and inspiration. Every fan of Little Women will delight in reading this book. And all the women―and men―who haven’t read the novel will race to it after reading Rioux.”
- Ann Hood, author of Morningstar and The Book That Matters Most

*****

Little Women has influenced quilters as well.

Copy of pattern  by Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton 

Artist Marion Cheever Whiteside Newton established Story Book Quilts, a cottage industry of quiltmakers who sewes quilts based on her applique designs inspired by children's literature.

Little Women made by Nancy A. Bekofske

In 1952 her Little Women pattern was sold through Ladies Home Journal Magazine. I purchased a copy of the pattern online and made my own version.

Kaye England's Voices of the Past: A History of Women's Lives in PatchworkVolumee II includes an essay and quilt pattern for Louisa May Alcott

Terry Clothier Thompson offered Louise May Alcott: Quilts of Her Life, Her Work, Her Heart in 2008.

 The applique quilt features scenes from the life of the Alcott family.

See more Little Women quilts:

International Quilt Study Center and Museum:

https://www.quiltstudy.org/quilt/20060530002

The Quilt Index

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=4F-88-146

The Quilt Show:

https://thequiltshow.com/see-quilts/quilt-gallery/item/11275-little-women

Quiltville Blogspot:

http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2013/05/susans-little-women-quilt.html

Little Women Quilt from Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/photos/luanarubin/26664280967/

The Enchanted Quilters of Lopez Island on Karen Alexander's collection

http://enchantedquiltersoflopezisland.blogspot.com/2015/02/who-is-marion-cheever-whiteside-newton.html?m=1

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt

I found great enjoyment in reading The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt.  He examines the stories humans have created of our first parents, from prehistory's myths to the challenge of scientific evidence shaking a literal reading of the Bible.

Adam and Eve is one of the great stories in Western literature, a tale that has morphed from folklore to Christian canon to inspiration for artistic and literary masterworks and finally become relegated again to myth--a story with meaning--it's historic veracity disproved by science.

In the beginning we humans created stories to explain the world and our place in it. Stories from societies immemorial have come down to us via clay tablets, the Enuma Elish and the epic Gilgamesh. These known four-thousand-year-old tales are but 'later' contributions in human history.

In the Western world, the biblical story of Adam and Eve had its roots in the earlier myths but soon displaced them with the spread of Christianity. Early theologian St. Augustine insisted on a literal reading of the story. Renaissance art focused on Biblical stories, bringing Adam and Eve come to life as real people. John Milton, a radical in many ways, wrote his masterpiece Paradise Lost, which consolidated Christian's vision of the 'real' Adam and Eve.

Greenblatt contends that this very elevation of the story of Adam and Eve from a story with meaning to 'historic truth' was in fact its downfall. There are too many questions that arise. I recall, back in the early 1980s, when a man asked, "Where did Cain get a wife? " He told me he figured that Cain took an ape as wife and that is where people of color come from. This is the awful kind of problem that literalism leads to!

Darwin's observations during his time on the HMS Beagle led to his life's work proving and testing the theory of evolution. Theologians scrambled to reconcile science and the literal reading of the Bible.

I was taught (auditing a seminary class) that a myth is a story with meaning, humanity's endeavor to put into words the unknowable. It is not diminished because it is not literally true. Science holds the Theory of Evolution as a theory, the best understanding that scientific evidence and observation and testing can offer us at this time. Oddly, DNA evidence offers us an "Eve"-- a common first human ancestor.

I enjoyed how Greenblatt brought everything together into a rich narrative.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
Stephen Greenblatt
W.W. Norton
Hardcover $27.95
ISBN: 978-0-393-24080-1

Morningstar: Growing Up With Books by Ann Hood

When Ann Hood's memoir Morningstar: Growing Up With Books arrived in the mail, I opened it up to glance at it. I read the Introduction, in which Hood talks about her family and hometown and discovery of books, in particular, Louis May Alcott's Little Women.

I made myself a cup of hot tea and settled in to read the first chapter.

Before dinner, I had read the entire book. I could not put it down. Hood's voice and personality, her childhood yearning for something bigger, her love of reading and the impact books had on her life, caught my heart as well as my interest. I felt a kinship. I recognized myself reflected in her life, and while reading I thought about the books that had changed my life.

Hood's reading was free ranging, preferring thick books. She believes that the right book comes into a reader's life at the time it is needed, and this small book gives credit to the books that helped her understand life, answering the questions that perplexed her, and showing the path to personal growth and adulthood.

I recommend Morningstar for everyone who loves books, whose lives were touched by books. Those who as children found answers and discovered new questions, who found understanding and direction in the pages.

The back cover reads, "In her admired works of fiction, including the recent The Book That Matters Most, Ann Hood explores the transformative power of literature. Now, with warmth and honesty, Hood reveals the personal story behind these beloved novels." Another book for my TBR list! But when I was at our local bookstore this morning, I choose to buy Hood's novel The Red Thread. I am eager to read more of Hood's work.

The chapters and major books discussed are:

• Lesson 1: How to Dream, in which Hood address the impact of Majorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, which she read as a teenager who felt trapped in a narrow life. 
• Lesson 2: How to Become a Writer concerns The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and Hood's yearning for something more. 
• Lesson 3: How to Ask Why considers Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbull and the Viet Nam War. 
• In Lesson 4: How to Buy Books, Hood agonizes over purchasing a book, in particular, Love Story by Eric Segal, and how that first purchase led to a library. 
• Hood's brother gifted her a set of Steinbeck books and in Lesson 5: How to Write A Book she writes about what Grapes of Wrath taught about layers of meaning. 
• A Stone for Danny Fisher by Harold Robbins was her introduction to another culture, which Hood writes about in Lesson 7: Be Curious. 
• As a curious teen, The Harrad Experiment by Robert Rimmer answered questions she could not ask, Lesson 8: How to Have Sex. 
• How to See the World is Lesson 9, in which Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago exposed Hood to exotic places and times. 
• The last, Lesson 10: How to Run Away, is inspired by the character longing to escape in John Updike's Rabbit, Run. 

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Ann Hood

Morningstar
by Ann Hood
W. W. Norton & Co.
Publication Date:  August 1. 2017
$22.95 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-393-25481-5

Lit Up: One Reporter, Three Schools, Twenty-four Books that Can Change Lives

Does teaching literature to 10th graders make a difference in their lives? How do we instill an appetite for serious reading in an age of smart phones, graphic novels, social texting, and computer gaming?  Does economic class, home life, school district, environment, or teacher effectiveness, make a difference? Can literature impact the lives of young people?

In Lit Up David Denby set out to explore these questions by visiting three classrooms in three schools. He chose Tenth Grade because fifteen-year-old's minds are still plastic, they are grappling with identity and their future, and are still 'reachable'. An age, perhaps, when it it not too late for them to learn to read literature for the sheer pleasure of it and perhaps begin to see literature as art.

Denby visited Sean Leon at Beacon High in Manhattan whose reading list was heavy on existential classics; James Hillhouse High in inner-city New Haven, a public school with many troubles; and a Marmaroneck, wealthy New York City suburb school. Each class differed in books and teaching practices. We follow the classes through the reading lists as Denby reports on how the works are taught and student's responses as individuals and as a class. Denby interjects his own opinions and thoughts about what he observes. I don't always agree with Denby, or the teachers, but was drawn into formulating my own ideas in response.

Sean Leon's class emphasized good writing and independent thinking. His reading list was grim, rooted in "the fears and disasters of the last century," as Denby notes. Leon pushed his students to totally engage with life and evaluate societal expectations, their addiction to social media, and the fast food diet of Internet fodder. Denby describes Leon as "a radical in spirit, a conservative in values."

Jessica Zelenski taught at the worst performing school in the state. Social Justice was the theme that year. Her book choices also precluded 'feel good' books. She instituted "Read Around"; students were to chose one of four books: A Long Way Gone: Memories of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nagisi, Night by Elie Wiesel, and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. The students at first rejected the selections. Zelenski explained what the books were about and read from each before asking a volunteer to continue reading. Most students decided to read Beah's book. Zelenski bought extra copies with her own money. The kids soon requested silent reading period to work on their books. These kids understood troubled families, poverty, trust and safety issues, and had a deep sense of justice. Yale University had a college promise program but Hillhouse had no office to help kids navigate college entrance. Zelenski knew that studying literature might not get them into college, but it could help them live. When the students demanded reading time it was a huge leap. Not only were they enjoying reading, they enjoyed reading together. At the end of the school year students were able to meet Beah who was in town. They knew his journey, they knew he had come through and flourished, and now they actually met

The best part of the book are the students. I enjoyed meeting them, hearing their words, watching them grow. There is nothing more amazing than watching a young person's understanding blossom and burst open like flowers in spring.

Reading this book I felt my inadequacies as a writer and as a reader. These 10th grade students were prodded to levels of critical thinking I had only experienced in honors and 400-level classes. I spend hours writing a book review or blog post. Have I become self-satisfied and lazy? It's been nearly 40 years since I graduated university. Have I settled for 'good enough?'

This was an interesting and thought-provoking book.

The Reading Lists

The 10th grade reading list at Beacon, taught by Sean Leon, included A Rose for Emily by Faulkner and Hawthorne's The Minister Back Veil, poems by Sylvia Plath, Brave New World by Huxley, Siddhartha by Hesse, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky, No Exit by Sartre, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot. (As a teen I read Brave New World, Siddhartha, and Man's Search for Meaning and saw Waiting for Godot performed. Slaughterhouse-Five I encountered in a college course on Black Humor. I didn't read Plath until I was post-college.)

At Beacon, Mary Whittemore's 11th graders read Middlesex by Eugenides, excerpts from Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Morrison's The Song of Solomon, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey, The Things They Carried by O'Brien, Ceremony by Silko, and Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. ( I read Kesey in the Black Humor college class, Gatsby on my own as a teen, And Eugenides and O'Brien as an adult.)

At Beacon, Daniel Guralnick's 11th graders read Rip Van Winkle by Irving, Hawthorne's The Birthmark, Poe's The Cask of Amontillado, Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Daisy Miller by James, Crane's The Open Boat, Capote's In Cold Blood, The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald, The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, and Invisible Man by Ellison. (I read Hemingway, Capote, and Poe as a teen, and later Crane and James as an adult. I never read any of these in a classroom setting.)

James Hillhouse 10th teacher Jessica Zelenski taught To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee, Ursula LeGuin's The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas, Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, and Hemingway's the Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Students chose to read Beah's A Long Way Gone, Tan's Joy Luck Club, Night by Wiesel, or A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. To prod students to actually finish reading one book was victory. (I only read the Sonnets in a classroom. I read Lee, Tan,  and Wiesel as an adult. My son read Beah in college.)

Mary Beth Jordan at Mamaroneck high taught 10th graders Wall's The Glass Castle, Night by Weisel, Macbeth by Shakespeare, East of Eden by Steinbeck, The Flowers by Alice Walker, Cheever's The Reunion, Saunders's Sticks, and poetry by Shelley, Frost, Eliot, Roethke, and Kumin. Students chose to read Orwell's 1984 or Bradbury's 451, and The Kite Runner by Hosseini or King's The Body. (Again, I read none of these in a classroom setting. I read Wall, Hosseini and Eliot as an adult, and Night, Steinbeck, Orwell and Bradbury as a teen.)

Denby, a movie critic, wrote Great Books in 1996.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Lit Up by David Denby
Henry Holt & Co
Publication Date: February 2, 2016
$30.00 hard cover
ISBN: 9780805095852

The Literate Reader's Fun Fantasy Series: Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde

"Whoever controls metaphor controls fiction."

The Peace Talks are coming up and Thursday Next is missing. Thursday Next works for Jurisfiction, keeping BookWorld in order for readers everywhere. The peace talks with Racy Novel will prevent an all out genre war. Thursday was to head the talks. Is she dead, or lost in BookWorld, or hiding out in the OutWorld? Even her husband Landen Parke-Laine does not know where she is.

The written Thursday from BookWorld is drafted to take her place. Of course the written Thursday does not know everything the OutWorld Thursday knows, so she will pretend that irritable vowel disease prevents her from talking.

Thursday (written) saves the life of a robot named Sprocket. "We tick, therefore we are," he tells her. He helps her evade the notorious Men in Plaid who are out to kills her.( It's Tartan, they will testily correct.) A car chase to evade the Men in Plaid lands Thursday (written) and Sprocket in a dangerous mime field. Luckily they find a way to evade the Mimes.

We gain an inside understanding of the interaction between readers and characters. "Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of his life looking like Daniel Radcliff."

You would not believe the crimes committed in BookWorld. In "One Of Our Thursdays is Missing" we learn about the met labs turning out illegal metaphor. And cheese smuggling is endemic. The stinkier the cheese the high the street price.

To BookWorld denizens the OutWorld can break a character down in minutes. Thursday (written) is sent there for 12 hours to find the missing Thursday (real).

"Is it as bad as they say it is?"

"I've heard it's worse. Here in the BookWorld we say what needs to be said for the story to proceed. Out there? Well, you can discount at least eighty percent of chat as just meaningless drivel."

Written Thursday Next can't find Thursday Next. She suffers an identity crisis: could she BE the real deal? As she tries to solve the mystery of the missing Next she travels through the far reaches of literature, into Vanity, Fan Fiction, and Racy Novel itself. She discovers a dirty bomb, that is, a loosely bound coil of badly described scenes of a sexual nature. Had it gone off smut would show up higgily-piggily in literature everywhere!

I have been reading Thursday Next novels every since I saw them advertised in my son's Science Fiction Book Club brochure way back when he was a kid. British novelist Jasper Fforde has written five in the series: The Well of Lost Plots; Lost in a Good Book; Something Rotten; Thursday Next: First Among Sequels; and One of Our Thursdays is Missing.

The BookWorld is full of great wisdom.  Such as the Law of Egodynamics: "For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert." That is SO true!

The Brothers Karamozov Will Improve Your Social Intelligence

"In literary fiction, like Dostoyevsky, “there is no single, overarching authorial voice,” he said. “Each character presents a different version of reality, and they aren’t necessarily reliable. You have to participate as a reader in this dialectic, which is really something you have to do in real life.”

A article in the New York Times reports on a study conducted by social psychologists at the New School for Social Research in New York City where volunteers were given literay fiction, popular fiction, and non-fiction to read. The readers were then fiven tests that measure people’s ability to decode emotions or predict a person’s expectations or beliefs in a particular scenario.The results were startling. As reported in the article, written by Pam Belluck,

"The researchers — Emanuele Castano, a psychology professor, and David Comer Kidd, a doctoral candidate — found that people who read literary fiction scored better than those who read popular fiction. This was true even though, when asked, subjects said they did not enjoy literary fiction as much. Literary fiction readers also scored better than nonfiction readers — and popular fiction readers made as many mistakes as people who read nothing."

"This is why I love science,” Louise Erdrich, whose novel “The Round House” was used in one of the experiments, wrote in an e-mail. The researchers, she said, “found a way to prove true the intangible benefits of literary fiction."

Erdrich later says, “Writers are often lonely obsessives, especially the literary ones. It’s nice to be told what we write is of social value,” she said. “However, I would still write even if novels were useless.”

"Experts said the results implied that people could be primed for social skills like empathy, just as watching a clip from a sad movie can make one feel more emotional," Belluck wrote. This is exciting news for all who enjoy literature. And a good reason to continue to include literature in education curriculums. It build better people. 

I read The Round House a few months ago, a wonderful book. And have been reading the Brothers Karamazov over the last few weeks, a book I first read in 1970 and have read at least four times since then. I have been reading literary fiction since Sixth Grade. I can't say if it has made me a better person. But the now have a test for that!