Little Women
I am REALLY excited to see the new Little Women movie that releases today. The book by Louisa May Alcott has always been a personal favorite of mine. I share that sentiment as it came out as #8 of the top 100 books that people voted for in The Great American Read. As I mentioned previously on my blog I love seeing new interpretations of childhood favorite stories. My more recent journey into reading Louisa May Alcott's work has been through discovering her as one of the early females in horror fiction and loving reading Behind A Mask.
Louisa May Alcott was actually writing thrillers for adults under the name A.M. Barnard before she enjoyed her success with Little Women. Little Women was a huge contrast as a semi-autobiographical piece of fiction written for children. It is a classic coming of age story chronicling the life of the March sisters around the civil war.
Despite being written for children it is a story that I often like to revisit around the Christmas season. It is a very fitting story to read at this time of year as it starts out with the March sisters discussing their newfound poverty on Christmas day.
The book The March Sisters: On Death Life and Little Women is a thoughtful collection of essays where different authors reflect on the significance of each of the March sisters. Each sister has her own chapter. Reading other people's reflections on how each of the sisters played an important role to them made me think of importance Little Women played in my own life. Jo March was the sister who was the writer who wanted to be just friends with the boy next door. Reading about Jo March made my 20s more bearable as a woman with intellectual pursuits who was fine having men who were just friends.
But my fascination with the book transcends my own personal connection with the March sisters. The history of the book is fascinating. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters was brain candy for me diving into historical analysis. By reading that book I learned that when the book first released one of the reasons why it was so popular was that the storytelling in the book was easy to relate to for children while many of the other books geared towards children at that point in history were didactic. Before reading that book I did not even realize that it was considered scandalous by conservative Christians for the lack of discussion about God or heaven around a death in the novel. This came as a result of Alcott's family practicing transcendentalism (in fact Louisa May Alcott's father was in a social circle with Thoreau and Emerson). Nor did I realize that one of the more contemporary arguments about the book is that it is not typically taught in the classroom while Huckleberrry Finn is considered a must read. This brings out questions of gender representation when we teach children the classics. I seriously loved Anne Boyd Rioux's in depth historical analysis of Little Women. I am sharing my own personal highlights from Rioux's study but Alcott fans of history and cultural analysis will want to read her scholarly study.
However I do not just love the history of this book, I have also really enjoyed reading other takes on this story. My most recent voyage into a retelling was the new book Meg and Jo which is a contemporary adult retelling of the story imagining the dilemmas that the girls would have with love and work in our modern world. One of the things that I loved about this book was that it was clearly NOT for children as it has sexy scenes and reflections on the difficulties of parenthood. The fun of this retelling was that it was written as a contemporary romance. Modern retellings of Little Women are definitely not a new phenomenon but its always fun to be exposed to a new perspective on the story.
But then there is also sometimes nothing better than visiting the original book itself. I parted with my paperback copy years ago when I was trying to get rid of books that I could affordably replace on my Kindle reader. But when I recently found a copy at Magers and Quinn (one of my favorite Twin Cities bookstores) I eagerly purchased it knowing that I was planning to reread it again soon in anticipation for the new movie. There is something that feels like going home again when I am rereading a book I loved so much as a child!
Louisa May Alcott was actually writing thrillers for adults under the name A.M. Barnard before she enjoyed her success with Little Women. Little Women was a huge contrast as a semi-autobiographical piece of fiction written for children. It is a classic coming of age story chronicling the life of the March sisters around the civil war.
Despite being written for children it is a story that I often like to revisit around the Christmas season. It is a very fitting story to read at this time of year as it starts out with the March sisters discussing their newfound poverty on Christmas day.
The book The March Sisters: On Death Life and Little Women is a thoughtful collection of essays where different authors reflect on the significance of each of the March sisters. Each sister has her own chapter. Reading other people's reflections on how each of the sisters played an important role to them made me think of importance Little Women played in my own life. Jo March was the sister who was the writer who wanted to be just friends with the boy next door. Reading about Jo March made my 20s more bearable as a woman with intellectual pursuits who was fine having men who were just friends.
But my fascination with the book transcends my own personal connection with the March sisters. The history of the book is fascinating. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters was brain candy for me diving into historical analysis. By reading that book I learned that when the book first released one of the reasons why it was so popular was that the storytelling in the book was easy to relate to for children while many of the other books geared towards children at that point in history were didactic. Before reading that book I did not even realize that it was considered scandalous by conservative Christians for the lack of discussion about God or heaven around a death in the novel. This came as a result of Alcott's family practicing transcendentalism (in fact Louisa May Alcott's father was in a social circle with Thoreau and Emerson). Nor did I realize that one of the more contemporary arguments about the book is that it is not typically taught in the classroom while Huckleberrry Finn is considered a must read. This brings out questions of gender representation when we teach children the classics. I seriously loved Anne Boyd Rioux's in depth historical analysis of Little Women. I am sharing my own personal highlights from Rioux's study but Alcott fans of history and cultural analysis will want to read her scholarly study.
However I do not just love the history of this book, I have also really enjoyed reading other takes on this story. My most recent voyage into a retelling was the new book Meg and Jo which is a contemporary adult retelling of the story imagining the dilemmas that the girls would have with love and work in our modern world. One of the things that I loved about this book was that it was clearly NOT for children as it has sexy scenes and reflections on the difficulties of parenthood. The fun of this retelling was that it was written as a contemporary romance. Modern retellings of Little Women are definitely not a new phenomenon but its always fun to be exposed to a new perspective on the story.
But then there is also sometimes nothing better than visiting the original book itself. I parted with my paperback copy years ago when I was trying to get rid of books that I could affordably replace on my Kindle reader. But when I recently found a copy at Magers and Quinn (one of my favorite Twin Cities bookstores) I eagerly purchased it knowing that I was planning to reread it again soon in anticipation for the new movie. There is something that feels like going home again when I am rereading a book I loved so much as a child!
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