February 10 2024
By Juha(Lucy) Kim
Summary
Following the tale of four sisters, loosely based on the author's early life, Little Women has been a cult classic for centuries. From full, charm-filled childhoods to diverse and often difficult adulthoods, we watch their struggle and growth during and after the Civil War: transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and particularly from girlhood to womanhood in a time when femininity was constrained within a spike-lined cage. Jo is free-spirited and boyish; Meg is beautiful and fanciful; Beth is shy and frail; and Amy is spoiled and romantic. As different as they are, they learn from and depend on each other greatly as they grapple to survive in poverty.
Review
This may just be the dearest book I've ever read. The imagery and dialogue truly cannot be beaten by any other book. Much like in the movie, the way the characters in this book talk and interact with one another is natural and authentic, almost electric at times. Reading Little Women was such an experience. By the 50th page, all the characters had become as real to me as the people living in my house. Breathing, living, and loving each other passionately. The feeling I had was similar to that I had when reading Anne of the Green Gables. A feeling of innate love and warmth.
Readers can sometimes be arrogant and egotistical. At times, readers can even feel that the author made a vital mistake when writing. They believe the ending shouldn't have been what it was or that the action of a certain character was crudely changed for the sake of movement and plot. This reader would happen to be me. In my opinion, Alcott changed a character and made her do something she would not usually have done to make the story flow in the direction she wanted it to go. She did this for a noble reason, of course; however, I don’t believe it’s the right thing to do for any author.
Though Lousia May Alcott braved through this story, belligerently bent to set Jo apart from other heroines at that time who had the expectations of marriage and motherhood ahead of them from both readers and agents, she failed. Almost every girl in Little Women became a matron in the end, domestic and waiting. It was a disappointing ending in a novel I felt had so much promise and magic in the beginning.
As the girls got older and went their own respective ways, the book became less fantastical, as is the course for all coming-of-age novels. And though it gave me less heart to continue reading, it also gave me the closure I needed. It reminded me that life does not always go the way you want or expect it to. Each page I turned, I grew a day older with the girls. That's how it felt anyway. Ending the book was synonymous with ending a decade of life.
"I've had a lot of troubles, so I write jolly tales.” Louisa May Alcott
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