Get Mujercitas Formulated By Louisa May Alcott Readable In Version
two books that I have read the most in my life: Little Women and Walden,
Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women in, It centers on theyoung March sisters: Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth, Each of the sisters has a distinct personality, Meg is the oldest, Jo is the writer and tomboy, Amy is the vain one, and Beth is a saint, The sisters are guided by their mother, Marmee, and they strike up a friendship with the nextdoorneighbor boy, Laurie,
Little Women follows the March sisters as they grow up, Each chapter is relatively short and usually features a moral lesson without being preachy much like parables in the Bible,
Transcendentalism
Now, I mentioned Walden, What is the world does that have to do with Little Women Why I am so glad you asked or if you didnt I will tell you anyways.
Walden is authored by a man named Henry David Thoreau, He also lived in Concord, Massachusetts, the same as Louisa May Alcott, Additionally, Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott were friends, They were both transcendentalists. Transcendentalism is centered around the philosophy of simple, plain living with high thinking,
When was the last time you received an advertisement that said, “Buy less!” or “Stop buying things, You are enough!” If you are like me, that has never happened, Yet every day, we are inundated to buy more concealer, a new pair of skinny jeans, a lavish vacation, or a gigantic mansion that will surely make us happy.
Transcendentalism is anticonsumerism. It is a reminder that there is another way to live,
Little Women is the more digestible version of Walden, but if you loved Little Women and enjoyed the morals therein, I highly, highly, highly suggest Walden alright I suggest Walden to practically anybody.
Jane Austen
The last time I read Little Women was before the internet existed, When I picked this book up again for this reread, I am a completely different reader, and I have even more respect for Louisa May Alcott than before.
One of the things that I simply hate about Jane Austen is that her characters just seem to sit around and do nothing but complain about men and their highest desire is to be married the female characters also do a bunch of silly things.
Louisa May Alcott is the opposite of Jane Austen, and I like her more for it, Her female characters are strong, At the beginning of the novel, both Meg and Jo are working jobs to support their family, Jo dreams more of being a writer than getting married, Marmee is more focused on raising wonderful people versus marrying off her daughters,
One of the characters in Little Women refuses a marriage proposal, When she says no, she says that she really means no, In Jane Austens novels, her heroine receives multiple marriage proposals, and she says no and then yes, This is very confusing to young readers, Are you supposed to say no when you really mean yes I think Louisa May Alcott has the better idea of just saying no when you mean no.
As an introvert if I get even an inkling that the other person isnt interested, I will never try again so if you mean yes, you should probably say yes and leave mind games to Jane Austen novels.
Overall, Little Women is a timeless classic, one that should be read over and over again,
Reading Schedule
Jan Animal Farm
Feb Lord of the Flies
Mar The Da Vinci Code
Apr Of Mice and Men
May Memoirs of a Geisha
Jun Little Women
Jul The Lovely Bones
Aug Charlotte's Web
Sep Life of Pi
Oct Dracula
Nov Gone with the Wind
Dec The Secret Garden
Connect With Me!
sitelinkBlog sitelinkTwitter sitelinkBookTube sitelinkFacebook Never liked this one.
I read Alcott back around the time I was first reading the Brontes and Dickens, and her books always struck me as incredibly dull in comparison.
I was probably about, though, so I suppose I should try it again someday, Look, I'm going to be brutally honest here: I read this when I was aboutand I quite enjoyed it, But reading it at the age ofOH 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 .
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.
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 thes, 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 antislavery 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 thes, 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, " IM IN LOVE, IM IN LOVE, AND I DONT CARE WHO KNOWS IT!
When I was a child, my mother used to drag me to antique stores all the time.
There is nothing more boring to a kid than an antique store, It smelled like dust and old people, and everything looked the same dark wood, and if we were in a particularly baubleheavy shop I had to clasp my hands behind my back like a Von Trapp child in order to avoid invoking the youbreakityoubuyit policy on acrystal ashtray.
On one such excursion, when I was like eight, I found a vintageish copy of Little Women, Because it was a book, and because it had some kind of illustration of pretty girls in pretty dresses, it was far and away the most interesting thing in there.
So I indulged in what was then and what remains one of my favorite pastimes: asking my mother to buy me something.
She said no, both because it was confusingly expensive and because she doubted eightyearold mes lasting interest in reading apage book from.
Ever since, Little Women has tantalized me,
I am very pleased to say it lived up to every expectation,
This book is so cozy and delightful and happy, A lot of the time, when series start out in the childhood of characters and then follow their growing up, the book gets worse.
But I always liked reading about this ragtag group of gals!!
Warning, spoiler ahead, and if you complain about me spoiling a book that was published seven of my lifetime ago I will absolutely freak out so dont say I didnt give you a heads up:
Obviously Jo and Laurie were meant for each other, and his marrying Amy and Jos marrying some random old dude was the biggest flaw of this book.
But even with that, this book ended happy, and I enjoyed almost every second of it,
Okay, Im sorry, but Amy is the clear weak link and didnt deserve Laurie!! I will not rejoice for them!! Did I have to take off a half star for that alone Yes.
Because it upset me immensely, And I wont apologize. If anyone should be apologized to, its ME, And also JO. And also LAURIE!
But absolutely every other second was a pleasure,
Bottom line: This book feels like Christmas,
prereview
cozy:
comforted:
joy:
review to come!!!
currentlyreading updates
I am ready to feel COZY.
I am ready to feel COMFORTED, I am ready to feel JOY, .