“Our Book”
I FIRST READ LITTLE WOMEN in my early twenties, in a graduate course on American Literary Realism. I missed out on the formative experience of reading the novel as a child. As it turned out, though, it can have just as much impact on a young woman in her twenties who is still trying to figure out who she will be and whether she will find a way to have a family and a career. Jo inspired me not only because she had ambitions to be a writer but because she found a way to grow into adulthood without leaving those ambitions entirely behind. She was still on my mind ten years later when my daughter was born and I gave her the middle name Josephine.
As I worked on this book, I encountered numerous women who wanted to tell me their Little Women stories. They showed me nineteenth-century editions that had been passed down in their families like heirlooms, or they told me about the copy their grandmothers had given them and they had in turn given to their daughters. They recited passages to me from memory. They described their favorite scenes from the films. They told me, “I wanted to be Jo” or, simply, “I am Jo.” Their stories are reflected in the one Elena Ferrante tells of two little girls growing up in 1950s Naples in her critically acclaimed novel My Brilliant Friend (2011). Lila and Lenú meet every day for months in the courtyard to read Little Women together, “so many times that the book became tattered and sweat-stained, it lost its spine, came unthreaded, sections fell apart. But it was our book,” Lenú explains, “we loved it dearly.”1
Something about Little Women has made it the paradigmatic book about growing up, especially for the female half of the population. Although it is set in Massachusetts in the years following the Civil War, it has transcended its time and place and been translated into over fifty languages. Writers from England, Chile, Pakistan, and Korea have invented their own March sisters and rewritten the story in new contexts. And Little Women has been adapted for television in many countries—from Mexico to Turkey to Japan. In its original form, it has inspired the devotion of readers of all ages. Countless readers report having pored over Little Women repeatedly, not content with just one read. And many speak of coming back to the book again as adults, sometimes yearly, as a ritual that centers them and returns them to their memories and dreams of childhood. What is it that has spoken to readers and audiences of all ages for the past 150 years and made Little Women the most widely beloved story of girlhood?
Perhaps it is the book’s portrait of home. Images of the Marches nestled around the fire or the sisters performing plays for their neighbors make us yearn for quiet, candle-lit homes where pies are baking for dinner. The family bonds the Marches share—strong enough to survive war, marriage, overseas travel, and even death—make us nostalgic for a time before fragmented families became the norm. And the scenes of sisters curling each other’s hair before a dance or fighting over who gets to go to the play with the cute boy next door remind us of our own siblings or make us wish that we had them.
More than cozy memories, though, Little Women evokes deep feelings of identification, especially in female readers. The March sisters are highly individualistic, lifelike characters in which girls can see themselves reflected. None is idealized. Meg, the dutiful oldest sister, is eager to make Marmee proud but also resents the family’s poverty. Jo, the tomboy with literary ambitions and a fierce devotion to her family, struggles with an unruly temper. Beth loves music, plays mother to her broken dolls, and is excruciatingly shy. Amy, the youngest, aspires to be a great lady and a great artist but is also insufferably vain. Jo, especially, has fired the dreams of countless girls hoping to strike out on their own one day and do something exceptional. Readers as varied as Christine King Farris, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Carla Hayden, Simone de Beauvoir, Patti Smith, the Empress of Japan, Gloria Vanderbilt, Connie Chung, Gloria Steinem, J. K. Rowling, Cynthia Ozick, and Caitlin Moran have all been inspired by Jo March.2 She was the girl inside of so many of us, the one who rebelled against convention and donned her glory cloak while genius burned in the garret yet wanted very much to love and be loved by her family.
While researching the history of how Alcott wrote Little Women, how generations of readers have thought about it and argued over it, as well as how others have adapted the story for new generations, I have discovered that Alcott’s novel is not what it at first appears to be. What seems like a tale from a simpler time turns out to be the product of a difficult and sometimes troubled life. What appears to be a sweet, light story of four girls growing up is also very much about how hard it was (and is) to come of age in a culture that prizes a woman’s appearance over her substance. And what may seem an idealized portrait of an intact home and family is also the story of a family in danger of being torn apart.
Once we look past the nostalgic glow on the surface of our memories of Alcott’s classic, we can see that reading the novel raises questions still relevant today. What does it mean that this venerated story of girlhood centers on a girl who doesn’t want to be one at all? How can we aspire to independence and also find love and support in the context of home? And is Little Women really a story only for female readers, or is it just as much about how we all have to make compromises as we grow into adulthood? Why have so many male readers, from Teddy Roosevelt to John Green, fallen in love with Little Women too, yet felt they had to hide or make excuses for it? And what are the implications of telling boys that the book is not for them, as happens with almost all books that center on girls?
Reading Little Women, talking about it, acting it out with friends, watching movies based on it, rewriting it ourselves, and being inspired by it are anything but simple acts of readerly affection. Alcott’s classic has seeped into generations of lives and helped shape the way we think about what it means to grow up, what it means to be female, and what it means to live a fulfilling life. As Little Women celebrates its sesquicentennial, I have wondered, will it continue to matter to readers for another 150 years? Although younger readers are living in a much different world, they are still figuring out their relationships to family and friends and testing their independence. They can still find themselves reflected in the characters of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy as each sister finds her own way to grow up. Returning to Little Women reminds us of who we are and invites us to examine who we hope to be, making Alcott’s classic as vital as ever.