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You have to read Good Wives to find out I have to say that GW was my least favourite of the books. I'd read LW about 3 times before I managed to make it through GW - only did so because someone bought me Little Men and Jo's Boys for Christmas and my mum hid them until I'd read GW!!
I love it, but I first read it as a child; don't know how I'd feel if I came to it now for the first time. I think that LW is more of a kids' book whereas GW is more aimed at 'young ladies'
She turned him down, but I can't remember why. Maybe she didn't fancy him He ended up marrying Amy, but I expect you knew that if you googled.
I have always loved it - every bit of it. It's hard to explain why, with something you've loved since you were a child. I always wanted to be Jo, of course, but I liked all of the characters, even Amy when she was being a pain in the arse.
You've made me want to go and read all 4 of them, now!
Because it makes you cry, what with Father being away and Mama being so lovely and all the Marches being so good and what happens to Beth. I guess you haven't seen the film with Susan Sarandon? I still weep buckets at that! Guess who Jo does marry, btw...
OF course there's a lot in it that's very pukey, and all the Patience and Goodness and Charity etc is irritating, but you have to cut through that, I think. And it's of its time, blah blah but you know that.
Jo didn't love him! Not like that.
Found GW the other day, was opening at random and reading bits I came across. Meg - good God can you imagine her in real life? Jo and Amy at least were spirited.
Yes but that is the sting! The book would have been much more predictable schlock if they'd ended up together and you would have criticised from firmer ground!
I loved it, Mom bought it for me in hardback when I was about 10, I in turn gave it to DGD when she was 10, she has handed it back ready for the next girl in the family.
I loved it, soo much wanted to be Jo. In my family my mum always read us the Chrstmas bit when they give their Christmas stuff to the poor German family every Christmas Eve. I also wrote an extended essay at University on Little Women and Good Wives as the first popular feminist novels. Think I may have revealed too much about my devotion.
Phew that's a relief about the spoilers! Lovely mumsnet towers have removed my post anyway - so now it looks like I've said something v rude about Louisa May Alcott and then thought better of it...
Do you not find 'Teddy' a bit neeedy though? rich but needy? That's why he can marry amy - because she needs him and they can form an equal parternship. He would never have had that with Jo -as Marmee points out repeatedly as I recall.
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
I loved this from the off because in all the other "period" things I read (Katy, Jane Eyre, what have you) the girls, even the tomboyish ones, never did anything as graceless and normal as lying on a rug.
I lurve LW and Good Wives, I always love any domestic details. I thought John Brooke was a bit of a sap, and hated how everyone wanted to be Jo (I liked Meg). I hated the doglike devotion to their dad despite him losing their money but apart from that, it's wonderful. Apparently, Louisa Alcott wrote a bonkbuster after that!
Omg, emskaboo, I did Little Women for my dissertation!! I only got a 2ii for it, which put me in a huff and ruined the book for me for about 14 years and counting. This thread has cured me though, I reckon, I really want to read them all again - can remember every word anyway!
Feenie, I'm pleased I'm not the only one! I know what you mean about runining it, I felt like I'd analysed it to death and couldn't look at it for about ten years, but it is now back on the comfort reading pile
Has anyone read "What Katy Did" lately? I really want to but I read it when I was about 7 and if I loved it then it might actually be a bit pants. I loved Jo but I wanted to be Katy.
It is one of the great crimes of literature that Jo and Laurie don't end up together. Keep googling and you will prob discover there are various theories that LMA didn't feel she was sufficiently feminine to deserve to cop off with the hero (I imagine in her mind it was not expressed this way). When they laugh about it in subsequent books - oh how unsuited we were to marry - errr, no people, you missed the opportunity of a lifetime, GET WITH IT.
I love these books but agree you probably have to have read them as a child to really appreciate why. Ditto Narnia?
I don't think they were really that suited, though. They wouldn't have made each other happy, in the long run. Laurie is basically a posh boy who needed a pretty wife. Jo is a free spirit before they had free spirits, she's much better off with the person she married.
It's a bit like "The Way We Were" if anyone has seen that. In love but completely incompatible.
I loved What Katy Did, georgimama, and it's still ace. I still love What Katy Did at School aswell, but What Katy Did Next I never really liked. There were apparently two more after that, but they aren't in print.
That's it, I'm going to buy the lot that I can find, may even get friendly old bookman who can find anything to find me the others, if at all possible.
I have just realised why I was thinking that Jo's bloke must have completely passed me by, or you had the two books confused... No-one told me that Little Women & Good Wives are meant to be one bloody book!
I would have been much more inclined to read it had it all been one volume. It also explains how I knew about Beth, but she was all bright and perky at the end of my book.
Grrr.
Now, as much as I struggled my way through LW, I feel like I have only read half a book. I don't wanna spend hard earned cash on another one though!
I've got and have recently re-read all the Little Women stories. I must have been about 8 or 9 when I read them (annd What Katy Did) as it took me ages to twig that they were set in America. I was also bemused by shops being open on Christmas Day.
Ditto the Anne of Green Gables series but she got too prissy in the end. I preferred her in the first book . Has anyone read Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm? Quite similar to Anne.
I wanted to be passionate Emily but thought that I was in fact imaginative Anne with her sensible streak.
But I did love Teddy much more than Gilbert, who has always seemed rather characterless to me - probably why she makes him into a hard-working doctor in the later books to keep him out of the way.
think you may be right though. probably I loved Emily so because I am so straight myself. but also because her dreamy wafting about in pine forests never seemed as...I dunno, fevered, as Anne's doomed heroines. that gave me the pip.
and I liked Emily's writing. Anne was just a dabbler, Emily meant it.
Yes, Emily very serious about her writing - always wondered if LLM was drawing on her own feelings there. I alwas though Emily was more fevered, though, with that weird 'second sight' thing, which is only hinted at with Anne. I feel that they are a bit more Gothic, which is not usually my thing, but I do love them.
Anne was my first love though; I remember crying when I realised Rainbow Valley (which I thought was a random story) was actually about Anne grownup. I went downstairs and pulled my mother out of a dinner party because I was so upset.
The sentimentality curdles a bit when you get older. Because it is written from a child's perspective, it works for you when you read it as a child, but comes across as overly earnest when you are grown up
Oh no, I loved Gilbert, he must have had charisma to carry off such a silly name. Poss image formed by cute guy who played him on telly (a reverse Shatner if you will). Which reminds me, has anyone seen the Anne telly mini-series where she gets arrested as a spy in the First World War? Bit off-piste for LMM methinks.
If Prof Bhaer looked like Gabriel Byrne I could sort of buy it but he didn't. He was a great guy but notLaurie.
If you are having a Little Women moment, also try 'March', it won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago, telling the story from the father's perspective, with lots of slavery and American Civil War stuff thrown in. Definitely more of a grown up book, with some surprising insight into Marmee's character...
Guess who Jo does marry, btw...
