Reading Little Women for a book group and hating it so far

[FatherFintanFay]

I've read an awful lot of things in my lifetime - I'm a big reader, love the classics generally, but for some reason I've never read Little Women. I don't know why, but now I've been obliged to read it for a book group I'm in, and - my god, the preachiness! The saccharine! I usually manage about two chapters before I have to put it aside in disgust.

It's just that each chapter is like a little sermon about proper womanly behaviour. Nobody seems to grow or develop very much overall, but they always learn something over the course of the chapter and vow to mend their unladylike ways by the end. So far, Meg has been slut-shamed for wanting to look nice at a ball, and Jo has had to forgive Amy for burning the book she spent years writing because SHE MIGHT DIE AND THEN YOU'D WISH YOU HADN'T BEEN SO ANGRY! Not to mention all the talk of Marmee having to squash down her unseemly anger when she gets given a particular look by her as-yet unseen husband.

It is awful, isn't it? It is regressive even for the time in which it was written? Does it get any better? I know vaguely what happens by the end because I saw the adaptation on TV last Christmas, so I'm all ready for meek little Beth to stop existing. I only wonder how long it will be before anyone else notices she's no longer there.

I actually find it much easier to discuss books that I did not enjoy than books that I loved reading. You don't have to like a book to be able to talk critically about it. All of the topics discussed on this thread would make excellent discussion points at your book club meeting!

I hated Little Women even as a child, they were all so bloody pious and twee. And yes I know it was of its time etc. but I just can't bring myself to re-read as an adult! I used to love the What Katy did books though, but really wanted to boot drippy Helen off that sofa. I must have been a very unsentimental child in hindsight!

Was Helen in What Katy Did 'drippy'? IIRC think I got more of quiet fortitude vibe.

Nah, Cousin Helen was pure hell. She's the one who comes in and tells Katy that it's her duty as a female invalid to make herself pleasant to look at, and tells her that when she used to lie on her bed after her own accident (which permanently disabled her), she used to hold her forehead smooth with her fingers, so that she didn't become 'cross and wrinkled-looking'.

And she has a deeply masochistic devotion to pain, and gives poor Katy a poem called 'The School of Pain', all about the lessons pain has to teach her -- I mean, these are about fortitude and sweet endurance, your standard Victorian Angel in the House stuff, but you could actually drop it into a discarded scene in Fifty Shades and it wouldn't seem that out of place....

Yes Angelic Cousin Helen was in " What Katy did" as I recall, she was so Angelic that when she had her accident she refused to marry her fiancee so he didn't have to be tied to an" invalid " however removed next door with his new wife and they called their daughter Helen imagine the wife's version of events and the answers she would get on aibu.

How would the Dr,s be so convinced that Katy would walk again anyway? I mean she didn't walk for about four years but Dr,Carr knew that Katy would recover one day .

I don't think Dr Carr was certain of Katy's recovery - he hoped that because she was young, her back would heal as she continued to grow, but he was careful not to give Katy false hope.

What I didn't understand was why Katy had to live upstairs - surely she'd have been better off downstairs, especially when she started using a wheelchair.

I know I get it would have been difficult to get her up.and down the stairs ,in the days before stair lifts etc but they could have made a room for her down stairs especially as she was " running the house" they had servants etc so they must have been fairly well off and had the room.

I also most certainly skipped that poem!

Almost, not also most.

x2boys perhaps confining Katy to her room was what passed for infection control in those days? She would have been vulnerable to passing bugs, scarlet fever, pneumonia, malaria etc. and maybe keeping her separate from random visitors was their way of trying to protect her.