What Katy Did. I expect it has its fans and I daresay I'd have loved it if I'd first read it as a child but....

[nkf]

...isn't it mawkish and depressing and horrible? In particular, I hated the way that Katy has to be tamed by invalidism into proper femininity

I read WKD At School and WKD Next (goes to Europe, nurses child through Roman fever, wins affection of said child's uncle due to devotion to duty) fairly recently when ill. They are rather lovely, whatever you think of some parts of the message.

Also reread Good Wives recently. I found that one pretty positive tbh. Jo gets her Professor (and they were friends, proper friends, first!) and starts her school. Good role model The only difficult bit in that is where Meg learns to be a proper pretty little cheerful wife and not complain

The Secret Garden was published in 1909.

berolina, I read that bit as being that Meg learned to accept their life and not hanker after riches they couldn't afford - so a good lesson about saving up for things and not falling into a credit trap!

Article on Louisa May Alcott - describes her as a feminist! Something else I have read is that she felt very guilty about the death of her sister Elizabeth (Beth) and the book reflects that - if Jo had not been too busy to visit the Hummels then Beth would not have contracted Scarlet Fever.

I thought Meg learned to stop interfering when the children's father dealt with them, and to be more considerate about spending money that her family couldn't really afford. She bought something for a dress that would have meant her husband go without a coat. She decided to take it back.

Given the period of the book, I think she was fairly forward thinking.

lm alcott and s coolidge shared a publisher according to wikipedia

I was thinking more of the bit where her husband brings his colleague home

oh I love that scene - she's bought twenty yards of violet silk or something and has to ask her rich friend Sallie to buy it from her as a favour so she can get the money back to buy the overcoat.

Then she puts on the coat when John comes home and asks 'how he likes her new silk gown' and they kiss and it is All Better.

I'm such a sap

when she was trying to make jam? I think that's all part of the settling down to life though isn't it? And he is a lot older than her. And she had always said 'you don't need to ask to bring someone home' and she was foul to him!

while she's trying to make jam?

I always feel awful for her, it;s exactly the kidn of thing I'd do

LMA's father was also very pro votes for women!

oh I just felt really sorry for her. I think the references to her as a 'little wife' rather galled me.

The bit where he (was he John?) falls asleep with Demi post-tantrum and Meg finds them was really quite touching, though.

Ummmm remind me.

I still think that yiu have to allow for the era inn which these books were written. They are still good books.

Of course social context is relevant and I wasn't thinking for a minute about banning the books or denying access. My post was more about how our attitudes to books differ according to when we read them

However as the thread has moved onto "message", I think that Little Women and WKD contain very different messages. Katy is rumbunctious and difficult and learns via illness and Helen's example to conform and that conformity includes domestic skills and quietness as well as kindness.

Louisa M Alcott's little women are non conformist, unfashionable and out of sync with the worldly societ around them. They are characters created by a Boston liberal anti-slavery woman brought up by a radical thinker. The Bhaer schools for example is progressive. They are dreamers and ambitious and Jo ends up as a bestselling writer.

and eventually they found a college as well, so propogating those ideals further.

whereas all the Carrs just get married and make tablecloths.

ROFL @ MrsMattie's feminist mum changing the names over in Blyton.

It's a goodie isn't it? Wonder what other books could be changed in that way.

Clover doesn't - as I said further up she marries a rancher out west and is very pioneering. Not a tablecloth in sight!

It never occurred to me to think that being a nice girl was the preferred option so the moral was clearly lost on me.

I loved Little Women. I was Jo . My mum once said in the middle of reading it to me for the umpeteenth time: 'God, Beth's a bore isn't she?'. I think I was about 8 or 9 at the time - I cried! She's not a great sentimentalist, my old dear :-)

i loved wkd and the sequels. wkd next was the best one...i was desperate to do the whole travel-the-world thing after that!

Someone mentioned Rose in Bloom which I dimly remember. Was that a follow on from Eight Cousins? I remember a lot of stuff about corsets and the evils of pierced ears.

Pierced ears eh? Now, what does that make me think of?

How about MN meets Little Women?

Poster is called Marmee. AIBU to not want my teenage daughter to go and stay with some very frivolous people?

Over to you...

What Katy Did taught me to ask for an explanation for rules - had the rules about the swing been explained, Katy would never have hurt her back!

I think the 'taming-through-illness/injury' is quite common in that-era fiction for girls (and indeed up to about the 50s).