A question about Little Women.

[CurlewKate]

That scene at the beginning where they each find a book under their pillow. What book is it? I ask because I have always thought one thing-and I discover my best bookish friend thinks something else….

It wouldn't have been regarded as a novel at all. It was one book that wasn't regarded as frivolous or ruinous.

Blimey sarahandquack what did you do!!?

😀@SarahAndQuack

Ha, just seen your other post! Scandalous.
Read a chapter of PP as penance.

Alcott's father, btw, published a (very dull) book about reading the Gospels with children; the language used to describe the Bible is not very different from what you get in Little Women. Alcott quite happily refers to bits of the gospels as a 'story' and also encourages the children to analyse the Bible as they would analyse a 'story' (when he discusses whether you should paraphrase the Bible). I don't think he would have found it odd to refer to the gospels as the story of Jesus' life.

There are no chapter divisions in Pilgrim's Progress, so if they were reading chapters, it was surely the gospels.

It never occurred to me reading Little Women that this was anything but the gospels or New Testament. Sure, they liked playing Pilgrim's Progress when they were small, as we learn in chapter 1, but then in chapter 2 we learn that they haven't read this book much since father went away, which sounds more recent.

Christian's life in Pilgrim's Progress isn't presented as one of the best lives ever lived: it's about his salvation but he is burdened by sin. He is an everyman. The best life ever lived would surely be Christ's, from Alcott's point of view.

Interesting about the chapters! I also thought it sounded more like gospel chapters (short, digestible) but I hadn't thought of going to check PP for chapter divisions.

I’ve always thought it was the PP due to the ongoing theme in the novel, but I’ve just checked the text (it’s on Project Gutenberg) & Alcott doesn't say it is doesn’t actually say it is the PP so I think previous posters are right with their argument that it’s the Gospels or a retelling. I’ve learned something today!

The PP is a very powerful text though - I was very taken with the Enid Blyton retelling as a child & also with a schools radio version that we heard at school, which led me to eventually read the full text as a teen. I haven’t read it for years now, but I still find myself thinking occasionally of images from the book such as the Slough of Despond because they can sum up some situations perfectly. I’m now wondering if 19th century children were allowed to read the PP on Sundays - Little House in the Big Woods makes Sundays sound such a dull day for children.

I assumed it was PP, but am prepared to be enlightened!

Cor, Marmee is insufferable . I went on my own personal pilgrimage to LMA’s house a few years ago. The guide said that her parents were domineering with their stress on improvement . And the publisher made her have a “happy Hallmark Movie ending” to LW, rather than Jo remaining dutiful single daughter.

@Benvenuto - my dm was brought up as Chapel, although they did not attend. Dm said that my gm would bellow threateningly up the stairs on a Sunday, “You’re not reading a novel are you?!”

Frankly I think Sundays for anybody, religious or not, only improved in the 1980s…

@MaturingCheeseball- that is some story about your DM! At least in the Little House books Sundays improved for Laura once she became a teenager & could go out on buggy rides & sleigh rides.

Those rides sounded such fun - she was lucky to hook up with Amazon. Although it must have put a dampener on things to come back to poor Mary’s cat’s bum face.

The guide said that her parents were domineering with their stress on improvement

'Improvement' was a general general thing in the 19th century, though, not limited to the Alcotts. People were supposed to spend their leisure time in improving ways - healthy walks, lectures, improving literature etc, not sensational novels and music halls.

See for example Prof. Bhaer's disapproval of the cheap fiction Jo wrote - which apparently was something LMA did herself at one stage of her career.

TBF, wasn't Mary off having fun with Blanche fooling clerks in shops by then?

I’ve always thought they were pretty copies of extracts from the Bible/the life of Jesus that they can dip in and out of.

@SarahAndQuack- yes Mary was & there’s the summer that she didn’t come home as she visited Blanche instead. There is the bit though the next year where Mary does ask Laura if she really wants to get married, which I read as Mary expecting her home just to stay the same, whereas Laura has really grown up having to earn money for Mary.

I read the whole series to my DC when they were younger as DS2 really loved the stories. I kept thinking he would lose interest when it moved on to growing up & dresses, but he was really taken with Pa and later Almanzo & the outdoors stuff, so I had to read until the end.

Improvement makes me think of the Avonlea Village Improvement Society in Anne of Green Gables (later books). Of course that series starts around 1910 or so I think? Less about internal virtue, more about imposing an ordered external aesthetic on what we might see as appealing wildness, perhaps less appealing when there was a lot more of it.

Dear Antonia Forest. Though is it ghastly Rowan Marlow who says it?

I'm pretty sure it's Pilgrims Progress. The book is about a man's journey from earth to heaven, which would be an exemplary life - tallies with 'the best life ever lived'.

God, Little Women. I mean, I also also love it, but it’s all about women learning to have no selves or worldly desires— Meg gets punished with a dreary poor man for enjoying dancing and dressing up, Beth dies while mentally a toddler, Jo bags a man whose courtship chiefly involves telling her not write trash, and Amy only gets a millionaire once she’s given up her artistic ambitions.

It just doesn’t make sense for ‘the best life ever lived’ to refer to a man in a novel whose life was less than exemplary (I haven’t read Pilgrim’s Progress but his journey is famous for having ups and downs!). For a devoutly Christian family the best life ever lived would be Jesus.

I have found my people!

There's a great podcast about Louisa Alcott's life, work and family called Let Genius Burn. Fascinating.

You're not familiar with the book, then?