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….

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'.

But it wasn't a life that was ever lived, because the character never actually lived - he wasn't real.

I’m just wondering if you’ve read it recently? As an adult, I mean.

@CurlewKate - yes, we should all re-read books we read “too early”. So many books I’ve “got” as an adult that as a callow youthess I was quite hard-hearted and dismissive of.

I read David Copperfield to the dcs, and I was gulping and snivelling over the description of DC’s first marriage failing (bit of luck that Dora conveniently died…). When I had to read it at school the whole business washed right over me.

Rowan Marlow is not ghastly!

I should probably re-read it. I loathed it as a teenager. Whereas I read all the LIW and LMM series over and over.

@PermanentTemporary - no, the Avonlea books start around 1885/90. Anne's second son Walter serves in WW1.

I don’t agree with this. John B isn’t dull and I don’t see Meg’s marriage as a punishment. I do think it’s shit that LMA then kills John though.

I think Jo and her Mr B are a proper love match. You have a point about the writing stuff, but Jo’s mother and father would also have disliked her writing sensationalist stuff and he recognises that she’s a young woman away from home and from her usual guidance. It could be argued that this therefore infantilises her, I suppose, but I see it more as reminding her of the rules of a game that she’s already been taught and wants to follow. She already feels uncomfortable about it herself.

As for Amy and Laurie, I hate their match and find it totally unbelievable.

I have actually read PP- it was the kind of book very much approved of at my school- and it is ( obviously) an allegory, so as you say couldn’t be the story of the best life ever lived.

I tried to reread LW a few years ago and couldn’t get past the chapter where the girls learn the moral lesson never to take a holiday. They want to have a break from their chores and studies but each ends up bored / gets a headache in the sun or whatever (I can’t remember exactly) and Marmee nods sagely and they all learn their lesson.

I always found Amy and Laurie pretty believable as a marriage but not as a couple who would be happy long term. Realistically there must have been just as many unhappy marriages back then, presumably you just didn’t see the couples together very much, ad in fact having separate lives was quite socially supported. I think of the Gladstones who barely spent a month per year together, and most of that month Gladstone was chopping trees down. Or couples where the man would get a job where he was away 90% of the time.

I have no objection to Amy and Laurie or Jo and Prof Bhaer. I think Jo is right in her assessment that she and Laurie getting married wouldn’t have worked out - they are too similar.

It would be tempestuous and they’d have periods of sulking and hating each other, but I bet the sex in the early days would have been magnificent!

Laurie and Amy are both incredibly shallow so they're ideally suited. Amy loves the money and they're very happy in their high-status life of swanning around making occasional charitable donations.

Meanwhile Jo and Professor Bhaer's life of educating troubled boys is much richer and Little Men is a very convincing depiction of how they make this work.

I will have to read Good Wives again, but I couldn’t get past Prof Bhaer’s Germanisms in his speech being really annoying to appreciate him as a character (I should probably say that this is a problem with Louisa Alcott’s writing rather than Prof Bhaer’s nationality & it’s probably because it’s not easy writing a character who isn’t fluent in the language (s)he is speaking). At least Amy & Laurie are a meeting of equals to some extent as she tells him not to be lazy & he tells her not to be mercenary.

I read Good Wives first, which probably led me to have a better opinion of Amy than if I had read the books in the correct order. However, I do feel that Louisa Alcott is rather unfair to Amy as she only gets her sister’s cast-off suitor & is only allowed one sickly child nor is she allowed any artistic success although that is better than what happened to Beth.

The big problem with Jo & Laurie is that their relationship drives so much of what happens in Little Women so it isn’t surprising that readers get invested in it & consequently grumpy when it doesn’t work out in Good Wives. I don’t think the 3 year gap between Little Women and Good Wives really helps, as that’s the point in the story where Laurie & Jo growing up and growing apart could have been shown to the reader.

Rowan is spectacularly awful, dogmatic, self-righteous, completely unable to see why anyone should simply do what she says — though perhaps not as awful as Ghastly Giles. Then again, I’ve always tended to side with Lois Sanger, who feels the Marlows in general are too pleased with themselves by far.

I adore all AF’s books, but have always felt pleased that, whatever happens to LS (implicitly nothing good), Rowan clearly spends the rest of her days worrying about scour, and doesn’t even get to inherit.

I don’t think Laurie is shallow. I think he’d have actually been happier with Beth, had she lived, than with the awful Amy. He’d have loved her devotion and they could have gone to all the concerts they wanted then home to grandpa who already loves Beth for herself. And some time travelling and being forced into society a bit could rub the baby aspects of Beth’scharacter away.

We need this thread

Does the fan community Trennels still exist?

I had to -

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/5477093-delicately-balanced-on-a-razor-edge-of-mutual-toleration-rowan-marlow-saint-or?reply=149923231

I have found fan sites extremely scary. I joined one for an innocuous author and after a while respectfully lurking and commenting in a minor way, started a discussion on why a character was an entitled pita. Boy, the reaction! The first comment told me to get lost and read something else. Such angry fans!

Mind you, I’ve never seen such general nastiness as that on the Identifying British Wildflowers forum…

As in 'come friendly bombs and fall on Slough'? I was practically gridlocked there on Wed!

Ye gods and little fishes - how Tommy (Bangs) did carouse. Lovely books, Little Men and Jo's Boys. following them all the way through.

Under the pillows? Bibles or New Testaments I always think, but they were hot on the story of Pilgrim's Progress and knew it. One of the chapters is called 'Slough of Despond'.

Ye gods and little fishes - how Tommy (Bangs) did carouse. Lovely books, Little Men and Jo's Boys. following them all the way through.

Under the pillows? Bibles or New Testaments I always think, but they were hot on the story of Pilgrim's Progress and knew it. One of the chapters is called 'Slough of Despond'.

No, the Slough of Despond is not, fortunately, in Slough!

I always read it as the New Testament - that fits in with it being available in many different coloured bindings. Copies would have been considered appropriate gifts and readily available to buy. Also 'story of the best life ever lived' - obviously LMA is referencing Jesus.

I suppose the confusion is because 'Pilgrim's Progress' is frequently referenced in LW.

Doesn't it say explicitly it's Pilgrim's Progress?