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….

I think I must have been a very unusual reader in that Amy was always my favourite character. I don't know if perhaps it was because I read LW when I was 12 and therefore the same age as Amy but I always related to her more than Jo. Jo didn't resonate at all with me - I never understood the 'I wish I were a boy' stuff (obviously I get it now much better - it's a response to the social etc restrictions faced by women at the time).
I only realised as an adult that Jo was supposed to be the heroine and readers were rooting for her and Laurie to get married. I never got any indication in LW or GW that Jo was at all interested in him romantically. The vibe between them was always very obviously a sibling one to me. I loved the romance between Amy and Laurie!

Nobody is denying that LW is structured around PP, and uses chapter names inspired by it.

It's just that the book the girls are given at Christmas isn't PP. Surely you get that authors might refer to more than one book? To go back to Milton, it's like saying the passage where the fallen angels lie on the edge of the flood in Hell like 'leaves in Vallombrosa' can't be a reference to Virgil because the whole poem is structured around the Bible. Except, obviously it is, and the fact Milton used the Bible for structure doesn't stop him borrowing from other books too.

(NB, not comparing Alcott to Milton. Not sure either of them would have appreciated that!)

I always thought PP too but thanks to this delightful thread I’m switching to the New Testament. And going to reread the books.

apologies to AI loathers but I found this Google AI summary useful

In a historically accurate 1860s American household like the March family’s, children would almost certainly have owned their own individual Bibles or New Testaments rather than just having supervised access to a family Bible.
The shift toward personal Bible ownership for children was driven by several 19th-century factors:

• Mass Production and Affordability: By the mid-1800s, advances in printing made small, portable Bibles affordable for many families.
• Religious Education Movements:Organizations like the American Sunday School Union (ASSU), founded in 1824, actively promoted a "Bible alone" approach and distributed Bibles, ornate picture cards, and religious tracts specifically for children’s personal use. Bibles were often given as prizes for memorizing scripture.
• Theological Shifts: By the 1830s, American Protestantism began moving away from a vision of children as "born in sin" toward a focus on personal "choice" and conversion, which encouraged children to read and engage with scripture privately to develop their own faith.
• Educational Literacy: Sunday schools and "ragged schools" of the era used the Bible as a primary tool for teaching literacy, making it the most likely book for a child to own individually.

I’ve spent the afternoon watching the film (the one with Emma Watson). No mention of any books for Christmas at all! It’s not bad, but takes too many liberties for my liking. Amy is insufferable. I liked this Beth better than Clare Danes, who I thought was dreadful. Jo isn’t right but plays it well.

I’m so torn about which of the two more recent films is my favourite.

Emma Watson does a good job of ruining the later one with her inability to act but I think the other characters are pretty true to the books. I’m less keen on how the story flips back and forth.

My biggest problem with the earlier one is how Winona Ryder can play a character supposed to be the unattractive one! I do love it though, the ending never fails to make me cry and the music is beautiful.

Agree that Emma W isn’t great. I liked Laurie.

And the flipping was annoying. And there wasn’t enough Mr B and they ruined the Jo and Nr B declaration scene.

I really like Florence Pugh as an actress, but she struck me as well into mature adulthood compared to Timothée Chalamet’s spindly, little-boy Lawrie (who looks far more tubercular and liable to die than the actress playing Beth).

Emma Watson does her usual unconvincing stage school thing.

I’m definitely on the NT side as I think the “best life ever lived” means it has to be that.

However, I’m wondering if anyone else has read the The Other Alcott by Elise Hopper. It’s a really interesting fictional take on the life of May Alcott, the inspiration behind Amy.

I haven’t seen the recent film - I liked the Winona Ryder one when I saw it, although it isn’t perfect (as well as Beth not being right, they missed out a lot of the Amy / Laurie stuff which didn’t work well).

Having just scanned the initial chapters with Prof B, I am wondering why neither film casts a German actor as the Prof. He uses German words, his English pronunciation & grammar is clearly Germanic, he reads Schiller & Jo loves his accent - Louisa Alcott puts so much in the book about him being German, yet one film casts an Irish actor & the other a French one.

I didn't know there was an inspiration behind Amy. Would be interested to hear more!

I didn't know there was an inspiration behind Amy.

The four March sisters are based on the four Alcott sisters - Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and May. Elizabeth really did die young.

Definitely The Pilgrim's Progress -

Mrs. March broke the silence that followed Jo's words, by saying in her cheery voice, "Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrim's Progress when you were little things?...

..."We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book. We ought to have our roll of directions, like Christian. What shall we do about that?" asked Jo, delighted with the fancy which lent a little romance to the very dull task of doing her duty.
"Look under your pillows Christmas morning, and you will find your guidebook," replied Mrs. March.

If you read the description of the book on Amazon, it mentions Christian, the Slough of Despond and the Celestial City.

Oh good lord. No it isn’t Pilgrim’s Progress!!

Indeed!! I realised this when I first read LW aged 9 or so - having read PP younger still.

(Incidentally, the idea of my now 9 yo DD being able to make any sense of either PP or LW seems highly far-fetched - what has changed in a generation??)

The books are definitely bibles. The whole point is that the bible will guide their progress as they go on their own 'pilgrimages' through life. No one would describe the life of Christian in Pilgrims Progress as 'the best life ever lived' Christian represents Everyman and his great burden is the knowledge of his sin—which he believed came from his reading "the book in his hand' - the Bible.

I think the best dramatisation is the 2017 BBC serial: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ld2ht

(Incidentally, the idea of my now 9 yo DD being able to make any sense of either PP or LW seems highly far-fetched - what has changed in a generation??)

I read Little Women to my 10 year old recently and she went on to read Little Men by herself. She enjoyed them but I did have to explain a lot of outdated references, attitudes etc. I think they still just about work as the characters are recognisably ‘real’ people behind the preachiness (she did prefer Anne of Green Gables though!). Wouldn’t dream of giving her Pilgrim’s Progress - I can’t imagine there’s much in it to interest a modern child!

I don't think children have got less capable. It's that we were used to a world where we couldn't access the solutions to every puzzling question immediately. It was part of the experience that you might come across a word you didn't know, or something that made no sense (or that you might be completely unaware you were reading the third book in a series not the first). We're just not used to that any more. Children know how to google or ask Alexa, and they're used to parents who do the same, so when they do find whole complicated situations that are unfamiliar - and that they can't google - they're less equipped to cope with it.

May (could L M Alcott be any more obvious with the name, just switching two letters) was not pleased with her portrayal as Amy. She did the illustrations for the first publication of Little Women and there was a lot of feedback that the novel was great but the illustrations amateur. She persevered and studied art overseas and had some success. If you are interested I encourage you to read the book.

I probably will - thank you. Maybe it's a younger sister thing but I was always glad Amy grew up and married Laurie ...

I always imagined it was a book of collected sermons 😁

Read the thread. It really isn’t definite.

Oh no, I always thought it was PP. How disappointing.

@chocolatemissmarple
I think I must have been a very unusual reader in that Amy was always my favourite character.

So pleased! I've never found anyone else who wanted to be Amy.
Obviously we were all supposed to want to be feisty, go-get-'em Jo but - although I loved the character - she was nothing like me. I so wanted to be able to draw like Amy and be so naturally pretty (I scrub up well but it takes time!) . Really, the most I actually have in common with her is that I hate my nose and take comfort in the fact that my offspring have perfect profiles 😄

Like others, when I was young (read it first about 10) I thought the book was PP but now I think it's obvious it was the Bible or extracts thereof.
As it was said above, there is more than one book in the world and I thought the passage:
We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book. We ought to have our roll of directions, like Christian. What shall we do about that?" asked Jo, delighted with the fancy which lent a little romance to the very dull task of doing her duty.
"Look under your pillows Christmas morning, and you will find your guidebook," replied Mrs. March.
makes it blindingly obvious it was the Bible - their "guidebook" to negotiating their own Pilgrim's Progress.

As far as the films go, hated the most recent one (can't stand Emma Watson), hated the one with Susan Sarandon as Marmee who became a feminist talking about women's underwear to Laurie (I think...definitely with a man present) which is so unlike the book Marmee.
There are a couple of older ones (haven't checked details so happy to be corrected). A B&W one (again, I think) with June Allyson as Jo and (my favourite) one with Katherine Hepburn as Jo. I think that was the one with Liz Taylor as Amy.

Interesting that if I ask the internet whether it was definitely PP, or definitely the NT, AI will confirm whichever I weight the question towards. Helpful (not). Quite a nice exercise to demonstrate the weakness of LLMs to children.