So I finally read Little Women (with spoilers)

[Flamebat]

hell of a struggle I might add - please someone who loves it tell me why?!

Anyway, googled Good Wives to see the outcome - and how did Jo NOT marry him eventually????

Feenie, I'm pleased I'm not the only one! I know what you mean about runining it, I felt like I'd analysed it to death and couldn't look at it for about ten years, but it is now back on the comfort reading pile

Feel like I should have started this thread first - I am now looking back on it all warm and fuzzy

Has anyone read "What Katy Did" lately? I really want to but I read it when I was about 7 and if I loved it then it might actually be a bit pants. I loved Jo but I wanted to be Katy.

It is one of the great crimes of literature that Jo and Laurie don't end up together. Keep googling and you will prob discover there are various theories that LMA didn't feel she was sufficiently feminine to deserve to cop off with the hero (I imagine in her mind it was not expressed this way). When they laugh about it in subsequent books - oh how unsuited we were to marry - errr, no people, you missed the opportunity of a lifetime, GET WITH IT.

I love these books but agree you probably have to have read them as a child to really appreciate why. Ditto Narnia?

I don't think they were really that suited, though. They wouldn't have made each other happy, in the long run. Laurie is basically a posh boy who needed a pretty wife. Jo is a free spirit before they had free spirits, she's much better off with the person she married.

It's a bit like "The Way We Were" if anyone has seen that. In love but completely incompatible.

She would have helped him to remember his wild side, and he could have calmed her a bit.

Did she need 'calming'?

oh for heaven's sake people, Jo couldn't have married Laurie! He was a boy, she needed a MAN!

I do think the bit with Jo and the Prof under the umbrella is terribly sweet.

The bit under the brollie with Gabriel Byrne is probably the most romantic thing ever

"I have nothing to offer you, my hands are empty."

(Jo puts her hand in his)

"Not empty now."

If Professor Bhear looked like Gabriel Byrne, I really don't blame her.

oh yes, had forgotten GB was the prof. still stuck with awful image of william shatner

or did I make that up?

I didn't make it up, did I?

[worried]

I was wondering, will check.

There was a film version in 1933 and in 1994. I don't think William Shatner was in either.

Where did you get that idea from? It's intriguing.

phew!

because, you know, it would be deeply wrong and disturbing to have imagined that myself!

No no no I take it back - 1978 William Shatner as Professor Bhaer. Aarrrggghh how is that possible?

I loved What Katy Did, georgimama, and it's still ace. I still love What Katy Did at School aswell, but What Katy Did Next I never really liked. There were apparently two more after that, but they aren't in print.

I've said too much again, haven't I....

That's it, I'm going to buy the lot that I can find, may even get friendly old bookman who can find anything to find me the others, if at all possible.

Katy rocks.

I never got the hang of Katie.

I had to re-read the Anne of Green Gables series recently, though, and let me tell you that took some tracking down!

Nah, she pissed me off. Too prissy.

Feenie, you can read the last two online here.

who, Anne? prissy?

mind you I read pollyanna as a child too, maybe Anne just seemed a wildchild compared to her

I have just realised why I was thinking that Jo's bloke must have completely passed me by, or you had the two books confused... No-one told me that Little Women & Good Wives are meant to be one bloody book!

I would have been much more inclined to read it had it all been one volume. It also explains how I knew about Beth, but she was all bright and perky at the end of my book.

Grrr.

Now, as much as I struggled my way through LW, I feel like I have only read half a book. I don't wanna spend hard earned cash on another one though!

B*stards.

Wow, thanks procrastinatingparent!

Anne
Katy
Little Women

Heaven
Shherr heaven