Recent reading

[troisoiseaux]

Read Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott, and enjoyed it more than Little Men, if only out of a sense of novelty. I hadn't read it before, and it definitely cranks up the drama compared to the earlier March family books, featuring shipwrecks and prison riots and collapsing mines alongside its more expectedly domestic storylines— Jo's niece wants to be an actress! Young love is in the air! A few of the Plumfield boys went to Harvard and have become total jerks!

I have to admit, I found it more interesting as a historical artifact than a story, if that makes sense? Especially after learning more about Alcott as a person and a writer through Anne Boyd Rioux's Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, I was interested to see how much of it felt like a response to Little Women— there's an amusing chapter about Jo, now the famous author of a book that is clearly Little Women, dealing with her adoring and very persistent public. There were also a few storylines that felt like Alcott taking paths she'd been pressured away from in Little Women: namely, her decision to allow Little Men's tomboyish Nan to reject the persistent suit of her childhood friend AND end up as a "busy, cheerful, independent spinster" rather than marry someone else, as well as Jo's namesake niece's passion for theater— a trait of Alcott's sister Anna that she toned down in Meg / swapped for the more respectable goals of marriage and motherhood. (Josie Brooke was a delight and the highlight of this book, imo.)

It was also an intriguing snapshot of its moment in time— the book's discussion of women's rights felt like looking at the middle picture on an Animorphs cover, because it had young female students asserting their right to education and pursue careers (Nan was in med school!) while, for example, taking as unquestioned fact that women's brains are smaller than men's. Interestingly, from a conversation about women's suffrage and some quick follow-up googling, it appears that women in Massachusetts could vote in local elections as of 1879— and our Louisa was the first woman to register to vote in Concord!

I'm not sure how much Laurence College reflected an ideal rather than a kind of institution that actually existed circa 1886, being co-ed and integrated - it's mentioned in passing that it accepted students of "all sexes, colors, creeds, and ranks," including "the freedman and woman from the South" - but that was cool. Sympathetic, although not exactly respectful, references to Native Americans, as one of Jo's boys' career plans is to help a tribe that's being screwed over by the U.S. government. Had a bit of a mental record scratch over just how completely everyone - the narrative, Jo, Dan himself - dismissed Dan's love for Bess Laurence as not having a snowball's chance in hell at being a conceivable match, let alone reciprocated, given their difference in social status— if this had been historical fiction written now, it's inconceivable that a wealthy, sheltered, aspiring artist could nurse a rugged, wounded outdoorsman - a convict who redeemed himself through a heroic act, no less! - back to health and the two of them not end up together.

Lots of allusions to Dickens, as well as a conversation about the respective merits of George Eliot and "little Charlotte Bronte," which I was tickled by.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I think it's mostly about class. He was considered an impossible match before he killed a man, IIRC; the killing emphasized why he was impossible, ie, he's the sort of rough man to whom such things happen, not the reason by itself.

But the fixit fic I really want is Dan/Nat.

[troisoiseaux]

But the fixit fic I really want is Dan/Nat.

Yes!!

[osprey_archer]

Is Nat the one who has to whip Professor Bhaer, and finds having to swat his teacher a MUCH worse punishment than being swatted himself? Dan's opposite: too tenderhearted, where Dan is too rough? I bet there's a market for this in historical romance.

[troisoiseaux]

Yes! There's also a whole side plot in Little Men where Nat is accused of stealing and is ostracized by the other boys, until Dan sells his most beloved possession to pay back the money that Nat is accused of stealing, implies that he was the one who stole it, and therefore takes the burden of the public shaming onto himself, until it's revealed that neither of them were the thieves. I think the narrative actually refers to them as "Damon and Pythias."

[osprey_archer]

That's possibly the most nineteenth century subplot I've ever seen! Although "our hero FALSELY ACCUSED" is definitely a big thing in early to mid-twentieth century boarding school books too.

You know, books really prepared me for people to be falsely accused of thievery ALL THE TIME, and in fact I have never been even adjacent to this subplot in real life. Truly, literature can be misleading.

[troisoiseaux]

It was genuinely more stressful to read than the "Dan is imprisoned for murder and the other inmates try to rope him into planning a prison riot" chapter of Jo's Boys, because middle schoolers are the worst. (Poor Dan. It feels like he wandered into an Alcott children's novel out of a different genre entirely and she didn't know what to do with him.)

[rachelmanija]

I think so. He's the sweet woobie who plays the violin. He gets wrongly accused of stealing and Dan makes a false confession to protect him.