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

[osprey_archer]

There are some nineteenth century novels I read for pleasure, and some where the pleasure arises from the book as historical artifact - the story may not be strike me as "entertaining" per se, but the things that it tells me about the historical time period definitely do!

My own college (called Lawrence!) was founded coeducational in 1847, and I know that Oberlin was founded coeducational and integrated around the same time - so Laurence College would have been a real possibility in 1887.

Isn't part of the problem with Dan/Bess that Dan killed a man (who totally had it coming! but nonetheless!) and is thus Forever Tainted? I remember feeling it was strange that everyone believed so adamantly that Bess could never love him. I could understand why they would think the match could not or should not come off, but how can they all be SO SURE Bess will never love him back? And the narrative bears this belief out, too.

This is the book that ends with Alcott storming "I wish I could end this book with an earthquake swallowing Plumfield and killing them ALL so no one could ever bother me about the March family EVER AGAIN," right? Just the sheer ballsiness of flinging that in the face of her most devoted readers. I am in awe.

[conuly]

one of Jo's boys' career plans is to help a tribe that's being screwed over by the U.S. government

Good luck with that.

[oursin]

The actress whom Josie fangirls and who gives her Sage Advice? based on the rl Charlotte Cushman, who was part of the sapphic circle of expatriate artistic ladies in Rome as well as famed for her breeches roles.

[kore]

Josie and Nan are SO GREAT. I couldn't really stand Bess, though, she's like this very strange mix of Amy (the beauty) and Beth (everyone protecting her to death like a hothouse flower). I think I kind of just took the very meta "I am writing about my characters and also writing about my publishing experience" as a weird given when I first read these books (pretty young -- six or so?). I knew Louisa Alcott was a famous writer, so it made sense she'd write about being famous or something! lol.

I think Laurence College is still more an idealized version of Bronson's (ugh) educational ideas than anything else, but it does sound closer to more liberal colleges of the period.

I honestly get the books after LW kind of mixed up, I reread them so often and continuously as a kid. They just all collapse into one big Alcottverse.

The bit about Nat not being Good Enough for Daisy also kind of gave me the heebie-jeebies, since I was raised by boho artistic types and part of the fun of being a musician is the parties! Jeez. Alcott is often so forward-thinking in some aspects it's always kind of a shock to run up against her granite NE work ethic, or idolization of self-sacrifice.

[oracne]

I read this when I was in...middle school, maybe? Early high school? I remember mostly Nan.

Dan gets sort of exoticized, doesn't he?.

[copperfyre]

I’ve never read any of the sequels to Little Women, so it’s really interesting to read your thoughts on them. It’s definitively interesting to think about which novels are more interesting as historical windows than as books in and of themselves.