19. Little Women: The Secret Sadness of a Classic

The Book Club - Goalhanger

This episode of The Book Club explores the enduring legacy of 'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott, examining its historical context, Alcott's personal life, and the 2019 Greta Gerwig adaptation. The hosts reflect on themes of family, gender roles, and artistic ambition.

Key takeaways

• Alcott based the March sisters on her own family, especially her rebellious nature versus her sister's obedience.
• The novel reflects 19th-century ideals of domesticity, morality, and social reform, particularly transcendentalist values.
• Alcott never married and may have been a lesbian, shaped by her complex relationship with her father and her sense of duty.

Transcript preview

This episode is brought to you by the London Review of Books. And now we are certainly not shy of digging into things on the book club, whether that is why it is that a classic novel endures or why more contemporary novels manage to capture a particular zeitgeist or mood. So the London Review of Books, an absolutely brilliant periodical by the way, operates on much the same principle. Each issue is an archive of long form essays, poetry, cultural criticism, and of course, the famed book reviews. of Clipped opinions and half-baked insights, the L.R.B. is the outlier. It's a trustworthy source that prioritizes the thinking, not the word count. So try three months of the London Review of Books, completely free when you sign up today. Subscribe now at L.R. me, forward slash book club. So that is L.R.B. M.E. forward. to try three months of the London Review. of books for free. Another bang of the street door sent the girls to the table eager for breakfast. Merry Christmas little daughters. I'm glad you began at once and I hope you'll keep on. But I want to say one word before we sit down. Not far away from here, there lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby. I'm glad you began at once and I hope you'll keep on. But I want to say one word before we sit down. Not far away from here, there lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby baby. Six children are huddled in a one bed to keep from freezing for they have no fire There's nothing to eat over there and the old this boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold My girls will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present They're unusually hungry having waited nearly an hour and for a minute no one spoke only a minute for Joe exclaimed impetuously I'm so glad you came before we began May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children? asked Beth eagerly. I shall take the cream and the muffins, added Amy, heroically giving up the articles she most liked. Meg was already covering the buckwheats and piling the bread into one big plate. I thought you'd do it, said Mrs March, smiling as if satisfied. You shall all go and help me, and when we come back we shall have bread and milk for breakfast and make it up at dinner time. They were. ready and the procession set out. Fortunately it was early and they went through back streets so few people saw them and no one laughed at the funny party. A poor, bare, miserable room it was with broken windows, no fire, ragged bedclothes, a sick mother wailing baby and a group of pale hungry children cuddled under one old quilt trying to keep warm. How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in. Angels come to us. Cried the poor woman, crying for joy. Funny angels in hoods and middens, said Joe and set them laughing. So hello everybody and welcome to the book club. That was from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and it's based on her own life and family and it was first published in two parts in 1868 and 1869 and it's set in New England and it's set in New England. in the 1860s during and then following the American Civil War and we'll be digging into the historical context and the life of Louise May Alcott herself in a bit and it follows the kind of the development the growing up of the four March sisters as they go from being children to teenagers to women and it's all about kind of the challenges of that transition of leaving home it's the ultimate coming of age story and that's why it's widely considered to be one of the originators of what we now call young adult fiction, YA. And it was a huge success upon its publication. And it's been further popularised today by a series of movies, but especially Greta Gerwig's, well most recently Greta Gerwig's, 19 adaptation, starring Serta Rohnen, Timothy Shalome, and Florence Pugh. And we'll be rating that movie, won't we, at the very end? We absolutely will. Hello everybody. I hope you all enjoyed my performance as Marmi. I certainly did. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, well, it was your idea that we do that we do that reading that reading. look absolutely ridiculous, not unfair. No, I'm always keen to push you, you know, push you to the limits of your artistic abilities. Thank you and you certainly did. Yeah, so I first read little women when I was quite small myself, I think, probably about 10 or 11, but it now strikes me that I couldn't possibly have read the original. I must have read some abridged addition or something because there's no way I'd have slogged through 500 pages of this sort of stuff at that age. But I remember, I remember really enjoying it. I enjoyed it at the time which absolutely blows my mind now. I was the same as you I was about 11 I can remember the copy of it and it had this pink cover with a shoe on it or something and it was very small so then when we started rereading it for this episode I was shocked and appalled to discover how long it was that it was massive and also maybe not as exciting as I remembered I remembered it exciting a lot of japery well there is much japery there's great japory there's great bono me but there's in the full edition of the children's version I originally read. However, we'll just outline the plot for those people who have not read it and not seen the film. So as you say, Tabby, there were the four March sisters, Meg, Joe, Beth and Amy, all of whom you performed magnificently in your introduction. And they live in Concord, Massachusetts in this kind of genteel poverty. Their father is an army chaplain and he's away with the Union Army in the American Civil War, as you said. So the two older girls, Meg, Meg, Meg, Meg, feminine. She loves dresses and she loves the idea being married and all of this. She's working as a governess and the next girl down who is Joe who is the heart of the novel really. Joe is headstrong, she's a tomboy, she's clever, she loves reading and writing, she writes all these plays and stories and things and she is working as a companion to their intimidating but very rich relative aunt March. Then there's the two younger girls there are Beth, they are Beth who's very sweet, who's very sweet and gentle. and there is Amy who is the spoiled baby who she's a bit of a heartbreaker isn't she she loves art but and she's very she's a little bit bumpious I suppose yeah she's got youngest child syndrome for sure completely she does their mother who they call Marmy and Marmy's job is basically to turn them into good Christian girls so in the certainly in the opening chapters of the book Marmy tries to instill in them a series of lessons in how to be charitable as we saw they're giving away their Christmas breakfast to a German family, teaching them how to overcome their jealousy or their hot temper or their vanity or their avarice or whatever. But by and large the girls get on pretty well, they sometimes squabble, they go to parties, they perform plays and they write stories for each other and they have a little club based on the Pickwick Club from the Pickwick Papers. They have a mate called Theodore Lawrence, Laurie who in the film is Timothy Chalome and he lives nearby with his uncle. to be very rich. He becomes a part of the club and he becomes great pals with tomboy Joe and all kinds of fun things happen and also sad things. So Beth falls ill from Scarlet Fever and that will blight her the rest of her life. In the second half of the book it's a much more grown-up version of the girls. So Meg is courted by and then eventually marries their neighbor John who is just stimulating. You don't like John do you? I'm not a big fan of John but more on that later. by this is the first sign that her family is going to gradually get broken up as the women increasingly leave and are married. Amy goes to Europe with her wealthy March aunts and kind of becomes this queen of society. Joe goes to New York where she works as a governess to try and earn money but she's also writing a lot, these kind of thrilling sensation stories. And there she grows close to a very eccentric German professor called Friedrich and she eventually stops writing actually when he criticises her stories. She comes home and Laurie, you know, her dearest friend he proposes to her. Beth then, and this is a big spoiler, tragically dies and Joe realizes that she's kind of lonely and that this life that she would always want it for herself maybe isn't going to make her that happy and she watches her sisters all coupling up and going out and claiming their own versions of independence. So what will become of Joe, we will discover after the break. But before then let's dig into the historical context a little bit of the book. Okay so Little Women is one of those Teutemic 19th century novels one of the most important 19th century novels I would say in the way that it shaped the imagination of generations of readers a little bit like Tom Brown school days I think for boys boarding school story massively important for boys in England. Little women is the equivalent of that for girls and young women in America and it's set as you mentioned in the war in a place in America, in Massachusetts, somewhere that is kind of steeped in history and in sort of identity of America, the idea of Americanism and American individualism and so on. So this is the cradle of the American Revolution and then later on the transcendentalist movement which will come on to. And the book also reflects, I think the intellectual currents of sort of mid-century American, particularly mid-century New England. So an interest in social reform. you know a kind of Christian piety that absolutely runs through the book abolitionism social activism temperance so you know this is a do-gooding family surrounded by other kind of do-gooding people a massive interest in education and in schools and so on and Louisa May Alcott is reflecting a lot of that what she's also reflecting is a profound interest in the kind of nuclear family definitely in the idea of marriage as the kind of heart and the foundation of Bourgeois middle class existence. I mean this is a book that would have appealed overwhelmingly to middle class readers who are interested in giving their girls in particular, their little women, a kind of primer in how you grow up, how you make your way in society. What does the new world of 19th century capitalist kind of bourgeois America have to offer a young woman and how do you find your niche within it? How do you reconcile it? How do you reconcile your artistic? ambitions or your individualistic ambitions with the demands of a society in which women have very, very strictly identified roles and Louisa May Wilcott and indeed her avatar on the book Joe are kind of pushing against that a little bit they're challenging it in sort of subtle ways but they don't want to undermine the established order completely I wouldn't say. Yeah. And this takes us I guess to the author herself. So the girls in little women, the March family are very clearly based on Alcott own family. So she comes from this family. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1832. She is the second of four daughters as Joe is. They're a kind of genteel high-minded family, but poor actually poorer than the March family. In the March, yeah. Her mom is a social worker and her dad who is unquestionably the biggest influence on her and not necessarily in a very good way. So his name is Amos Bronson-olcott and he is a transcendentalist. And what that means a lot of this is a transcendentalist. sort of transcendentalist is. Transcendentalism was this movement in mid-century America, particularly New England, that was a sort of spin-off of the romantic movement. And it's based on, it's associated with people like Ralph Wald or Emerson or Henry David Thoreau. And it's basically about, you know, you look deep into your own soul to find out the meaning of life, I suppose. It's idealistic, it's individualistic. The transcendentalists believe about harmony with nature, rather romanticsics. They believe that human beings are inherently good. They're very, very high-minded. They're interested in all kinds of, you know, they're sort of pacifist and vegetarian adjacent, I suppose. Yeah. A lot of social reform involved. So I mean, if anyone who has listened to our Frankenstein episode, this is quite in the realm of Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin. Definitely shades of that. Yeah, that's a good point. There's a sort of radicalism to them. It's a kind of Christian radicalism to them, I suppose. And, and bronson, and bronson, and bronson, and bronson, all this. So Louisa, she grows up and she's influenced by it too. Rather like Mary Shelley was in awe of her father William Godwin, she is in awe of her father, isn't she? She kind of worships him. Didn't she call him the modern Plato? She did, she called him the modern Plato, but a lot of his kind of more successful and now more famous contemporaries like for instance Emerson. He called Bronson a tedious arch angel because you know like Mary Shelley, Louis Louis May Alcott is growing up surrounded by by some of the great kind of thinkers of the day or certainly of this movement. But yeah, he definitely was kind of the most mediocre of the bunch, a big do-gooder for sure. Some of the experiments he carried out. Yeah, tell us about the apples. I know you like the apples business. Yeah, I do. I love a jape involving apples. So he'd carry out these kind of social experiments on his daughters. And one of them is kind of referred to as the drama of the apple. And this is where he was trying to test his, he thought his, he thought, he, he thought, he was, he was, he, he thought, he was, he was, he was, he was, he, he, he thought, he was, he was, he selfless and obedient and kind of meek and mild and he was trying to test his daughter's obedience by leaving prohibited apples full of kind of Garden of Eden metaphorical symbolic significance there so he'd leave them out where his daughters could see them and Anna so this is Louisa May Alcott's older sister on whom Meg is based she was you know the perfect woman she didn't touch the prohibited apples whereas Louisa went in and you know ate herself silly the naughty naughty girl you know this was to prove that Louisa was kind of less obedient more headstrong than she ought to be. Some things I read so that he was kind of in spite of being utterly deranged he was on the whole a loving parent. Loving in his own way I think. Loving his own way. He's also he's useless because he doesn't make any money at all. Yeah. And he basically they live on charity effectively though his friends and his family and whatnot. He sets up a kind of educational school, doesn't he? Yeah, it's very alternative. It's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it of its day or something. Yeah, or Steiner school or something. Yeah and his daughters went there. Yeah and in some ways very admirable so for example I mentioned they are abolitionists so they get it becomes very controversial because they basically have a mixed race child at the school and lots of people say oh this is terrible stuff educating such a person alongside white children but at the same time he has some unconventional teaching methods so did you see this thing about how he would lie down or he do gymnastics to teach people how to teach people how he would read So you basically contort your body into the shape of the letters of the alphabets. But also this is what Joe's father does in the book to teach her nephew and niece how to read. So you like lie on the ground and you do the letter A or whatever it may be. In the book it describes them lying on the ground to act out a W. Yeah. I think it would be very difficult to act out a W. You don't have enough legs. I'd struggle to act a worm. I'd struggle to act out a worm. I'd struggle to act out a really tough. I think you need help for sure. Yeah I think it's difficult for this and and you know his attitude to abolitionism and also because he was very open with the children in ways that at the time were considered kind of outrageous like he'd speak about circumcision and birth and things like that. Why would you speak if you've got four girls why would you be giving them lectures about circumcision? Well I mean also it wasn't just the four girls it was a classroom for like six year old children but because of this the school the school the school were shut down. The school were shut down. at home. And then he sets up a commune. Tabby, I'm going to come out and say it. If you're going to set up a commune, don't call it fruitlands. I know, I know. I know. Terrible name. But I suppose it's meant to sound all kind of garden of Edeny and lovely or whatever. But so he sets this up in 1843 by 1844 it's done, it's gone. And this was meant to be a progressive utopian commune. And it's constantly experimenting with their moral codes, I guess. But it promoted veganism and no animal labour, no property ownership. So it's very much ahead of its time. I suspect maybe you wouldn't have been a fan of living at fruit fields. It's a bit Zach Polanski for me to be honest. Yeah, the veganism would not sit well with you. No animal labour, I mean I'm all in favour of animal labour. I love animal labour. But as with so many of these kind of utopian ideals or dreams, it's shut down because of internal feud feuding. terrible living conditions. Yeah, it's always the way. Louisa Alcott humorously referred to it as an apple slump. But I think at the end of the novel, the March is a kind of living in close proximity and they come together once a year to pick apples and be happy and share break bread. There is something of that in this experiment. I think two things. I think one, the March family themselves, the girls as they're growing up. There's a sense of them creating almost a little commune of their own. off from the outside world with its own codes, sort of that kind of thing. And then exactly as you say, at the end of the book, there's a sense that they are part now of some very happy collective community. You know, there's a school, there's all, they're all sort of laughing and gambling in the fields together and all this sort of thing. Yeah, and also because it's almost as though the girls that do have their time going out into the world, they come home and they cut off the outside world and they live in this little sort of female paradise, But this brings us to another major influence from Alcott's own life in the book and this is her mother. She is called Abba May Alcott and she is the inspiration for Marmy. Although interestingly in later editions, Marmy was made quite kind of tall and genteel and slim. But the original Marmy in the book was kind of plump and homely but they wanted to make her more feminine I guess. Right. And I think she sounds like a wonderful woman. I'm going to betray my hand. In the book, Marmy is very boring, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I everything into a moral lesson. I think one of the real low points in the book is when the girls do this lovely thing where they come home and they tell and this is where they tell their sisters about something interesting that happened to them during the day and it's Marmy's turn to tell and she kind of tells this thinly veiled moralistic story in which all the girls they do something better and they accept that they're lot and they're happy and they're good and it's