Revisiting Little Women

Little Women, by Louisa M. Alcott
Angus & Robertson Ltd, Sydney, 1934

Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott was the book of my early childhood. I can't remember a time when it was not part of my life. Before I started school, my older sister had read the story to me and I'm sure we all watched the MGM movie starring June Allyson as Jo and Elizabeth Taylor as Amy on many a Sunday afternoon.

Part of my fascination was no doubt due to being one of four sisters (like Louisa Alcott herself) - and having a brother coincidentally named Laurie. In my imagining, I was Amy. Jo was too boyish, Beth far too sickly and good, and Meg was boring. Who wouldn't want to be Amy with her golden curls and pretty nose that she helped to shape with the use of a peg? Looking back now there was another similarity too, one that I doubt I was conscious of. A couple of months before my 4th birthday, my father died suddenly. Like the March girls, I was growing up in a fatherless household.

The inscription by Ina Reynolds

But Little Women goes back further in my family story. In 1934, my mother was a pretty child with long ringlets created by curling her hair around rags each night. And, despite being a minister's daughter, she was desperate to go on the stage. She begged and begged her parents to allow her to take lessons and, although the country was in the grip of a depression and her father's income as a Church of Christ minister was meagre, somehow they found the money to allow her to follow her dream. So each week, little Joy walked up Frederick Street, Bexley to the top of the hill. She carried two shillings in her hand, payment for her elocution teacher, Ina Reynolds. When Mum was not quite 10-years-old, she was given a copy of Little Women by her elocution teacher. The gift, presented on 19 April 1934, was inscribed 'with many thanks for the help of both mother and yourself in Concert work ...'.

I'm the custodian of this family treasure. Published in early 1934 by Angus and Robertson, the blue cloth-covered edition features stills from the 1933 RKO Radio Pictures movie starring Katherine Hepburn as Jo and Joan Bennett as Amy. How I coveted this book! What a treat it was to be allowed to gently open it and look at the photographs.

Over the past week or so, I've done more than look at the photographs. It must be close to 40 years since I read the story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy - although it is so embedded in my memory that I can still score 89% on the New York Public Library quiz, Little Women: Which March Sister Said It?

And here's the thing - for the first few chapters, I regretted ever going back to it. Those girls, at the start of book anyway, are such whiners: we're so poor; it's not fair; why did father have to lose all his money?

'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents.'

They drove me crazy. No wonder they were given copies of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to inspire them to be better! I nearly stop reading to avoid having damage done to my childhood memory. But it is Marmee, Mrs March who turns the book around for me. Marmee, who was completely forgettable in all my earlier readings. She was barely a presence and, when she was, she was mostly offering a lesson in how to behave. But listen to her speaking to Jo:

You think your temper is the worst in the world; but mine used to be just like it ... I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.

Katharine Hepburn as Jo and
Joan Bennett as Amy - a still from the
RKO Radio Pictures movie

Marmee angry? Nearly every day of her life? Suddenly, I am aware of all the anger that sits beneath the surface of this seemingly gentle book for girls. Time and time again, Marmee leaves the room with her lips tightly compressed. It is wild fury that leads Amy to burn Jo's manuscript, and it is Jo's anger that almost leads to Amy drowning. Aunt March is cranky with the world - although perhaps she has a right to be, having buried a daughter and a husband. Old Mr Laurence's anger with his dead son, who ran away to play music in Italy, leads him to be tough with young Laurie. And what of Marmee? Wouldn't you be angry too if your husband's poor business decisions meant you were flung with four daughters into the world of the genteel poor and then he ran off to minister to the soldiers fighting in the Civil War?

In 1868, when the book was first published, Marmee is angry and a feminist, reflecting the views of the author herself. Although she wants to see her daughters 'well and wisely married', she also advises them:

better be happy old maids than unhappy wives, or unmaidenly girls, running about to find husbands.

In a world where marriage seems to be the only option, Little Women offers it's readers alternatives. While Meg begins to yearn for marriage and her own home, Jo and Amy are planning on making their own way in the world, earning their fortune through writing and art. And the family newspaper, The Pickwick Chronicles, includes an advertisement for 'Miss Oranthy Bluggage, the accomplished Strong-Minded Lecturer', who is delivering a lecture on 'WOMAN AND HER POSITION'.

It's not until the sequel, Good Wives, published in 1869, that we see how Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy's lives play out. Somewhere I have my own, large-format illustrated copy. And yes, I'm going to read it. Not to see if Professor Bhaer is as lovely as I remember (although I hope he still is) but to discover whether Marmee manages her anger and continues to advise her little women to imagine alternative lives.

All quotes and images are from Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott, published by Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1934