Little Women

I have a good friend who absolutely loves the film version of Little Women.  Reading the book, though has seriously made me question her judgement.  It’s one of the few great classics that are on The List that I hadn’t worked my way around to previously and I think that was to my detriment.  It’s not an awful book by any means.  I am just too old and too well read to appreciate it any more.  I’m sure, had I been the sort of teenager to appreciate this sort of book, I’d have gotten much more enjoyment from it when I was younger.

The story, for the handful of you not aware, is of the March sisters; Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy and a year in their lives when their father is away fighting in the American Civil War.  There’s little actual overarching plot, rather each chapter is more like a short story loosely linked to the last which shows another way in which the girls develop.  My main issue with this structure is that Louisa May Alcott turns each chapter into a moral lesson for the sisters and that gets incredibly boring.  The March sisters’ main hobby, it seems, is self-flagellation.  It’s no fun to hear over-wrought remorse and promises to be better made over some imaged slight.  Oh no, Jo uses slang; let’s moralise until she improves, Amy is vain; with the will of God and some proper penitence she won’t be soon.  Ad infinitum.  There’s one part where Meg just gets a bit tipsy on champagne.  Her first experience getting drunk is hours of remorse for foolishness and a feeling her hangover is completely deserved along with holier-than-thou recriminations from her mother.  My first experience with a hangover involve far too much vodka the night before and then the day spent in bed trying to convince my parents it was food poisoning.  They didn’t go for it.  There was regret but only because I felt so sick.  These incidents make the March clan neither believable nor likeable.

Another of my issues was that the book’s reputation precedes it.  Most of my generation probably know about Little Women because there’s a Friends plot line about it.  Essentially, Rachel convinces Joey to read it as it’s her favourite book.  There’s this whole thing in that episode about the fate of Beth and it ends with Joey hiding the novel in the freezer because he doesn’t want to read about her dying of Scarlet Fever.  Beth has literally no personality, so I was quite looking forward to the drama of her death.  Unfortunately, Alcott doesn’t actually kill her off.  So, I did some digging and it turns out that the American version of Little Women is a two volume novel which includes what is published in the UK as Good Wives.  Essentially, this meant that after my initial relief that it was over; I was faced with a second behemoth of tedium.  It was a bad day for me.  In short, though, Good Wives is better.  Things happen.  Beth dies and everyone else gets married.

Alcott has a habit of not using characters to their full potential.  Jo has some wonderful moments.  Firstly, she is clumsy.  As someone who is very clumsy, this appeals to me; especially as Alcott doesn’t do it in that ditzy rom-com way.  Jo sets fire to her dress and breaks things all over the place.  It’s great.  I do that.  She is free spirited and independent at the beginning of the novel but throughout the book is chastised for everything that makes her interesting.  Eventually she becomes as bland as her sisters.  Her father returns and is very happy with her new found lack of personality.  She’s marriageable now, and marries someone far too old and dull for her.

I can see why this book is on The List and it certainly deserves that place.  Alcott was writing for people younger than I am, and it’s hard to remember that sometimes with the book.  I kept mentally comparing it to Pride and Prejudice.  The five Bennett sisters are far more witty and intelligent than the Marchs and Litte Women is so much harder to enjoy.  Because it is for children, the book feels less well developed than anything Jane Austen wrote- even when the subjects are comparable. It is, in short, hundreds of simply written pages of people you wouldn’t want to know.  They’re so deadly dull.  Lizzy Bennett could have really livened things up.

I’m now about to start A Maggot by John Fowles.