I recently finished reading Louisa May Alcott’s famous novel Little Women. My mom had read it aloud to our family when I was young and I’ve loved the story for years, as retold in the 1994 movie featuring Winona Ryder as Jo, but I had never actually read the book for myself. Now, living less than half an hour from Concord, Ma., where Louise May Alcott grew up, has renewed my interest in her life and works. When I recently found Little Women in a used bookstore, I decided to pick up a copy, despite my husband’s occasional reminders that it was categorized as “juvenile fiction”.
I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the book and quickly added it to the mental list of books that I hope to read to my children one day – girls in particular, of course. In the Little Women movie, there are plenty of moments with wise thoughts from Marmee, insightful conversations between the sisters, and events and decisions that mold the character of the little women. But what surprised me most about the book was the central role attributed to God in the character formation process.
The framework of the first half of the novel is John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress, the story of a young man named Christian who is carrying a burden from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. The story is an allegory for the Christian life and the little women learn to understand their own lives and struggles through its lens. It was first of all remarkable to me that a book that was widely read at the time of its publishing could have such an overtly Christian theme. And secondly, I found it remarkable that the average person at that time must have had, or been expected to have, some knowledge of Pilgrim’s Progress. Otherwise, Alcott would have known that she was alienating her readers by weaving the allegory throughout the entire book.
As I meandered along the path to the Celestial City with the girls, I marveled at many beautiful passages that were full of wisdom, insight and prudence. None exhibits these characteristics more than Marmee’s account of what she wishes for her daughters’ futures.
“I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected; to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman, and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. It is natural to think of it, Meg, right to hope and wait for it, and wise to prepare for it, so that when the happy time comes, you may feel ready for the duties and worthy of the joy. My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world – marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing – and, when well used, a noble thing – but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace.”
In the second half of the book, each of the little women (besides weak Beth, who dies young) do come to be “rich in the possession of a good man’s heart,” which Marmee deems “better than a fortune”. Meg, Jo and Amy all begin families of their own, while still maintaining their close relationships with their parents and sisters. As the book nears its end, each of the women has battled her own selfishness, smoothed away her rough edges, and learned to exalt in the joys of life, even while acknowledging the sorrows.
As this was my take on the book, I was sorely disappointed upon turning past the last page of the novel into the afterword written by Nina Auerbach. Many of Auerbach’s observations and implications are illuminating but at several points, an underlying tone of raging anger bursts out onto the page. She asserts that the marriages of the March sisters constitute a “mournful” ending of the tale, particularly Jo’s marriage to Professor Bhaer, which according to Auerbach is “a destiny that has depressed readers from Alcott’s day to our own.” Furthermore, she concludes that “Beth’s lingering death symbolizes the marriage of the remaining sisters… When we mourn for Beth, we mourn for all the girls as they give up their ‘castles in the air’ for worthy but subduing marriages.”
Perhaps the most striking of Auerbach’s ideas is her vision of true community. She says that Alcott did not want to write Good Wives, the second half of Little Women, but instead preferred other stories she wrote called Shawl Straps and Happy Women. In the first, American women travel through Europe with “Spinsterhood forever!” as their mantra. In the second, a spinster community of artists, actresses, authors, physicians and lawyers lives happily together. Auerbach sees this as an account of a place where “energy, ambition, and community are not renounced.”
She implies, of course, that the March girls did give up energy, ambition, and community in order to pursue marriages and families. As I read, I could only help but think that Auerbach has never experienced marriage or family at its best. Some of the environments most characterized by energy, ambition and community that I’ve seen are in the context of families, often large ones. And my experience and understanding of marriage is that it is a relationship that allows a person to be even more themselves than they could possibly be on their own.
As for marriage symbolizing death, there certainly is an element of dying to self involved. But death brings about new life as well, as is modeled in the resurrection which we are currently preparing to celebrate. The “castles in the air” which the young March girls had built for themselves were later realized for what they in fact were – primarily selfish dreams that were hollow without someone with whom to share them – and their marriages, on the contrary, brought not only new life but plenty of enjoyment of energy, ambition, and community. Marmee would be proud.
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