Author: Louisa May Alcott
Publisher: ABDO
Rating: WARTY!
For some reason, this novel interested me for the longest time. There was something about the title which intrigued me, although I can’t say what it was or how it worked its influence. Finally, I decided to tackle this in an ongoing, if slightly unenthusiastic effort to read some of the so-called classics. I confess I've been almost singularly disappointed in this quest, and this novel was unfortunately no exception. It should have been titled "Little Mary Sues".
The story is rather autobiographical, drawing heavily on Alcott's own childhood (she is the Jo of this novel although their fates are different). It’s a story about four young sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and their rather privileged and truly boring lives. Their father is a soldier in the American civil war, and the four of them live with their mother in comparative luxury all the while hinting at how deprived they are.
I was particularly sickened by the farcical description of their Christmas, where they give up their breakfast to feed a horribly impoverished woman and her child who live nearby in abject and miserable circumstances; then they promptly forget about her for the rest of the novel (at least they did as far as I read before giving up in disgust - this attitude of theirs may not have held for the entire novel).
I could not help but ask: how is it helping that woman at all to lavish attention on her for a couple of hours on Xmas morning, and then let her rot for the rest of the year? It would have made a far more interesting novel had they invited her into their home to live with them until she could get out of the circumstances which held her cruelly and rigidly trapped. Their home was spacious and comfortable. They had plenty of room.
That's not the story we get however. The main story here appeared to be that of Jo's love interest over her new neighbor, which was boring at best. That's as far as I got before I ditched this. I've learned from other reviews that she did not marry "Laurie" but married a mature professor with whom she had a much closer mindset, so kudos for that.
From what I've read of Alcott's life, she was very forward-looking and progressive, being both a feminist and an abolitionist, which begs the question as to why she seemed so desperate to marry-off the four girls in this novel and effectively kill both their independence and careers, when she herself had a long and distinguished career and never married. I don’t care if this is considered a classic, or if it was a best seller when it was first published - it’s really not very good, and I can’t recommend it.
