A Book Review : "Little Women (1868)"

“I Do think that families are the most beautiful things in the world!” Little Women is an 1868 book by Louisa May Alcott, a book so exciting, inspiring, captivating, and timeless that it transcends an era. Little Women tells the story of Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy, specifically Jo, during the Civil War in New England. All while the girls struggle through poverty, the consequences of war, friendships and romantic relationships. Jo is outspoken, a tomboy, passionate for writing, and lives life on her own terms. Meg is responsible, kind, motherly, and goes weak when presented with luxury, leisure, and other nice things. Beth is quiet, gentle, kind, sweet, has a passion for piano playing, wise, and will stand up for her sisters if need be. Finally, Amy is artistic, has a hard time looking past the surface, loves luxurious items (like Meg), and is selfish and dramatic, but does try to better herself. They have to deal with their father being at war and the girls’, particularly Jo’s, pending friendship with Theodore “Laurie” Laurence, who is secretly in love with Jo. On a sad note, in the end Beth ends up dying due to ill health. But fortunately, Meg and Amy find love, and Jo finally decides to go full swing into her writing career.

At this point in the story, Meg is berating Jo for using “boyish” and “unladylike” slang.

“I’m Not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I’ll wear it in 2 tails till I’m 20. …...I hate to think I’ve got to grow up, be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China astor! It’s bad enough to be a girl anyway when I like boys’ games and work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment at not being a boy” (Alcott, 5).

There is so much to read into this quote, so it needs to be analyzed further. Right off the bat, Jo is clearly an outspoken tomboy who is unafraid to show anyone and everyone her true colors, and if they do not like it, it is their problem. She also makes it very clear that she will not change for anyone. This sets the stone for nearly every single decision that Jo makes in the book, such as her passion for writing trumping any rush to marry, unlike her sisters.

The Marches’ father decided to go off to war, and if he had not done that, the family’s socio-economic status, a piece of the story that makes the story as good as it was, would have been gone. At the beginning of the book, Jo says, “‘We haven’t got father and Shall not have him for a long time’. She didn’t say ‘perhaps never’, but each silently added it, thinking of Father far away” (Alcott, 3). Earlier in the page, Meg alluded to the fact that their poverty was caused by Mr. March joining the war, therefore making it so they were not as wealthy because none of the girls and their mother could make as much as he did. If it were not for Mr. Lawrence noticing the Marches struggling, Jo would have never become good friends with Laurie. Now, we would still have a story, and that story would still be fantastic, but one of the central concepts that make this book one of the greats would not be there. As A result, Little Women became one of the greatest books of all time, mostly because Louisa May Alcott decided to have Mr. March off at war.

Louisa May Alcott also uses figurative language to enhance the personalities of each character. After a fight with Meg, Jo states “I’m dying to go and fight with papa and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman” (Alcott, 5). Jo is presented as a tomboy who hates the fact that she is a girl. This quote paints the picture of exactly why. She wants to be active and be in the center of the action in the conflict, and not to the sidelines as society believes women should act, which she connects in her mind to not being important. Metaphors are also used to describe Amy and Beth’s characters. Amy is called “A goose,” an animal associated with being vain and self-absorbed, and Beth is called “a mouse” an animal associated with being quiet until provoked. These are simple and easy ways of explaining the characters to the audience, and are very effective. As a result, the audience is not pandered to, and the characters’ personalities come across with the very simple, yet very complex language and magical way it is written.

The central idea in Little Women is definitely the themes of womanhood, sisterhood, and general relationships between women in their teens and 20s. On page 227, Alcott writes “‘Is there any danger about Beth?’ ‘I’m afraid there is’....When he had gone, she went to her little chapel, and sitting in the twilight, prayed for Beth, with streaming tears and an aching heart, feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the loss of her gentle little sister” (Alcott, 227). Beth has come down with severe Scarlet Fever by this point. Amy, throughout the book, is a very selfish and conceited person who values items, like turquoise rings, above the fact that she and her family are even still alive, just poor. But even when pressed with the mere mention of Beth dying, she goes and does everything she believes she can to keep Beth alive, even if being ‘alive’ means she would have to give up her own life for it, because nothing in the world would heal the wound of losing Beth, or any of her sisters. This is also shown with a happier lense when Meg gets married. Before her marriage, things were stressful, chaotic, and argumentative, but had the underlying tone that Meg was still content with her life, and loved living with her sisters. However, once she marries John, she still has the stress, chaos, and arguments (Just with different people), but there are no real positives to it, no thought in the back of her head that everything is still great and will go back to normal once the argument is over, just more stress that he might resent her if she does even a single thing wrong. All in all, Little Women presents a story where the bond of a loving family triumphs all else.

This book is a classic and one of the greatest written works of art ever made. I mostly concur with this analysis, which is why I would give Little Women a 10/10. The themes of love and the bond of a family that will put each other before all else is a very touching and deep moral that, unlike other books, is put in the foreground and is present throughout every letter on every page. But not only that, every character is their own person. This is one of the few books where I can feel what every character is doing and feeling, etc. even when they are not important to what is being actually written in that specific chapter. Not only that, but each character’s chemistry matches every other character to the point where the sisters honestly feel much more real even than sisterly relationships being written today. In every other story, all each sister does is fight and say other hateful stuff, but then magically make up using some form of deus ex machina. For example, on the day of Meg’s wedding to John, the sisters intend to make the most out of preparing for her wedding, and trying not to focus on the fact that she is leaving home, but when they do have to face it at the ceremony, they all cope in ways that are on point with their characters. Amy focuses on the lavish elements of the wedding, Beth focuses her energy to the subtlety beautiful ones, and Jo focuses her energy towards complementing the quirks of the wedding and politely trashing the pretentious nature of conventional weddings. Contrast that to how John is barely present at their wedding, and in their marriage sees Meg as not much else than “a woman” or “his wife,” and not a thinking human being with whom he shares an emotional bond. It shows that even though you can fall in love with someone and vice versa, deep down, you’ll always put your family first and have a more emotional reaction to them. It is the same reason why you will not legitimately say that you hate your siblings unless there is a really, really good reason. In particular, fans of classic literature and people who love to analyze works of art find this book to be their god. Classic literature fans will particularly adore this book because, despite the modern elements underneath the surface, it is very much rooted under common staples of the 1860s, and uses many outdated literary conventions that are pretty like “the” or “and” in terms of how much they are used in classic literature, and people who love to analyze art will find many themes involving family to dissect. Above all, the main takeaway from this book is that you should be grateful for the family you have.