Questioning the Lessons from Little Women

Louisa May Alcott's Little Women is one of my favorite books. It was one of the first great works of literature I ever picked up, and I have read it over and over again through the years. As much as I love this work, however, I am still skeptical about some of the lessons that I think Alcott wanted the reader to take away. My favorite character in the book was Josephine March. Josephine (Jo) was a tomboy who loved to write. She was almost constantly plotting her next story, and she and her sisters would often act out her sensational dramas for their own personal entertainment. Jo even sold some of her stories to newspapers and periodicals, which really helped her family out during a difficult time (her father was fighting in the Civil War).

When Jo grew up, she moved to a boarding house in New York to work and write. She met Professor Friedrich Bhaer, who was a scholarly older man, and they struck up a friendship. When she sold one of her stories to a paper and excitedly brought it to him, he criticized her writing, basically telling her that her stories were low-brow and that she could write things that were much better. She was crushed, of course, and this was one of the defining moments in her life. Later, she produces a work more to his liking, and they end up married.

I remember being a bit puzzled about this when I first read it, and even sometimes now, if I think about it long enough. Do writers have a responsibility to produce a particular type of literature? Is there something wrong with producing light, easy, and fun stories? I'm bothered by the question because it was evident that Jo loved to write the types of stories she wrote before she was influenced by Professor Bhaer. It was also evident that her family, friends, and some of the public loved to read them. I think there's a time and place for each type of literature, and I think Professor Bhaer was acting like a judgmental ass when he made it seem like there was only one type of literature worth reading or producing.

Sometimes people want mindless fun. Books that have somewhat predictable plots and thrilling and unlikely events are about like movies and TV shows: they provide a temporary, welcome escape. I like to be caught up in a character's perplexing mystery or burgeoning romance. I also like deeper works that prompt questions about the way people live their lives or the right thing to do in a situation. There's a time and a place for both, and I don't see why one is "bad" while the other is "good". So, if I were Jo, I'd like to think that I would have pointed this out, then gone back to Concord and married Lawrence instead (he did end up pretty much supporting Jo and Prof. Bhaer later on anyway--maybe if Prof. Bhaer would have encouraged Jo to write stories that sold better, that wouldn't have been the case).

That is yet another point at which I (as well as other fans of the book) balk: Alcott had Jo choose to marry Prof. Bhaer instead of her best friend, the young and handsome Lawrence. Jo and Laurie had real chemistry, and a lifelong friendship, and yet Jo marries the significantly older Prof. Bhaer. Even the most recent movie adaptation of Little Women knew that would be a tough sell: Christian Bale as Laurie couldn't lose out to someone who looked and acted like the Prof. Bhaer described in the book (think Santa Claus but with reddish brown hair)--it became slightly more believable when they had Prof. Bhaer played by Gabriel Byrne. Hm. Alcott seemed to be saying that you should marry someone who will make you a better person, even if that means passing up someone for whom you have a real passion. I'm not sure how I feel about that point. It seems like you can get that same benefit from a friend, so why settle for only one of those things when you can have both? Jo could have married Laurie and corresponded with Prof. Bhaer. Dilemma solved. It seems that Alcott wasn't the greatest at thinking of alternatives--she didn't make much use of the inclusive sense of 'or'. As a result, she paints Jo into a corner. Jo has to choose between being a "bad" person and giving into all her more basic desires (writing thrilling literature, having a young, handsome, and passionate husband), and being a "good" person (writing great and lofty literature, having an older, uglier but wiser husband, doing good deeds and works to better humankind). So, while this book was certainly one of the most influential in my life, I still find some of the themes problematic.