A review by mnerd63
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

hopeful lighthearted sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I love Little Women. I have two sisters and we all grew up in love with the movie from 1994. I saw the 2019 version in theaters and adore it as well, but it wasn’t until this year that I finally read the book. Yes, at times the story drags and the time period it was written in clearly dates it. However, I was more often taken by how some pretty “modern” ideas are harbored within the text, some hidden away and some right out there in the open. There were many lines that I knew well from either movie, sure they had been written only in the screenplay for the more modern audience, but were in fact lines from the original source material. I think my main take away from the book is how it subverted popular publishing norms of the time. This was a time where a woman’s voice or perspective was thought of as overly sentimental, naive, unimportant and worthless—and even now these ideas still pervade. But Louisa May Alcott proved them wrong. Little Women was a great success and still is. It hurts a little to know that some of Alcott’s efforts to make the story wholly her own were in vain—Jo marries at the end, despite the author’s wish for her to remain single. However, she does get away with a little more in Laurie’s character and how he parallels Jo. Both feel out of place in the roles assigned to them, but still have both “masculine” and “feminine” qualities. Neither gives these up fully when they grow up. They both are molded by a woman’s touch (Marmee and to some degree the other sisters) into accomplished, kind and respectful people. To me, that’s Little Women’s true message: that a woman’s perspective is important and has value in a world that claims otherwise. That women have unique minds and experiences and we can change the world.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings