Final Thoughts and Ratings

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Ask your doctor about Tremphia today. Call one eight hundred five two six seven seven three six to learn more. or visit Trempharadio. com Hey parents How do you make smarter choices for your kids' college today? That's where Sally can help With Sally, you can find scholarships, funding options, tools, and guidance all in one place And if you need a loan, Sally has options for different families and different situations College is only worth it if you do it right So don't just help your kid go Help them go smarter Sally d. com slash go parents Another bang of the street door sent the girls to the table eager for breakfast. Merry Christmas little daughters I am glad you began at once and I hope you'll keep on. But I wantan to say one word before we sit down not far away from here There lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby Six children are huddled in a one bed to keep from freezing for they have no fire There's nothing to eat over there. And the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold Girls Will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present? They're unusually hungry, having waited nearly an hour for a minute. I onece spoke onlynly a minute for Joe exclaimed impetuously I'm so glad you came before we began. May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children Bh eagerly. She'll take the cream and the muffins A did Amy hereroically giving up the articles she most liked. Meg was already covering the buckwheats and piling the bread into one big plate. I thought you'd do it, said Mrs March, smiling as if satisfied. You shall all go and help me And when we come back we shall have bread and milk for breakfast and make it up at dinner time. They were soon ready and the procession set out Fortunately it was early and they went through back streets, so few people saw them, and no one laughed at the funny party. A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bed cllothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale Hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm, how the big eyes stared, and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in Ah my God. It is good angels come to us. cried the poor woman, crying for joy. Fanny Angels in Hoods and Middens said Joe and set them laughing So Hello everybody and welcome to the Book Cub That was from Little Women by Louisa Maay Alcott and it's based on her own life and family. And it was first published in two parts in eighteen sixty eight and eighteen sixty nine And it's set in New England in the eighteen sixties during and then following the American Civil War. And we'll be digging into the historical context and the life of Louise Ma Allcot herself in a bit. And it follows the kind of the development, the growing up of the four Mch sisters as they go from being children to teenagers to women And it's all about kind of the challenges of that transition of leaving home. It's the ultimate coming of age story And that's why it's widely considered to be one of the originators of what we now call young adult fiction, YA And it was a huge success upon its publication And it's been further popularized today by a series of movies, but especially Greta Gwig's, or most recently Greta Gerwig's twenty nineteen adaptation starring Sasha Ronan, Timothy Chalomet and Florence Pgh, and we'll be rating that movie, won't we at the very end? We abbsolutely will. Hello everybody. I hope you' all enjoyed my performances as Mary. I certainly did. Yeah, well, Tabby, it was your idea that we do that reading. And you chose a reading which would look absolutely ridiculous.ot I'm I'm just always keen to push you, you know push you to the limits of your artistic abilities. Thank you, and you certainly did. Yeah, so I first read Little Women when I was Quite small myself, I think, probably about ten or eleven But it now strikes me that I couldn't possibly have read the original. I must have read some abridged edition or something because there's no way I'd have slogged through five hundred pages of this sort of stuff at that age. But I remember really enjoying it. I enjoyed it at the time, which absolutely blows my mind now. I was the same as you, I was about eleven. I can remember the copy of it and it had this pink cover with a shoe on it or something. And it was very small. So then when we started rereading it for this episode, I was shocked and appalled to discover how long it was. That it was massive also Maybe not as exciting as I remembered. I remembered it exciting a lot of japperery. Well, there is much jappery. There's great Bono Mi and there's great japperery. Yeah, but there's probably more moralizing in the full edition than was in the children's version that I originally read. However, we'll just outline the plot for those people who've not read it or not seen the film So she say, Tabby There were the four March sisters, Meg, Joe, Beth and Amy, all of whom you performed magnificently Thank you introduction And they live in Concord, Massachusetts in this kind of genteel poverty Their father is an army chaplain, and he's away with the Union Amy in the American Civil Wars, you said. So the two older girls Meg who is sort of traditionally feminine. She loves dresses and she loves the idea of being married and all of this She's working as a governness And the next girl down who is Joe who is the heart of the novel really? Joe is headstrong. She's a tomboy She's clever, she loves reading and writing. She writes all these plays and stories and things and she is working as a companion to their intimidating but very rich relative Aunt March. Then there's the two younger girls, there are Beth, who's very sweet and gentle And there is Amy, who is the spoiled baby. Yeah who she's a bit of a heartbreaker, isn't she? She loves art But and she's very she's a little bit bumpsous, I suppose,. Yeah. she's got youngest child syndrome for sure. Completely she does. Their mother who they call Mari And Mommy's job ' basically to turn them into good Christian girls. Yeah So in the certainly in the opening chapters of the book, Mommy tries to instill in them a series of lessons in how to be charitable. as we saw, they're giving away their Christmas breakfast to a German family teaching them how to overcome their jealousy or their or their vanity or their avarice or whatever. By and large, the girls get on pretty well, they send her a squabble they part is they perform plays and they write stories for each other and they have a little club based on the Pickwick Club from the Pickwood Papers. Yeah. They have a mate called Theodore Lawrence, Laurie who in the film is Timothy Chhalamay And he lives nearby with his uncle. He's going to be very rich. He becomes part of the club and he becomes great pals with Tomboy Joe. and All kinds of fun things happen and also sad things. So Beth falls ill from scarlet fever and that will blight her the rest of her life. In The second half of the book, it's a much more grown up version of the girls. So Meg is courted by and then eventually marries their neighbor John. He was just stimulating. You don't like John, do you? I'm not a big fan of John, but more on that later Jo is devastated by this because she feels like this is the first sign that her family is going to gradually get broken up as the women increasingly leave and are married. Amy goes to Europe with her wealthy March aunt and kind of becomes this queen of society. Joe goes to New York where she works as a governess to try and earn money, but she's also writing a lot, these kind of thrilling sensation stories And there she grows close to a very eccentric German professor called Friedich and She eventually stops writing actually when he criticizes her stories. She comes home and Laorie, you know, her dearest friend, he proposes to her Beth then and this is a big spoiler tragically dies and Jo realizes that she's kind of lonely and that this life that she' always wanted for herself maybe isn't going to make her that happy. and she watches her sisters all coupling up and going out and claiming their own versions of independence So What will become of Joe, we will discover after the break But before then, let's dig into the historical context a little bit of the book. Okay. Little Women is one of those totemic nineteenth century novels One of the most important nineteenth century novels, I would say, in the way that it shaped the imagination of generations of readers is a little bit like Tom Brown school days, I think for boys, boarding school story, massively important for boys in England. Little womomen is the equivalent of that for girls and young women in America. And it set, as you mentioned in the Civil War, in a place in America in Massachusetts Some of that is kind of steeped in history and in sort of identity of America, the idea of Americanism and American individualism and so on. So this is the cradle of the American Revolution And then later on the transrcendentalist movement, which will come on to And the book also reflects, I think the intellectual currents of sort of mid century America, particularly mid century New England. An interest in social reform you know, a kind of Christian piety that absolutely runs through the book Abolitionism Social activism Temperance. so you know, this is a do goodooding family surrounded by other kind of do goodooding people a massive interest in education and in schools and so on and Louisa May Alcott is reflecting a lot of that. What she's also reflecting is a profound interest in the kind of nuclear family. Definitely. the idea of marriage as the kind of heart and the foundation stone of bourgeois middle class existence. I mean, this is a book that would have appealed overwhelmingly to middle class readers who are interested in giving their girls, in particular their little women. P primer in how you how you grow up, how you make your way in society What does the new world of nineteenth century capitalist kind of bourgeois America have to offer a young woman? And how do you find your niche within it? How do you reconcile your artistic ambitions or your individualistic ambitions with the demands of a society in which women have very, very identified roles and Louisa Ma Rocott and indeed her avatar in the book Joe A kind of pushing against that a little bit. They're challenging it in sort of subtle ways, but they don't want to undermine the established order completely, I wouldn't say And this takes us, I guess to the author herself. So the girls in Little Women, the March family very clearly based on Alcott's own family So she comes from this family. She was born in Pennsylvania in eighteen thirty two. She is the second of four daughters. as Joe is. They're a kind of genteel, high minded family, but poor, actually poorer than the March family In the March yeah. Her m is a social worker and her dad who is unquestionably the biggest influence on her and not necessarily in a very good way So his name is Amos Bronson Olcott. And he is a transcendentalist And what that means, a lot of listeners won't know, I guess what a transcendentalist is. Transcendentalism was this movement in mid century America, particularly New England It was a sort of spinoff of the romantic movie. Yeah. and it's based on it's associated with people like Ralph Wald or Emerson or Henry David Thoreau It's basically about, you know, you look deep into your own soul to find out you know, the meaning of life, I suppose. It's idealistic It's individualistic. The transcendentalists believe about harmony with nature, rather than romantics. They believe that human beings are inherently good They're very, very, very high minded. They're interested in all kinds of, you know, they're sort of pacifist and vegetarian adjacent, I suppose. Yeah And lot of social reform involved. So I mean if anyone who has listened to our Frankenstein episode This is quite in the realm of Mary Shelley's father William Godwin Definitely shades of that. Yeah, that's a good point. This is a sort of radicalism to them. There's a kind of Christian radicalism to them, I suppose. And Bronson, her dad, is massively into all this. So Louisa she grows up And she's influenced by it too. Rather like Mary Shelley was in awe of her Father William Godwin She is in awe of her father, isn't she? She kind of worships him,.idn't she call him the modern Plato? She did. she caught in the modern Plato. But A lot of his kind of more successful and now more famous contemporaries like, for instance, Emerson, he called Bronson a tedious archangel because You know, like Mary Shelley, Louisa Mayelct is growing up surrounded by, you some of the great kind of thinkers of the day or certainly of this movement But yeah, he definitely was kind of the most mediocre of the bunch. big do G for sure. Some of the experiments you carried out Yeah, tellell us about the apples. I know you like the apples business. Yeah, I do. I love a jape involving apples. he'd carry out these these kind of social experiments on his daughters and one of them is kind of referred to as the drama of the Apple. And this is where he was trying to test he thought that women should be selfless and obedient and kind of meek and mild. and he was trying to test his daughter's obedience by leaving prohibited apples full of kind of Garden of Eden metaphorical symbolic significance there So he'd leave them out where his daughters could see them. Anna, so this is Louis Ma M Allcot's oldest sister on whom Meg is based, she was, you know, the perfect woman. she didn't touch the prohibited apples. whereereas Louisa went in and, you know, ate herself silly Naughty, naughty girl You know, this was to prove that Louisa was kind of less obedient and more headstrong than she ought to be. Some things I've read say that he was kind of in spite of being utterly erranged he was on the whole a loving parent Loving in his own way, I think. Loving in his own way. He's useless because he doesn't make any money at all. Yeah. And he basically they live on charity effectively of his friends to his family and whatnot He sets up a kind of educational school, doesn't he Yeah, It's very alternative. It's kind of like the Waldorf School of its day or something like Steiner schoolchool or something. Yeah. and his daughters went there. Yeah. And in some ways very admirable. So for example, I mentioned they were abolitionists. so they get it becomes very controversial because they basically have a mixed race child at the school And lots of people say oh, this is terrible stuff, educating such a person alongside white children But at the same time He has some unconventional teaching methods. So did you see this thing about how he would lie down or he'd do gymnastics to teach people how to read so you basically can taght your body into the shape of the letters of the alphabet But also, this is what Jo's father does in the book to teach her nephew and niece how to read. So you like lie on the ground and you do the letter A or whatever. In the book, it describes them lying on the ground to act out of W. Yeah, I think it'd be very difficult to act out of a W. You don't have enough. I'd struggle to act out of Wou. Surely how do some sort of a worm but freees yourself in the act of doing the worm. Or an N Something how How'd you do that? Really tough I think you need help for sure. Yeah, I think it's difficult. For this and you know you know, his attitude to abolitionism and also because he was very open with the children in ways at the time were considered kind of outrageous. Like he'd speak about circumcision and and things like that insane. Why would you if you've got four girls, why would you be giving them lectures about circumcision? Well I mean also it wasn't just the four girls, it was a classroom f of like six year old children. But because of this, The school was shut down and the girls were educated at home. And then he sets up a commune. Sabby, I'm gonna come out say, if you're going set up a commune Don't call it frruitlands. I know. I know name for a commun. Terrible name. I suppose it's meant to sound all kind of Garden of Eding and lovely or whatever. But so he sets this up in eighteen forty three. by eighteen forty four, it's done. it's gone. And this was meant to be a progressive utopian commune. It's interesting because it was considered like an experiment and in littleittle womomen The word experiment is used a lot. The girls are constantly experimenting with their moral codes, I guess. But it promoted veganism. and no animal labor, no property ownership. So it's very much ahead of its time Ipect maybe you wouldn't have been a fan of living at fruitfies. It's a bit Zach Polansky for me to be honest. Yeah, the veganism would not sit well with you. No animal labour, I mean, I'm all in favor of animal labour. I love animal labour. But as with so many of these kind of utopian ideals or dreams, it's shut down because of internal feuding terrible living conditions. Yeah, That's always the way. Louisisea Met Alcott humorously referred to it as Apple slump But I think at the end of the novel, the Marches are kind of living in close proximity and they come together once a year to pick apples and be happy and share break bread There is something of that in the is in this experiment. I think two things. I think one, the March family themselves, the girls as they're growing up There's a sense of them creating almost a little commune of their own. Yeah. This a little world of their own that's sealed off from the outside world with its own codes, with its own rules, all of that kind of thing. And then exactly as you say, at the end of the book There's a sense that they are part now of some very happy collective community Yeah know, there's a school, theres all they're all sort of laughing and gambling in the fields together and all this sort of thing. Yeah And also because it's almost as though the girls that do have their time going out into the world, they come home and they cut off the outside world and they live in this little sort of female paradise or whatever it may be. But this brings us to another major influence from Alcot's own life in the book. And this is her mother She is called Aba Me Alcot and she is the inspiration for Marmi. although interestingly in later editions Mami was made quite kind of tall and genteel and slim, but the original Mammi in the book was kind of plump and homely, but they wanted to make her more feminine, I guess. Right And I think she sounds like a wonderful woman. I'm going to betray my hand in the book Momy is very boring I think She just turns everything into a moral lesson. I think one of the real low points in the book is when the girls do this lovely thing where they come home and they tell And this is where they tell their sisters about something interesting that happened to them during the day. And it's Mommy's turn to tell. and she kind of tells this thinly veiled moralistic story in which all the girls they do something better and they accept that they're lot and they're happy and they're good. and it's just Dado But Alcott's own mother sounds wonderful. She encouraged Louisea's kind of more imaginative side and she encouraged her to write and read widely and She would read them all very romantic stories about kind of witchcraft, a far cry from realism. And she was supposed to have been loving and sympathetic and Louisa adored her. She dedicated many of her books to her and She was devoted to her and stayed with her until until the end of her mother's life But on the issue of Louisa, so Louisa is the second daughter, as Joe is in the book. and she is sort of cast, the role that she's given is to be the difficult daughter, headstrong, impetuous, tomboyish They called her topsy turvy Exactly. Topsy Turvy. So she's turning the world upside down. Eating apples. She's not exactly. unnecessarily eating apples. She's behaving in an unconventional way And Louisa clearly struggles with that a bit because she while she's challenging the expectations of her elders. At the same time, she wants them to, you know, she craves their approval and their love and stuff, as people so often do. And didn't she write that her great ambition in life was not to be a great writer but to be a good daughter. And that's very Joe, this like tension between wanting to go out and write and be independent and kind of the tug of home and family and duty. And she did spend a lot of her life trying to earn money for her family essentially because her father was so useless. So she published poems, stories, essays, but she also worked as a domestic servant for a while and would sew to earn money to seemam stressed And she volunteered as a nurse in the civil. Yes for the union. this is kind of the great the only really bold thing I would say that she did in her life and the only time that she really left home H but it didn't last long, did it? She went bad luck. she got typhoid almost straight away, six weeks and was sent back home again. and actually she never recovered from the typhoid that she got her health was blighted afterwards rather like Beth's health. is blighted by her. scarar fever But she ends up writing that inspires her to write her first really successful book, which is Hospital skketches which was eighteen sixty three. She's one of these people who is just a born writer. She loves reading. She wrote plays and stories when she was little and she never stops when she grows up. what her real interest It's in It' something we've already done on this show, which is sensation fiction, like Wilkie Collins' style, Woman in white style, Adventure stories and thrillers stories about witches and pirates and all of this, which Jo is interested in in the book. Instinctively, this is what Joe writes all of her life.es her sisters, the plays she writes it's all kind of poison and vengeance and incest and It's a sort of tragedy, I think, both for Louisa and indeed for Joe that its this is frowned upon And people say, Ohh gosh, this is very beneath you. You should be writing impving stories. The funny thing is that she writes a lot of these stories under these insane pseudonyms, Norloom So Minerva Moody, which is one of the names shes is such a JK Rlling. I was about to say that. They are such Harry Potter names. Aren't they? I mean, Minerva Moody? Well, there's Mad Eye Moody, isn't it? And Minerva McGonagall. Oh my God Yeah. It's basically like they got together and had a daughter. We've worked it out. This is like the Da Vinci code at the heart of Harry Potter books What about this one? Aranthy Bluggage. Brilliant. That's a brilliant name. Tribulation periwinkle. That's very Dickens though, isn't it It's tribulation periwink. Arath the bluggage, I'm going to use that, I think check into tell under under that name. You should you should start writing some really left wing pieces about Oh my piece of L left wing taby. what are you saying? Let's get into how she writes littleittle W women. It's like she writes that because she has a burning desire to write it. She's actually kind of pressured into writing it. So in september eighteen sixty seven, her publisher, Thomas Nyiles encourages her to write a girl' story. And these were very popular at the time. They're kind of moralistic stories intended to bridge the gap between childhood and womanhood and they encourage obedience and marriage rather than independence And as this nineteenth century critic, Edward Salmon wrote They were meant and you mentioned this earlier, you know, about basically feeding young women with kind of the morals that they need for later life. So he said they were intended to provide the mental food for the future wives and mothers. So right from the outset, this moralistic allegorical kind of framework is woven into this woman and that bleeds through for me anyway on every page.. And here's the surprising thing about it. Louisa Maylcott didn't really want to do it She actually said at the time, and I quote, I don't enjoy this sort of thing. I never liked girls or knew many except my sisters But our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it. And she's effectively writing it U dress. I mean, this is Really, really surprising write to this book under durus to please her father who as we already said, I think is don I don't approve of him at all Her father wants to get this Boke's publishing company to publish his own book second rate transcendentalist essays. Yeah. her father basically says to her, this is unbelievable. He actually says this explicitly, They want a book of two hundred pages or more. He obviously wishes to become your publisher as well as mine. Yeah, crucially as well as mine. Write this book And then hopefully I'll get a book deal out of it. Yeah, exactly. The thing is though, she had actually been planning to write for a while a satirical novel about her familiess hardships and her father's kind of oddities and these visions that he claimed to have had It was to be called the pathetic family or the Cost of an idea or the Fallaor Knights, The Fallaor Kights. That's what I'll call my future autobiography, I think. But instead, you, under pressure from her father, she turned this idea into the book that her publisher had asked for But she shifts the vision from her father so she sends the father in the book off to the Civil War. He doesn't really have a big part to play, certainly in the first half of the book shifts the focus onto herself and her sisters And so the focus is really sisterhood and the bond between the daughters and their mother and it's kind of this little female community that they have. But her plan originally is only to take the family through onene year. And so in June eighteen sixty eight, she sent her publisher Niles the first twelve and both acknowledged right from the offset that they were very dull Surely not. This is another of the funny details about the book. So basically when I was about twelve chapters in, I remember I said to you, Tubby This is so boring. Nothing happens. And the mad thing is that Louisasona Mela herself agrees And yeah, I know it's really boring so far But anyway, she keeps going She finishes the story halfway through the edition that we have. So she thinks like it's all done and finished with the return of Mr. March to the family home and they have this lovely very jolly family reunion. But Nle says Could I get a little bit more from you? like maybe one more chapter just kind of looking into the girls future, you know, what might happen to them Yeah So she writes this extra chapter in which the oldest sister Meg gets engaged to the dullest man in America, their next door neighbor John. And kind of there's the promise that there might be more to come. So she actually says something like, and should this you know book sell well You know, you'll hear more about the March family and their fortunes. And Niles was delighted Yes, he said Well he was he basically wanted us to do more because the first part comes out in October, eighteen sixty eight It is a huge success and completely overshadows her father's long anticipated book transcendentalist essays. But as we will see, he uses that to his advantage later on, but he does. We'll get to that. we'll get to that. He does. and crazily Some people complained that it was too licentious because basically there's a scene in which put on plays at Christmas High spirited plays and Jo does Joe dress up as a boy? is that would the issue? Joe dresses up as a boy and she rescues does she rescue Meg from the kind of who's a princess from the Tower and the illusion is kind of o Joe is her sister's lover and it really This is a wholesome book at the best of times, but this is one of the most wholesome scenes in a very wholesome book. so it's absolutely insane. The people complained, ye. Yeah, the people complained and then Nil wrote to Louise Melcott. Why will people be so very good? And this is slightly what I think about the whole book. So anyway, it's a hit, despite the fact that Sundaychool librarians didn't like this business about Joe dressing up as a bloke Alcot then starts on the second half She writes like a steam engine, we are told, so she writes a chapter a day. She doesn't think it'll do as well as the first bit, but she's amazed because in the first month, so April in eighteen sixty nine, the second half is published. They sell thirteen thousand copies in the first month By the end of eighteen sixty nine, she has made a lot of money in royalties eight thousand five hundred dollars. So that could be what more than two hundred thousand dollars, I think, in today's money. Yeah. sudenly The fortunes of her family, which was always really struggling to stay above the poverty line are completely transformed and her shameless father now goes around introducing herself to everybody as the father of littleittle women. Once again, he's taking all the credit for it. He's a great man So what's gone into the book, Tabby? Be there's a lot of different influences aren't there? She Louisa Melcott was extremely well read She loved, for example, some other people we've talked about on this show. Yeah Bronty sisters. She loves the Broni. She loves Elizabeth Gaskell. She loves Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte, which we spoke about in our very first episode In Bothering Heights. Yeah. She loves Mary Walstoncraft, who is the mother of Mary Shelley So that's interesting. so many of these the female writers that we've done on this show are great readers themselves. So this is also true of Louise Mayela. and she actually saw herself and her family as kind of as the American Bronte family. and that's kind of interesting. And you can sort of see that overbearing intellectual father, a group of very close sisters But then there's another major influence and this is the kind of allegorical stories that Bronson would read to his daughters when they were young And these kind of they're full of moral lessons and there's one in particular that has huge influence and it's all over the book. And this is Bunan's Pilgrim's prorogress. Yeah, so that was published in the seventeenth century It's arguably I mean, nobody reads it now. Have you ever tried to read it Abby? sureurely not. No, I haven't. I haven't even. I mean, I've kind of looked at it and I just thought I could live for a million years and I'd never read this book. But it was hugely influential It is one of the sort of four or five most influential books ever written in English. Give us so many phrases so many concepts. so the idea of a vanity fair comes from Yes, because it's the stages, isn't it? There's something you kind of likeike it's the opposite almost of kind of Dante's infernal or something. like you have em different stages of temptation, isn't it? So the early chapters of littleittle womomen be that As you say, Vanity Fair when Meg goes to a ball and is tempted by lovely things and her own pretiness. That is based on a chapter in Pilgr's. Exactly so. So Pilgrim's fogcus is the story of a bloc called Christian who advances through a series of trials and temptations to get to the celestial city. And actually Little women, you know, we mentioned that the the reason why Hel thought the first twelve chapters has she thought herself that they were dull. One of the reasons they're so dull is they're so obviously modeled on pilgrims progress. The very first chapter is called Playing Pilgrims. and basically you plod through a series of trials and tribulations in which the girls have to be charitable and kind and self denying and self effacing. and all of these kinds of things. So that's obviously a colossal influence. You know, if I got invited over to a friend's house when I was little to play Pilgrim's progress, I would think very poorly of that. Today, your charity Tmorrow your selflessness What about like swords and like Harry Potter and dragons and stuff. When I went to friends' houses when I was maybe eight There was a lot of throwing stuff. Did you play little women? surely you did? You'd host little tea parties and wear little aprons and No, absolutely not. The single worst thing that ever happened actually was Germally when people came to my house and then I took the opportunity to behave incredibly badly I remember one time, I can't believe I'm just telling the storyies ab. I remember one time my friend and I decided that we would get loads of mud and smear it over my parents' car So could then slide down off the roof along the windscreen. Yeah, that's classic stuff. and use it as a slide. and I can I cannot describe how cross my parents were. They were Unbelievably cross. Big improvement though on Pilgrim' progress. Well there must be some lesson here. I don't know, this is what's maybe the person I am prerecisely because I wasn't having these this improving kind of, parental education Anyway, there this pilg is progress There's the domestic novels of the mid nineteenth century. so these are They're very sentimental. It's all about women, sisterly affection, they're very warm. So Elaine Showwalter, who wrote the introduction to the version ofittle Women that I was reading, she says that they emphasize images of an idemic women's culture And Nathaniel Hawthorne, so the famous writer of the Scarlet Letter, was very, very rude about these, and he called the women who wrote them the scribbling womomen, which is very patronising. is patronising. becausecause these domestic novels, they kind of encapsulate conflict that these and coming kind of female writer' face between their artistic ambitions, their private feminine roles And so they never considered them to be kind of great arts of literature. They didn't see themselves as numbered among the ranks of the great male writers of the day And so they always justified what was on the whole considered to be pretty middling artistically as you know, they were born of a financial need And this is what Jo later does with the sensation novels that she writes or stories that she writes. She writes them to help her family. That's what she says isn't it? One other influence actually Dickens. So Dickens runs through this and they found their own version of the Pickweay club, don't? which is the club that they allow Laorie as the sort of he's the sort of honoraryirl Oh. it's a sweeten. actually in the film it's very sweet when Timothy Chhallane burst out from B clothes. They vote him in Yeah. They vote him into the club And Alcott love Dickens. so that explains that. Although a big difference between Alcot and Dickens Dickens' style of course, is very florid and very ornate. Alcot style is very, very direct and simple, isn't it? It's quite unadorned. There's not much metaphor. The very first edition was very, very American and very New England. It had lots of sort of New England slang and New England idioms and stuff like that. We spoke last week about how PG Woodhouse loved slang. Louisa May Alcott loved American idioms and you can see that in kind of her own diary entries, her own journals. And in the way that Jo speaks, part of the way that she makes Jo more masculine is that she's constantly using slang. and idioms and her sisters always telling her off of this. I like that. I think that's a good detail. What's interesting about this is that this is a point in American literary history, influenced by writers like Ralph Woodor Emerson Writers are trying to break away from European particularly English models and to find their own distinctly kind of American voice. And actually there's a scene in the book where a load of English people turn up and they play croquet And the English cheat is unbelievable that Lady is Amer She's massively let herself down with this She has and she also on a trip to England, she wrote back and said everything was very slow and boring and sedate and and very unyankee whichich I take is a compliment. Yeah, quite rightly. The big thing, of course about the style is that it's so moralistic. Both Mari and the narrator They write constantly with a kind of moralizing hat, don't they And the fact that the narrator, she intervenes sometimes, she'll say to you like, oh, I'm telling you a tale of this lovely family. It's a little bit like how in the ryme of ancient Mariner, the Mariner has a point that he's trying to make. You know, he's trying to say like it's a warning. Sometimes the intervention of the narrator in this is like, just to remind you, this is a moral tale and I'm teaching you lessons as we go through this lovely little family and That element of it is really what ruins it for me, the relentless moral lighting, like Mommy, especially, you know, saying things like Our road is before us and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistates, the peace which is a true celestial city. Yeah There's a lot of telling You know, she doesn't really let you find out people are like or you know by kind of implying or showing. She actively tells you what the sisters are like right from the get go and then feeds into those stereotypes for the rest of the book along their journey to kind of moral enlightenment. Let's talk about the sisters. So you' got Mr. and Mrs. March. they're basically very boring. Mr. March is offstage. We don't really find out that much about him. He barely appears in the book at all. Mrs. March is saintly kind. At one point she says that she used to have a bad temper but that she has conquered it through her tremendous use of the pilgrim's progress kind of inspiration. The one interesting thing about that is is that people said that Louis Met Alcott's mother, Abber, had a very bad temper And that's who Louisa inherited it from. So that's obviously drawn from her own life And so the sisters, take us through the sisters, Tabby. So these are based on Larisa May Alcourt's own sisters and you know, this sisterhood, this of little female paradise is very much to the heart of the book. and this is also what makes it kind of Y A is it puts the reader in the minds of these young women and struggles and stuff. It doesn't talk down. to the young readers, female readers who are reading it. So it's something very new in this way. and Simone de Beauvois for instance, was a massive fan of it for this reason because she said that she saw a glimpse of her future self in Joe So interesting isn't it? Because I think if you're a young woman reading this book or well probably a teenager, I suppose you can find one you can certainly find aspects of yourself in one of the sisters, surely Definitely, this is the thing. They're f different facets of femininity. I would say Specifically nineteenth century feminity. But there are also elements of it that I think anyone of any age can kind of relate to about growing up. I'm curious about which one you empathize with most. I had my own views about. Oh I'm frightened about the answer to this actually. I had a really long dark Kight of the soul. Benay we'll get there. But let's start with kind of the least significant sister. and this is Beth or Elizabeth So she is rosy, smooth haired, bright eyed, she's thirteen, she's very shy, she's timid, and she has a peaceful expression And she's based on Louisa May Alcott's sister, Lizzy, who died when she was twenty two And she is arguably not particularly interesting, I would say. She's just very sweet She's very kind. She loves music Yeah. She, you know, has she she's never wanted to get in people's way or anything like that and The most significant thing about her really, there are two things is that she is a way of showing whether or not other characters are kind and whether or not they pay her attention and a good to her and also her death which is a massive turning point in Jo's life and Joe's development. She's a saint, isn't she? She's basically a saint. But Her death is slow and sweet and sad And then we get to Meg And Meg is the pretty one. She's the most feminine one. She's based on Louisise M Allcot's sister Anna, who was an inspiring actress. Hence why Meg loves to act in the book. And she's kind of the most Sort of stereotypical woman of the bunch. She's beautiful, she's feminine, she likes society, she loves pretty things. She wants to be a lady, doesn't she? She wants to be a lady. She overcomes this by marrying a poor man, but she does get married you know young and the rest of the book, the second half of the book is basically about her domestic travails as she learns to become the perfect wife and mother Yeah She wants to be a good wife and mother So that's Meg. Then there's Amy. So Amy, Florence Pgh in the film, she actually in reality doesn't look anything like Florence Pgh. She is sort of slender and pale and a little bit ethereal. She's angelic looking. But Amy is fun, isn't she? She's a little bit as a child, she's a bit spoiled, She's a bit selfish, She's a bit of a little brat Yeah She She's a laugh She thinks she's the most important kind of person in every room, but you're right. For me, she's the most kind of realistic of the sisters because she's many things at one go. If you were to say, this is a certain type of woman, this is a certain type of woman, Amy is less easy perhaps to pigeonhole. You know the single most confusing thing about this whole book for me. When Ill and I read it the first time when I was even and this time as well I had to look it up was the instident with the Limes. ' this is where Amy is desperate to collect limes at school because it's a like a sign of popularity. I didn't know what limes were. and then I looked it up These are literally pickled limes that they keep in their desks. Who takes pickled limes to school? Read a good description of Amy, you clearly see her as yourself, do you? Amy's fantastic. Yeah. A you're not even denying it. You're not even denying it. Amy gets the guy as well as we'll see. anyyway, let's get to Joe. Joe is that heart. She is the absolute central character. She's a tomboy. clelever she's Agular She's described as being like a cult because she doesn't know what to do with her long limbs. that's interesting because thats must be one of the first times in literature peopleople have used that expression that people always use about youngult just cult like. don't they don't know what to do with their body which is absolutely true. It's what fourteen to fifteen year olds areike. But more fourteen, fifteen year old boys, I think. Yes. And she's often described in quite a boyish. way She is, you know, her eyes we're told are fierce and funny, thoughtful. She is tempered. She is clumsy She's very unladylike. She's not interested in being a lady or in kind of womanly things She likes boys liming. At one point, she cuts all her hair So she has a kind of boyish You see strains of the woman that Joe will ultimately become because she does end up being very much a woman and not the soul of a boy trapped in the body of a woman. att one point she says which Louisa May Alcott actually said as well that She felt that she had been born at a woman, but she should have been a boy. But she has vanities and after Joe cuts all of her hair off, she kind of cries herself to sleep So she's a woman of contradictions like Louisa May Allcott, I would say. I mean, you said you thought Amy was the most realized character. I think Joe is a pretty well realized character. I think she's a complicated person who is torn in different ways. You know, she's not a caricature, she's not simple She wants to be different things at on. She wants to be a tomboy But also she does't want to be a woman, I think. Yeah, the most relatable, I think actually strikingly modern passages of this book are the bits when Joe is struggling with who she is as she's growing up and she's just battling grief. So yeah, I think that's a fair point. Again, a very early example, perhaps the earliest in fiction of the idea that a teenager has to who they are. Yeah, that's very true. That's not preordained that they have to fight, you know, which we're also familiar with having been teenagers, who what how are you going to dress? who are you going to be? who you going to hang around with? what's your niche in the world Joe is wrestling with this in a way that the others perhaps aren't. So it's a new kind of kind of buildings roam in this, the fact that it's a coming of age story, but it's addressing a different phase of life to most coming of age stories. But then the other character, who she's very, very close to is Laurie. And Laurie also is someone that struggles with himself. He struggles with The fact that his personal ambitions to be a great musician contradicts what he ought to be as a good Victorian man, you know stepping into his grandfather's footsteps, taking on the family business. The fact he has lots of money, he's very lazy. But he adores Joe and I think they have a lovely relationship because he likes Jo for just who she is, this kind of tomboyish clumsy girl and Joe loves Laorie because as a good friend but also because she kind of wants him to be more than he you know might be given that he's so lazy and has a weakness for kind of pleasure. They're great companions, they're great comrades, they tease each other say Unusually in this book, which is otherwise very, as you said, very wholesome They do have kind of great banter. They have great banter. Yeah. Yeah. The expectation you have as a reader when you're about a third of the way through is Clearly they're going to end up together Because they are so well suited. There's something in this as well, because I think that it's almost as though Joe and Laurie at certain points, it's like they swap genders. so they both give up their full masculine feminine name, for instance. Oh yeah, they do. Yeah. He's very sensitive and sensual, Laurie. And in the original edition, he was very feminine, physically. He had these big dark eyes, He's very slender, had thin hands And he was shorter than Joe. And then the editors came in and they said, No he has to be taller than Joe and he has to be more American. Increased the size of his hands. Yeah, he has to have bigger hands But then we're constantly told that he and Joe kind of wouldn't be a good match because they're both too fiery and they're both too passionate So whether or not they end up together is kind of when you go from book one to book two, that's the thing that I was wondering more than anything else. And I was hoping, hoping that they would But whether they do or do not, I guess we'll have to find out after the break Evening by his remorse Buy a new car I'll be booo Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even' have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyers' rejoice I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carbana. Limitations exlusions may apply Sior sevay return policy, cararbana d I'm Arch Manning. I'm Madison Skinner, I'mv Yovich. I'm D Coria Moore. want to train like a Red Bowl athlete. Tell us your fitness goals this summer to enter the Red Bull Athlete challenge. You'll get to try each of our workouts for a chance to win an ultimate Red Bull experience. They you have what it takes So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to sixty percent off brands like Rag and Bone, Levis, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack Welcome back, everybody to the Book Club. So we were talking about the romance between Laorie and Joe Amy, what do you make of the romance betweenine Lauria? You're saying that, like it's like an indictment in my character, but it's a great thing. Amy the most interesting character in the book. and tasting clothes. super f She gets the guy. And why does she get the guy? Because when Laorie proposes to Joe, in a scene that I actually find Quite Moving, Joe turns him down. And this is partly because she fears losing her independence. she sees him as a brother, but I'm just going to read a little bit of this section out because it is genuinely quite heartbreaking. Are you doing both voices? Yeah, I am Go then. Gf. No, Teddy, please don't. I will and you must hear me. It's no use, Joe. We've got to have it out and the sooner the better for both of us. I've loved you ever since I've known you, Joe. Couldn't help it. You've been so good to me I've tried to show it, but you wouldn't let me. Now I'm going to make you hear and give me an answer for I can't go on so any longer I wanted to save you this. I thought you'd understand, began Jo, finding it a great deal harder than she expected. Oh, Teddy, I'm so sorry, so desperately sorry. I could kill myself if it would do any good. You know it's impossible for people to make themselves love other people if they don't cried Joe, inelegantly but remorsefully, as she softly patted his shoulder They do sometimes, said a muffled voice from the post I don't believe it's the right sort of love and I'd rather not try it was the decided answer. See, I think that's very modern. that really captures that experience for anyone who's gone through it on either side, I think. Firston says you buttle the accents, which just s. No, I thought that you know, when I do the accents Yeah, it becomes you know, a comedic edge whereas I really wanted to capture the poignancy there of what is quite a heartbreaking scene. And the reason Joe does that, turns down Laoram and is A, she doesn't love him the right way as she says, but also because at this stage in her life when she's still kind of a teenager she fears that He by marrying a wealthy man it'll deprive her of her ambition to be independent and make her own money and become a writer because above all, you know Joe is ambitious and she wants to be independent. And this brings us to quite a big kind of question at the heart of the book, which is female ambition live alongside femininity during this period Well okay, let's just hold Laurie and Joe for a second. I think we should come back to this later on because I they should have ended up together frankly. I totally agree. Now on the issue the female ambition, which is the sort of Part of the reason she turns him down is that she wants to be her own person And she thinks that at this point she thinks they're getting married settling down will deprive her of that freedom I mean, obviously, one of the key themes of the book is What do you do if you're a young woman And how do you find fulfillment in a society that has very, very rigid expectations? for women To some degree, the story of the book is how they go from being daughters into wives and presumably and mothers actually And you could argue, I suppose that Part of the book is them struggling with the idea that they can have to define themselves in relation to a man But they also want to define themselves in relation to each other, other women and just in and of themselves, don't they? And it's interesting just very quickly because from the beginning of part two onwards There are suddenly so many more male characters in the story. And that is the moment in the book when they start becoming women And therefore they have to define themselves in relation to a man in this kind of a world. And I guess Joe grapples with that. She's trying to work out, can she not, maybe? Can she be a spinster? I mean, you could argue that one of the sad things about the book One of the sad chapters in retrospect, maybe not at the time when it seems very moralistic is there's a chapter called Castles in the Air, isn't there? Which is a key chapter because this is when the children as they then really are. are talking about their dreams. So for example, Amy wants to be an artist or Joe wants to be a writer. They both want to be great though. That's the really kind of crucial thing. They both say kind of great or nothing. I want to be remembered. I want to be Cull out to go through the ambitions of the children Beth, the one who dies The Sainty victim She doesn't really have any ambition, does she other than to leave the house? And that's in a way why Louisa May Elcott has to tail her story. Wh she has to cut her off Because there's nowhere for Beth to go as a character She is defined entirely by being The Sainty victim sitting by the hearth And you know, what would you do with her? She has to go, basically. there's the fate that's preordained for, don't you think Yeah, and also there's one point where Joe thinks that Beth seems so low in spirits because she's another with Lorry and she knows deep down that Laurie loves her, Joe. And so she leaves. But actually Beth never has enough passion in her to be in love with anyone. She doesn't have enough passion to want to go out into the world. and quite touching y, she sort of knows that about herself. But in that way, she's like a saintly idealized version of the perfect Victorian woman. She's a Dcenzian woman. That's what she is. She totally is. She's quite Laura Fairly from the woman in White. Then there's Meg Meg also is slightly disappointing is since she's very conventional. We said she wants to be a lady. You're very rude about her husband, John Brooke. You call him the most boring man in America in your notes. He's a nice man. It's just that those passages I found a little bit dull. It's just like long sections about Meg ping with sewing and butons and housework. There is actually one quite touching bit though, in those that I thought about, which is that There's a bit when' shocked by the fact that marriage isn't perfect the minute that she gets married and these cold silences emerge between her and her husband and she kind of sits there and she watches him and they're talking about very dull, awkward things and then she decides to cross the room and speak to him and break the ice kind of thing. I think again, that's quite well observed. It's really well observed. For anyone who's in a relationship, that's very well observed Iin too much Daby. I really am. I think I never break I think there was I think that's one again, one of the maybe the first times in literature where somebody acknowledging that actuallyce you get married, the story doesn't stop. And particularly in this case, a big issue for Meg is that she's had children And her husband is going off and leaving her with the kids. she's putting all her time into the kids And she goes to seek her mother's advice and her mother says, Well, you know, basically you need to have more date nights with your husband. You're neglecting him, ye. Yeah, you need to spend and of course it's all this is the way these things work. It's all the woman's fault and she needs to put more effort into you know, pretitifying herself for her husband or whatever. And when she buys a dress, I mean, it's like, And true, they don't have much money, but I think that her husband at that point rather than saying You know, having a sort of tight clenched mouth and looking like someone' died. I think he should have been like, do you know what, Meg You deserve an nice dress. He's quite condesnding, isn't he, John Brook? Be Whenever she's trying to please him or something, it' always say, he sat her on his knee and he said, o, well done little lady order. Yeah. And he goes through her account books as though it's like it's like cosplay accounting S me a little purse. What have you got today Any. So then we get to Amy Yeah, you're not going to invite them one of your dinner parties, are you? No, I don't think so. I'd invite Amy to my dinner parties W you? Yeah. love Ay. abute then Okay, so Amy's great ambition at this point is to become a successful artist and she says I want to be great or nothing. But the more that she goes out into the world and she does, unlike the other sisters, she really does go out into the world. She travels, she goes around Europe. The more time that she spends in society, the more ladylike she becomes, the more that she feels her art is inferior and particularly, which is very self knowing, when she looks upon the work of kind of the great European masters, especially Michelangelo, She realizes that she's not good enough be great And so she says, Well, in order to make my way in the world, I will marry a wealthy man And the implication there could be interpreted as o genius requires that you know, female artists have to sacrificed their femininity in order to be great. They have to be masculine to be geniuses or nothing. I don't think that's entirely true. I think that's quite self knowing from Amy. You know, if you' ever had that where you think I remember I sort of remember thinking like, oh, what's the point in playing like sport every day? If I'm never I'm never going to be good. I'm never going to be amazing. I'm never going to be like that's not the point of play sport. I can't believe you missed the point of sports No, but I get what she means. You ever get that thing where you're like, well, if I'm not going to be the best, like why bother? So she carves out a new path herself. She thinks I'm going to marry myself a wealthy husband. Jo, her dream is to be a great writer and actually She slightly pulls away from that, doesnn't she in the book? She doesn't really become a great writer, which is sad And actually That's true. I mean, all the girls have to compromise on their dreams They are fiery, passionate, interesting people. perhaps all a bit more boring by the end of the book? you say do you think that's true? I think so, because the thing that's kind of hammered home the whole way through is those traits of theirs present in the book of their moral failings, whether they are, they have bad tempers or they're competitive or you know they're passionate about something. They're constantly encouraged to suppress those and be better people for it. And it makes them less interesting. And it is true that all of their castles in the air that they speak about, None of them ever live out those dreams, but they do live out different versions of those. But another thing that Joe massively compromises on is the writing itself and a huge tension at the heart of her story is whether or not She can be a great artist, a great writer, but also make money for her family. and this is something that Louise M Alcott struggled with her whole life as well. She was always torn between wanting to make money for her family and provide for them and write works of real literary merit. And I think on the whole for her, economic stimulus was probably greater. So in her teens, she wrote, I will do something by and by, don't care what, teach, so act, write anything to help the family, and I'll be rich and famous and happy before I die. I think this is quite well observed. I think people The idea that most people when they're in any walk of life. that they're only you know, you can divide them into the sheep and the goats, peopleeople are only doing it for the money, and people are only doing it for artistic expression Yes, obviously, I' massively simplistic. Most people are wrestling with multiple different motivations. Definitely. And they are, you know, it's a compromise between those two things And Joe actually does find something she's good at. She likes doing pays well, which is this sensation fiction So we talked about this in the Wan and white Sensation fiction massively takes off In the eighteen fifties and eighteen sixties in Britain and then in America It's seen as I mean you describe it in the notes as the romanticy of the day. You're just you're softening people up for the People's identities is being stolen. it's kidnapping U Bigam mous marriages, conspiracies, all of this sort of thing, very exciting Very glamorous extxtremely popular And Joe in the book, as Louisa Mayelcoott, in real life looves doing it and is really good at it. And then She meets the worst person in the world Professor Friedrich Beayer This incredible hate him. I do. I think he's awful I thinkful. And in the film, the Greta Gerwig film I mean, you and Alia, a producer. Yeah, we were swooning. You were absolutely swooning. You were shaming yourselves before the recording getting so excited about the blake you played Fedrich Ber Now he really is my type, the guy in the film, not in the book Yeahah But In the book, he's like about eighty years older than Joe Yeah, his physically very own prepossessing. And he's and worst of all He's a massive bore Yeah, reminds me of Dracula. from the Gramstokeer. Dracula is much more interesting.acula love Dracula would love a sensation novel. I mean, he's kind, that's hammered home but he basically says to Joe, Joe feels really ashamed about writing these sensation novels as it is. And then Friedrich works out that Joe's writing these and he says to her, you know, do the right thing and write from the heart. So he says, you should be writing from life from the depths of your soul. There is nothing in here of the woman that I am privileged to know. i. e., don't write from your imagination. Write only what you know to be true from your real life It's realism or nothing. Taby imagine, you went on a date with a bloke and he found out what you were doing and he said in his German accent, Oh, Tabby, you are much better than this. You are letting yourself down. you' not this is not good. No second aate, for sure. Definitely not. So condescending to her. Yeah to say this is beneath you and all of this sort of thing But it works because Joe does stop writing for a while. And the interesting thing is that Louisise M Alcott said of Little Woman once it was published. It's not a bit sensational, but simple and true. For we really lived most of it as if she thinks that You know, this is the proper thing that she ought to be doing. Even though she said my natural inclination is for the lurred style And even after Little Woman was published, you know money did continue to be a massive incentive for her She said, I do not like writing moral tales for the young. I do it because it it pays well. as though. But isn't that the fantastic irony that she's writing moralistic stories about, you know, money iss not the be all and end all in life, you know kindness is all She's writing them against her better judgment for money But this is the thing. I feel like in writing littleittle women that she didn't really want to write it, the fact it doesn't really reflect much of what she thought about life and marriage and a woman's role. I feel like it's a book that's so full of contradictions and the real weaknesses of it are the stuff that she was almost forced to do against her will. And this is the kind of the sentimentality of it, the piet of it. And this is a big question, I think You know, that people at a criticism that people often fling at little women, those that, you know, don't love it because it is beloved is that is littleittle womoman just a code force term for sentimentality and female party? And I think that the gender of the reader has traditionally had a lot to do with your interpretation of that. Male critics and male readers have historically been very down on littleittle women Yeah. They have not been interested in it. You mentioned Elaine Shwalter's essay about it. I mean, she says in that essay This is a book that was colossally influential on the American imagination. you know, from the point of its publication in the midle late nineteenth century, all the way through probably to the middle of the twentieth century, But only on half of the American population And the other half just laughed at it and sneered at it or were totally indifferent to it. Yeah. And yet You know what? I actually quite like the sentimentality. I do like that and I think We are primed as twenty first century readers to laugh at that and to ironize it and to undermine it and to scoff. too inhabit the world of those first readers. they would have read the stuff like when Beth dies or when the father returns and says Here's another Christmas present for the March family. orr I know you'll laugh at me about this Tabby because you reallyready did when we discussed this. The bit where Laorie and Amy finally get together and he proposes on the rowing boat. I find all that. Quite, quite moving In a way, we're bellying the traditional kind of roles expectations of male and female ready here because I think there are parts of it that are so well wrought and so insightful and they really do appeal to me because I can relate to them as someone that's gone from girlhood to womanhood. And she really gets that, you know, be that Meg's relationship and the advice that her mother gives her in order to overcome her own pride, whether that's The fact that, you know Jo is lonely and she says at one point, you know, your love used to be enough, but it's not anymore. or Lauri's proposal, all these things, there are parts of it. I'm like God, that is so apt, That's so true. But then and I do actually like the domesticity of it as well. I like the kind of female community they build for themselves. But the way that the character is just so irritatingly obsessed with their morality all the time constantly comes back and they're intent on self sacrifice and perfection. And I think that the moral growth of the sisters throughout the book, I think that's unrealistic I don't think people just manage to overcome their flaws like that. I think it's a constant back and forth all your life. Yeah. I think that's a slightly like mythologized version of female piety that slightly irritates me. And the way that these moral lessons are woven into so many scenes is a massive Bzzkill You don't like the bit when they're playing game. they're outside having great laugh in the countryside. They're saying isn't it lovely the countside lovely. Yeah lovely day, sun shining, We're having a great time. There's a lovelier country even than that, where we shall go by and by when we're good enough See, you don't like that and actually because I'm a massive f sponge I quite like that. I thought that was quite sweet. But there's a massive exception to this sentimental like to my slight begrudgement of the sentimentality, and that is Beth's death. I think this is genuinely so moving. Beth's growing knowledge of it, her steady acceptance of it, her self knowledge, She's far more docile than her sisters. and the way that she describes that It's so tender And then Jo's grief as well, I think could only have been written by a woman who had lost her sister as Louis Ma Elcott had in losing her sister Lizzie. I mean, I could have wept reading those passages and the way that Jo struggles with herself after Beth's death, you know, wanting to be good, but not able to overcome this pain inside her But you made the point, didnn't you that there's a sort of tension at the heart of littleittle women the I mean, I think there is a tension between the Very acute as it were realistic observations contradictions of human emotion and the way that we respond to things on the one hand And then the other hand is the fact that her publisher and her dad and her training. pushing her to make it a moralizing U sort of very homespun, wholesome tale of these paragans of virtue. There's a constant tension never resolved all through the book between the realism and then the sort of the Christian vision, I suppose. That's an instability that actually, I think is quite quuite fun. and makes it quite interesting because Even the marriages, you know, Beth obviously marries sorry, Beth doesn't marry anybody. She marrieses God. Yeah Meg Mare is Mr. Boring Laur' Tutor. I mean, who cares about that? That's the most boring marriage in history and you wouldn't have them to a dinner party because they're just so pious and yeah, they'd be a lot of Dear wouldn Yeah, exactly. Well done little girl. You know that Now Amy's marriage So I already gave it away in a Yeah know, I let myself down and I told everybody that Amy marries Laorie Yeah, you love this I think they'd be a nice couple I think I like I think it's quite sweet how they get together and him proposing in the rowing boat and stuff I do think he's married the wrong sister. No question. should that. We all know this to be true. I don't really like it. In fact this was bit the part of the book I absolutely hateated. And when I used to watch the Winona Ryer movie, I would stop before Christian Bale got together with Amy. You would or you just start watching. That's pretty boy, you'd re watchatched the film but only up to that point. Well, that's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous behavior. It's my reality. It It happens too quickly. They fall in love in like five minutes. and over the course of those five minutes, Laorie is constantly thinking to himself, well, if I can't have the sister that I love, I'll take the, you know the second best one. Yeah. But I suppose it's presented as a happy marriage because you know Amy is a better person by this point. She's as selfish. Yes, she's given up her ambitions, but she's chosen love over money, although it's helpful that it comes with a big dollop of oney. Laurie's money. Yeah.. And they're both a laugh, aren't they? They're a fun. Yeah, they both they're both a laugh. You would have them over. But Joe and Laurie would have been a better couple. I think what she should have done is is that she should have let Joe have her kind of come to God moment where she realizes that because Jo has a not Jo does not have the ending that you would expect of her because throughout the book she is protesting her independence, She's saying, I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe She's saying she doesn't want to get married. She wants to walk a different path And then after Beth's death and watching Meg get married and all of this, she realizes that she is lonely and that she wants a different kind of love. She wants to try all sorts of love Yeah. And I think this is probably the moment where she should be like, well, actually all this time, you know, Lauri's been there and he's made for me, but instead She realizes that she's in love with Count Dracula. She realizes that she's in love with Professor Ber, the German professor who she'd met while living in New York and It's really interesting because she ends up, you know marrying him quite sweetly actually. You know, there's quite relatable moments like when she thinks that he's gone and left her and ditched her and she's like, Well, I never cared about him anyway secretly pining. and and she becomes quite and she starts caring about her bonnet and stuff. But it's interesting because Joe's always been this really independent character and yet the presentation of spinsterhood, which you know, Louisisea May Alcott was a spinster is a very negative one It is, and also it's a shame that Joe marry somebody who is so dominant who is much older than her, more worldly, more well traveveled He father, he's much more intellectual, he's a professor, even here has got a title that she cannot possibly aspire to have. She gives up writing the books that she loves, the stories that she loves to write because he tells her they're not good enough. I think it's very hard to read this and I know that lots of different feminist critics have different views about this. Some see him as an authority figure who is smothering her, others say no, no, no, no. hereere's a person who is allowing her to be herself or whatever I think he is massively smothering her And I think This is not the true ending. Louisa May Allcoott. I don't believe it's the ending that she deep down believed in or wanted either, as you say, Joe just goes her own way. I mean, that's the truest I think. The thing that readers wanted at the time. wasas there not an expectation that Jo would marry Laurie, but she didn't want to do that So she said, I will not marry Joe to Lorie because it's too neat, it's too tidy. I won't give Joe you know, such a traditional ending, but then she had all these letters from young women saying please marry off Jo to someone. Please can Joe have a nice happily married ending? And she had pressure from her publishers. And she actually wrote to a friend of hers, you I should't Joe should have ended up a spinster, but after all the pressure I thought I'd give her an ending, so I thought Id put her with an od fellow at least You know someone who's a bit Right And lots of critics now, twentieth century and twenty first century critics, sort of feminist critics or whatever, have seen this as a betrayal. as a portrayal of Joe and of the possibilities of the character I suppose the counter argument would be Jo does end up being fulfilled by this marriage because she opens a school, her husband You know perhaps because he's European or whever, he does take us seriously as an intellectual person whory right. He's not a traditionally masculine American man. No. There' is a very egalitarian marriage as well because Joe says to him,nook I'll only marry you if you let me earn our bread as well alongside you She says I'm to carry my share, Friedrich and help to earn the home Make your mind up to that or I'll never go. And he says, yeah, perfect, fine by me. So they are equals in that sense. And I suppose what you would say would also say to the critics is Louisa May Elcott is never going to give this book the ending that you would want as a critic writing in the nineteen seventies or today or whatever. I mean she's a Victorian writing for a Victorian audience. So it's unrealistic, I suppose to expect Joe to be Howard in a sort of modern feminist way, but I do think I mean, I just hate Professor Bear. I think should have end up with Laurie. I would have been very happy with that because Laurie loves that Joe's wildness and her boyishness and he loved her for who she was. Oh, lovely. There's a claim in the book, isn't there that basically they can't go be together because they're both passionate people Yeah, that's a hrible excuse. bad excuse. I mean, a passionate person generally doesn't want to marry somebody who's passionless No way. Yeah, you want you want Shared passion, shared interest, all that Thanks.reatit advice. Great marital advice there from Savy Briin. But speaking of marriage, what became of Louisa Met Alcot? Did she herself the happy ending that she wrote for her characters? Well, she never did marry, did she? No. She feels an anomalous person, doesn't she? She says, I am more than half persuaded, I'm a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body Be I've fallen in love in my life with so many pretty girls and never know the least with any man So a lot of modern critics say, o, Is this basically, is she basically? was she a lesbian Um or whatever And is that what explains why she stayed on her own all these years? I mean, she also stays on her ownancy because she felt an obligation to her family. She's clearly been crushed to some degree I mean this is massive amateur psychologizing by me. but she's in his shadow. and She supported her sisters. Yeah. I mean, also, I mean, you know, there are so many what ifs here. Is she deep down pining for the sort of ending that Joe got in the end? Does she feel that the kind of the marriage is on offer in that time kind of traditional sort of nineteenth century marriages and not enough to fill her. Who knows? We'll never know the answer to any of these questions. But I think that it is pop psychology, but there's got to be something in that she was so bound to her family. She was very bound to her mother. She nursed her to the very end She took care of her sisters, she took care of her father, and apart from a European tour in eighteen seventy and a couple of trips to New York She spent the last twenty years of her life just living in Boston Ccord nursing her mother. She actually adopted her sister Maay's little daughter, Maay died giving birth to her in Europe and she kind of took her on as her own alongside her sister Anna. Yeah. And then her mother died in eighteen seventy seven and then Louisea's own house, which had been bad ever since she had that nursing stint. She died in Boston on march sixth, eighteen eighty eight two days after her father's death She wrote I've had a lot of troules, so I write jolly tales, which is kind of sad. Oh that is sad. Well it is a jolly tale in some ways. We didn't really leave ourselves much time to talk about the film. I thought the film was quite clever and I thought some of the casting was wrong S. I did. I like Sira Ronan. I think she's brilliant, by the way. C P. I think she's brilliant And she is quite I mean, she doesn't look like the joe of my imagination, but I think she plays the part superbly. I actually think Florence Pugh plays the part of Amy extremely well Yeah And she's incredibly watchable and she's a very, very good actress I don't think she looks right for Amy, frankly, She's not my Amy. I think the other two are really forgettable. Beth and Emma Watson Yeah And I think the the messing around with a professor, I can understand why they did that. They made them a sexy continental hunk. They also want to give Jo a worthy, you know, she's going to give up her independence, better it be for someone who's, you know, hunky in French. It's a good film. I like the way they play with the timeline and Greta Gowig has this sort of framing device of her submitting the book of Little Women, of Joe written the Book of Little Wen, which is nice. whichich the original movie did as well actually. So ye, but they in every adaptation of it, they kind of show the idea that Joe is writing from her real life. That's a big improvement. They always play into that. And also they lean into the whole Louise M Uncle having pressure from her publisherers by when Joe goes to submit her stories. The publisher actually says and make sure she's married by the end of it. Oh ye ye they did that. exxactly did that. And I think Timothy Sham is a very good glory. Okay, let us rate it out of ten. What are you marking it in I think we should race it out of earnestly pontctificating Mammies I'm going to stun you with this. I'm going to give it seven out of ten Right, because Even though I found the first offal unbelievably boring I found bits of the second half very moving I think it's a really important landmark book I think it's really interesting. I actually have really enjoyed recording this episode, so I've actually upped my mark during the episode. So I'm going to give it seven out of ten now you, what are you going to give it? Now at the risk of alienating the three American listeners that we had managed to get on board So sorry, everyone. I'm going to give it a five. I agree with you that the second half is much, much better and much more interesting. And there are some really astute moving and actually very modern moments that capture what it's like to go from girlhood to womanhood, partarticularly Joe struggling with herself after Beth's death But it's just a bit boring and I got so tired of the relentless moralizing and the sort of slightly forceponomy of it all. And I think that the rapid reconciliations at the end are a little bit implausible, the way that Amy and Laurie just get together so quickly, the way that Joe and the prorofessor just get together so quickly. I don't believe that match at all. There's no chemistry. And I will never, ever ever forgive Louisae Alcott for for not letting Joe end up with Laurie ust think of think what could have been. I mean it is a bit boring. It is a bit boring, but it can be boring and important, which it is. But honestly, if I was recommending to listeners what to read, if someone said I'm going to go on a holiday, I want to really great classic to read. Yeah. I mean, it would be a high risk to recommend littleittle women. I must say you're enemy