In honor of the newest adaptation of Little Women airing on PBS this past weekend, we bring you this article from August 10, 2017 that discusses all the wonderfulness of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel.  Enjoy!

On Tuesday, Book Riot published a piece regarding my beloved (and your beloved, perhaps…?) Little Women, and the quirkiness of some editions. Now, I adore Book Riot; I love the way they talk about books, I love that they talk about Libraries; and I love that they encourage discussion about an enormous variety of books, genres, characters, adaptations.  I have got some excellent recommendations from their site (and passed a number off to you, dear readers!).  So it is from this place of love that I am discussing this piece.

When it was first published, Little Women ended with Father coming home from the Civil War, and Beth recovering from scarlet fever.  The book proved so overwhelmingly popular that Alcott’s publisher, Thomas Niles, suggested a sequel.  That book was, in the US, published as the second part of Little Women; in Britain, however, it was published as a second book entirely, called Good Wives.  The title choice was the publishers, not Alcott’s.  As a result, there are some editions of Little Women, almost all of them British-based, that end with Father coming home from war.  So, as Book Riot pointed out, there are some editions of the book where Beth doesn’t die.  Sort of.

All of that is fine.  And also good to know, because there is no “definitive” edition of Little Women.  Some publishers put it out as two volumes, some distinguish between Part I and Part II in the text (say, with a title page, or something).  It’s helpful to know what to expect from your books.

However, it’s what Book Riot had to say about the second half of Little Women that we are here to discuss today.  They note, “This work, which Alcott never intended to have a sequel, ends with Beth contracting scarlet fever and recovering.“, and appreciate the fact that readers are allowed to imagine their own ‘happy endings’ for the March girls and their families.  Good Wives, they claim “sort of exists as a Sliding Doors moment making fans wish it had all ended at the end of the original book”.

….Hold on there.

First of all, some historic clarification.  No, Little Women was not specifically intended to have a sequel, but very little of Alcott’s work was written with any plan other than to make money.  As a breadwinner of a family that had regularly known very real poverty, she wrote, admittedly, and unabashedly, for the paycheck.  That she could turn out such meaningful and enduring work speaks a great deal to the real power of her writing talent.   I worry that overlooking this aspect of her career, and using an “artist vs. capitalism” framework to disparage Part II (Good Wives).

So let’s be clear: Little Women was written for a paycheck, as was Work, as was Hospital Sketches.  So Niles’ request for a sequel wasn’t a command (he was a great friend to Alcott, and it’s not fair to paint him in a bad light, either), nor was the task onerous–except in the physical sense.  Alcott wrote by hand, on blue-lined paper, in ink.  Her rate of turnout, therefore, is absolutely remarkable: she began writing Little Women in the spring of 1868.  It was published in October.  She turned the completed manuscript of Part II (aka Good Wives) three months later.  And also managed to write a number of letters revealing her writing process to us.  And from those letters, I would argue that Part II (Good Wives) of Little Women was the book Louisa May Alcott wanted to write.

With her, and her family’s financial safety assured, Alcott had not only the funds, but the standing, to make some pretty bold choices.  First and foremost for many, including Book Riot, is to have Jo marry someone other than Laurie.  And that is a good thing.  Because it is perhaps the first of many examples throughout the book where Alcott shows her readers, who were largely female, how to grow up.  Little Women is full of ‘life lessons’ about the dangers of anger, about the power of forgiveness, about patience, and about pride.  All of which are great…but are nonetheless fairly familiar in the course of 19th-century literature.  What Part II does, and does so heartbreakingly well, is show us how messy, how painful, and how redemptive it can be to grow up, to put those childhood lessons to work in real life, and to know you’re not along doing it.

As Alcott wrote to one of her fans: “‘Jo’ should have remained a literary spinster but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn’t dare refuse & out of perversity went and made a funny match for her.  I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect.”  Look, Theodore Lawrence was my first love, and no one can ever, or will ever, hold a candle to him, and I will fight any who dare disparage him. But Louisa was making a point, as she does throughout Part II of Little Women: Life doesn’t turn out the way it does in books.  People grow and change.  On top of that, Alcott is adamant throughout this book that a woman’s life shouldn’t be defined by whom she marries (and that we should respect women’s decisions about their lives), which is why she marries a quirky, quiet, bookish guy who is happy to let her be precisely her.  Laurie admits freely that he feels for Amy something he didn’t feel for Jo–because he (and Amy) grew up and made grown-up decisions.  That’s not settling, as Book Riot claims.  That’s teaching readers not to settle.

And also–how fantastic is it that Jo and Laurie remain friends for the rest of their lives?  How many female/male platonic friendships endure so long, and remain so true, especially in literature?  To overlook that part of their relationship isn’t fair, either.

Part II of Little Women teaches us how inordinately cruel life can be.  People die.  Beth dies.  No off-the-page where we can skip past it.  She fades away before our eyes, just like Elizabeth Alcott, leaving a hole that would never be replaced.  And that, too, is crucially important.  In the 19th-century, people died elegantly and beautifully, looking like a saint.  They lingered as ghosts to teach lessons.  They are not, by and large, grieved in a realistic, human way.  Part II of Little Women is one of the few novels I have encountered that show us the bitter injustices of death, and the work it takes to grieve.  Does anyone want Beth to die?  Of course not.  But Alcott chose to share her loss with the world to help them bear their own sorrow.  It’s not fun, and it’s not easy, and it’s not what “should” happen.  But that’s the whole point.

To claim that Part II of Little Women wasn’t “what Alcott intended” overlooks the very serious financial straights in which she was forced to work, the remarkable quantity and quality of work she managed to produce as a result.  Saying that it’s not the book readers wanted discounts the very important messages that Alcott was sharing with the ‘little women’ who were reading her books.  She wasn’t just helping them be good ‘girls’, but helping them grow up, which we still don’t do well in literature today.  Is it fun?  No.  Do things turn out the way they should?  No.  But Part II tells us that we’re not alone when this stuff happens, and that is a phenomenal gift that needs to be acknowledged.

This week, we are addressing issues of sexual assault, abuse of power, and narratives of truth that have been effecting the literary world recently.  Yesterday, we considered the announcement that there would be no 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature as a result of the sexual assault scandal that has tarnished the reputation of the prestigious award.

The second story we need to address is that of Pultizer-Prize winning author Junot Diaz.  In April of this year, Junot Diaz published a deeply personal, intimate, and moving essay in The New Yorker, detailing the enduring damage he suffered as a result of childhood rape.  The essay was emotional and powerful, and served as a powerful reminder of the ways in which the #MeToo movement needed to encompass victims of sexual violence, no matter their gender, sex, race, or personal status.  The essay spoke to many who felt that their experiences had not yet been represented in discussions about sexual violence and power, and for that reason, was a source of hope.

However, within this essay were a number of troubling implications regarding Diaz’s subsequent treatment of women;  for example, Diaz’s admitting to “running around with other women”, to “ghosting” women (a phrase which describes the act of cutting off all contact with a person without warning–in effect, to become a ghost), and to betraying lovers and partners.  These admissions went largely unaddressed before last week, as most people focused on Diaz’s own narrative.  However, in her stunning review of Diaz’s essay, Briana L. Urena-Ravelo called out the way Diaz described the women he used during his journey, noting that:

…it is hard to hear him dissect and discuss the harm he then went on to cause towards the nameless Black and Brown women he dated on his journey of dealing with the effects and aftermath of his assault, reduced to objects that are mere footnotes in his journey, operating as tools to animate and move him forward at a time when he needed life and love and couldn’t make such decisions for himself, mere testaments, lessons of what his messed up behavior lost him.

Then, last week for example, in  only became an issue of widespread discussion after allegations of sexually aggressive behavior and misogynistic confrontations came to light late last week.  Since that essay, a number of authors, including Carmen Maria Machado‏ and Zinzi Clemmons, came forward to describe their encounters with Diaz, and the belittling, misogynistic, and predatory behavior to which they were subjected.  Diaz has long been upheld as an advocate for many things we hold dear: reading, libraries, inclusion, and compassion.  So for many, to hear that his public image and private behavior were so incongruous was not only jarring, but truly disappointing and disillusioning.

So what do we take away from all this?

Diaz’s behavior should not obscure his suffering–indeed, this moment offers us a powerful lesson about the ways in which trauma can reproduce trauma–especially in circumstances where people are not provided with the sympathy, tools, and support they need to heal properly.

But Diaz’s behavior should also force us to reckon with whose stories we hear, and whose silences we accept.  In her discussion of her experience with Diaz, Carmen Maria Machado (pictured above) recalled:

And I’ll never forget: his male handlers (presumably from the university? I don’t know) were sitting directly in front of me, and every time he spoke they nodded enthusiastically and in unison, and every time I spoke, they froze. When I think about those men I want to scream.

— Carmen Maria Machado (@carmenmmachado) May 4, 2018

This experience points to the ways in which power and privilege in reinforced by those unwilling to question the status quo.  This kind of power feeds on silence; not only the silence of victims, but the silence of those unwilling to speak up.  And that needs to change.  This does not invalidate Diaz’s own experience or suffering; indeed, consider how much his own enforced silence regarding his rape harmed him, by interrogating silence, we have the chance to offer hope to all those involved in these brutal cycles of harm, self-harm, and shame.  We have the opportunity to begin chipping away at the structures that privilege one person’s story over another, that dictate who is allowed to suffer and who is not, that encourage others to turn their backs when such stories of suffering are told.

But in order to do that, we have to learn to listen in a more profound way than we ever have before.  That is a frightening prospect, because it means opening up to stories that we may not want to hear–stories that challenge our understanding of the world, our assumptions, both positive and negative, about those around us, and, indeed, that challenge our own place in those stories.  To not do so, however, is to maintain the silences that have harmed so many for so long.  And at this point, such an idea is untenable.  We need to do better, as individuals, and as communities.  We are here to help.  If you have questions regarding the #MeToo Movement, or resources that can help you learn more and access resources that are available, please let a Library Staff member know.  We are here.  We are listening.