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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Little Women is one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, based on the author's own youthful experiences. It describes the family of the four March sisters living in a small New England community. Meg, the eldest, is pretty and wishes to be a lady; Jo, at fifteen is ungainly and unconventional with an ambition to be an author; Beth is a delicate child of thirteen with a taste for music and Amy is a blonde beauty of twelve. The story of their domestic adventures, their attempts to increase the family income, their friendship with the neighbouring Laurence family, and their later love affairs remains as fresh and beguiling as ever.
432 pages, Paperback
Published July 12, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 21, 2025
I remember loving this book in middle school. I re-read it for a family book club. The story I loved was still there but kind of hidden in old-fashioned preachy language. Still glad I re-read it, but I probably won't again.
October 20, 2025
Touring Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House last summer, I picked up a paperback copy of Little Women. It’s a strange experience to reread a classic that may have been the first long novel I ever read, well over 50 years ago. So this is not a review, but more of a reconsideration.
It’s easy to see what charmed me as a little girl and kept me reading despite its length (over 600 pages in my Simon and Schuster paperback edition). The writing feels quite fresh and engaging. The March family of sisters wins you over quickly. The lively characters of Jo and Amy among the more blandly virtuous Meg and Beth keep the moralism at the root of the book from encumbering it. The early chapters, where Jo, Meg, and Amy all get themselves into various scrapes are both funny and relatable—the girls struggle to fit into society when they lack the means to have pretty things, but at home they relish their family life with as much gusto as you can imagine. Amy, the youngest, is both vain and the queen of malapropisms. Jo is a tomboy with grand, writerly ambitions. All the sisters have their distinctive personalities, and the addition of the neighbor boy Laurie to the mix adds some further fun.
The unconventional character of Jo is, by the book’s end, not entirely tamed but not really the impetuous, strong-willed, ambitious girl she once was. Of course that is intended to be a good thing, and it is good to see her find happiness. But from a different vantage point, it’s a little sad to see her (and Amy’s) ambitions subdued by the end because they opt for the greater sphere of wifely devotion and home. Jo is able to redirect her energies into the schooling of boys, while Amy still creates art but only within the domestic realm. Nevertheless, as the girls transition to women, the change is gradual and full of realistic hiccups along the way. I never stopped caring what would happen to them—even as I knew exactly what was going to happen.
If you seek evidence of the unconventional views of Louisa’s father Bronson Alcott in this book, you will be disappointed. In fact, the character of Mr. March is barely sketched in the book in a heavily idealized portrait as a minister who loses all the family fortune by helping a friend (far from the way Bronson got his own family into debt). Alcott strains to avoid addressing the conflict underway during the action of the novel—the Civil War—or any of the issues that preoccupied her father Bronson, particularly women’s rights. (She does mention the controversial admission of a “quadroon” to Jo’s school, which echoes something her father did in one of his own schools.) Her beliefs were not entirely conventional, however. There is considerable evidence that she believed in equal partnership in marriage. Jo insists on working to help support her family; Meg is advised by her beloved “Marmee” to allow her husband to help in the rearing of the children when she begins to neglect her beloved husband.
In my first reading of the book, I must have glided past the numerous references to classical literature. Despite the informality of the March girls’ education, there are abundant references to Shakespeare, Bunyan, Dickens, and many other writers. Clearly Louisa gobbled up the books in her father’s library, whether her education was formal or not.
Despite the deftness of Alcott’s touch, the moralism can get heavy-handed and the sentimentality extreme, something I can tolerate a little better in Dickens because it comes with a broader critique of society. This book stays firmly within the domestic sphere and thus ensured its everlasting popularity by not seeking to challenge the norms of society in any way. Yet it continues to cast its warm glow over family life and the process of growing from girlhood into adulthood, and so justly remains an American classic.
It’s easy to see what charmed me as a little girl and kept me reading despite its length (over 600 pages in my Simon and Schuster paperback edition). The writing feels quite fresh and engaging. The March family of sisters wins you over quickly. The lively characters of Jo and Amy among the more blandly virtuous Meg and Beth keep the moralism at the root of the book from encumbering it. The early chapters, where Jo, Meg, and Amy all get themselves into various scrapes are both funny and relatable—the girls struggle to fit into society when they lack the means to have pretty things, but at home they relish their family life with as much gusto as you can imagine. Amy, the youngest, is both vain and the queen of malapropisms. Jo is a tomboy with grand, writerly ambitions. All the sisters have their distinctive personalities, and the addition of the neighbor boy Laurie to the mix adds some further fun.
The unconventional character of Jo is, by the book’s end, not entirely tamed but not really the impetuous, strong-willed, ambitious girl she once was. Of course that is intended to be a good thing, and it is good to see her find happiness. But from a different vantage point, it’s a little sad to see her (and Amy’s) ambitions subdued by the end because they opt for the greater sphere of wifely devotion and home. Jo is able to redirect her energies into the schooling of boys, while Amy still creates art but only within the domestic realm. Nevertheless, as the girls transition to women, the change is gradual and full of realistic hiccups along the way. I never stopped caring what would happen to them—even as I knew exactly what was going to happen.
If you seek evidence of the unconventional views of Louisa’s father Bronson Alcott in this book, you will be disappointed. In fact, the character of Mr. March is barely sketched in the book in a heavily idealized portrait as a minister who loses all the family fortune by helping a friend (far from the way Bronson got his own family into debt). Alcott strains to avoid addressing the conflict underway during the action of the novel—the Civil War—or any of the issues that preoccupied her father Bronson, particularly women’s rights. (She does mention the controversial admission of a “quadroon” to Jo’s school, which echoes something her father did in one of his own schools.) Her beliefs were not entirely conventional, however. There is considerable evidence that she believed in equal partnership in marriage. Jo insists on working to help support her family; Meg is advised by her beloved “Marmee” to allow her husband to help in the rearing of the children when she begins to neglect her beloved husband.
In my first reading of the book, I must have glided past the numerous references to classical literature. Despite the informality of the March girls’ education, there are abundant references to Shakespeare, Bunyan, Dickens, and many other writers. Clearly Louisa gobbled up the books in her father’s library, whether her education was formal or not.
Despite the deftness of Alcott’s touch, the moralism can get heavy-handed and the sentimentality extreme, something I can tolerate a little better in Dickens because it comes with a broader critique of society. This book stays firmly within the domestic sphere and thus ensured its everlasting popularity by not seeking to challenge the norms of society in any way. Yet it continues to cast its warm glow over family life and the process of growing from girlhood into adulthood, and so justly remains an American classic.
July 24, 2025
this is girlhood
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews