Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

by Simone de Beauvoir

but there was one book in which I believed I had caught a glimpse of my future self: Little Women, by Louisa M. Alcott. The March girls were Protestants, their father was a pastor and their mother had given them as a bedside book not The Imitation of Christ but The Pilgrim’s Progress: these slight differences only made the things we had in common with the March girls stand out all the more. I was moved when Meg and Jo had to put on their poor brown poplin frocks to go to a matinée at which all the other children were dressed in silk; they were taught, as I was, that a cultivated mind and moral righteousness were better than money; their modest home, like my own, had about it – I don’t know why – something quite exceptional. I identified myself passionately with Jo, the intellectual. Brusque and bony, Jo clambered up into trees when she wanted to read; she was much more tomboyish and daring than I was, but I shared her horror of sewing and housekeeping and her love of books. She wrote: in order to imitate her more completely, I composed two or three short stories. I don’t know if I dreamed of reviving my old friendship with Jacques, or if, rather more vaguely, I was longing for the barrier between my own world and the world of boys to be broken down, but the relationship between Jo and Laurie touched me to the heart. Later, I had no doubt, they would marry one another; so it was possible for maturity to bring to fruition, instead of denying them, the promises made in childh...