March Sisters Quotes

“Perhaps Louisa didn't need to detail what Marmee is so angry about nearly every day of her life. To be a woman is to know anger. To be underestimated, treated as inferior, have one's concerns classified as minor, to do all the work and receive none of the glory--how could one not feel angry? And yet in order to be a good woman who stands a chance at being loved and accepted, back then and still very much so now, one has to learn, as Marmee advises Jo, not to show it, even better not to feel it. Anger in a woman runs the risk of being pathologized, penalized, criminalized. A woman is supposed to bear the violence of patriarchy--both the bloody and the bloodless forms--with unflappable cheeriness (p.66)”
― Jenny Zhang, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women

“Jo is the one who writes popular fiction for money, Amy is the one who scrapes together what materials she can find to pursue her artistic ambitions and makes no money, as yet. Jo's moneymaking is seen as a necessity so that the Marches can get by. But because Amy dresses well, behaves properly, and gets along with Aunt March, and because, unlike Jo, she does not dismiss the idea of marrying for money, readers may misunderstand Amy. Amy is not more selfish than Jo, she is more canny...Amy has already demonstrated the value of reason, understanding, thoughtfulness, getting along. If we return to the spot in part one where Marmee tells Meg and Jo what she wants for her daughters, the first descriptive word out of her mouth is 'beautiful.' It is Amy who has done what her mother wanted, who has used her looks, i.e., to become beautiful in the eyes of society, to get ahead, but she has done so not out of vanity or greed but because, through her art, she has sought to understand the nature of beauty--in herself, in admiring Aunt March's jewelry, in painting, in relationships”
― Jane Smiley, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women

“My life has not been in the service of some kind of resistance or in accordance with any great ideology. I don’t wish to be twisted into a lesson for some young girl one day, either as an example to emulate or one to avoid at all costs. I don’t need to write yet another rallying cry against the oppressiveness of convention, or a bitter treatise on how I should have chosen a more orthodox existence. I don’t wish to be idealized or scorned. Sometimes I just want to shed a tear in peace, without it being a statement about anything at all.”
― Jenny Zhang, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women

“I do believe that books seep into us and change us in ways we can’t keep track of.”
― Kate Bolick, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women

“We are hardest on the people who mirror the shadowy parts of ourselves. The parts we don’t want to see.”
― Jenny Zhang, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women