From LW150 blog -- wow, I had no idea Laurie was so complex! Fascinating read. p.s. Check out Cathlin Davis' comments about this chapter here -- she brings it into the present day.
Chapter XXI. Laurie Makes Mischief, and Jo Makes Peace
XX. Confidential
From the LW150 blog: What a wonderful post by NY Times best-selling author of the Penderwick family novels Jeanne Birdsall!
By Jeanne Birdsall
Louisa settled at her desk, preparing to slog through another chapter of Little Women, this book she was writing only for the money. It was meant to be read by girls, which meant she needed to stay away from high drama and thunder, her usual ways to advance a story. She rubbed her temples—a headache threatened—unwittingly mussing her hair. Who was she to write for girls? A woman who’d never been a conventional girl, who barely knew what such girls talked about and wished for.
Stop fussing, she told herself, and get to work. Where was she in the story? The mother of the March family, Marmee, had just rushed home from Washington, where she’d been nursing the girls’ father, to find that Beth had miraculously escaped death from scarlet fever. The chapter needed to begin with quiet joy and gratitude. Louisa picked up her pen…
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A great gift for the little man or woman in your life: Little Women: 150th-Anniversary Annotated Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
There is always room for another annotated version of Little Women as seen by this beautiful version published by Penguin Classics. Featuring a modern cover that ought to appeal to younger readers, Little Women: 150th-Anniversary Annotated Edition is a physically appealing book; I was immediately attracted to it the moment I started thumbing through the pages. …
Chapter XVIIII. Amy’s Will
from the LW 150 blog: “Amy’s Will” – very interesting account of Amy’s Catholic moment.
By Monika Elbert
I am interested in Catholicism and the rosary’s presence within this very New England novel. In “Amy’s Will,” the Gothic momentarily intrudes in Aunt March’s household, where poor Amy is a captive slave in her role as attendant to the old woman. Aunt March’s maid, Esther, the “French woman” who is forced to change her name from the more Frenchified “Estelle”—“on condition that she was never asked to change her religion”—brings a sense of exoticism with “odd stories of her life in France” (192) and with her Catholic customs. Amy goes through Aunt March’s treasure trove of jewelry and chances upon a rosary, which she mistakes for a fine piece of jewelry. Indeed, it is the piece she most desires: she looks “with great admiration at a string of gold and ebony beads, from which hung a heavy cross of the same” (193). Esther concedes that she “covets” it as well…
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Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 