Louisa May Alcott is My Passion
Begun in 2010, this blog offers analysis and reflection by Susan Bailey on the life, works and legacy of Louisa May Alcott and her family. Susan is an active member and supporter of the Louisa May Alcott Society, the Fruitlands Museum and Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House.
From the new Little Women 150 blog reflecting each week on a chapter in Alcott’s classic, here is chapter four: Little Women 150 By Sandra Harbert Petrulionis The central concerns of “Burdens” may be character development and self-education, but within its domestic lessons, this chapter also foregrounds the inequities of Civil War- era America. It …
From the new Little Women 150 blog reflecting each week on a chapter in Alcott's classic, here is chapter three:
From the new Little Women 150 blog reflecting each week on a chapter in Alcott’s classic, here is chapter two:
By Katherine Paterson
Of course I wanted to be Jo. There’s nothing unusual about that. Is there a single woman’s writer of my generation that didn’t identify with her? Meg was dutiful and a bit prim, Amy was self-centered and a flibberty-gibbit. And Beth, well, of course we cried when she died, but, honestly, just between us, wasn’t she a bit tediously angelic? But Jo! She actually did things.
I remember coming into the house one day after a bout of street football with the neighborhood boys. In the living room my mother was entertaining at tea. As I listened to the cacophony of soprano voices I was struck with a sudden horror. I might have to grow up and be a woman. And all they did was talk.
In addition to her Tomboy ways, Jo was a great reader, which I certainly was, and a writer, which I didn’t think…
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From the new Little Women 150 blog reflecting each week on a chapter in Alcott’s classic, here is chapter one:
By Jan Turnquist
I love the opening lines of Little Women. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” may not be on a list of “Best Opening Lines,” but it is on my personal list of favorites. From the very start, this chapter offers a feeling of optimism and life even while introducing the four sisters in the midst of a difficult moment. This first chapter, “Playing Pilgrims,” establishes the personalities of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy as refreshingly real and imperfect. They tease and squabble as siblings do. But they are also warm companions in a home that is a safe refuge from a cold and dangerous world set against the backdrop of the Civil War. Right from the beginning the reader can experience that Little Women is a story based on love.
My experience at Orchard House has blended inexorably with my experience of the book itself. Because
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Louisa May Alcott is My Passion 