Little women, big issues

The great thing about Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women is that it has something for everyone: stay-at-home types have the oldest of the March sisters, Meg, who struggles to reconcile her love of ease with both her responsibilities and the family’s genteel poverty (and does at least manage to have one night of fun at the Moffatts’ party, sipping their champagne with one hand and sporting her single good glove on the other, before settling down with a nice husband and even better linen cupboard); cool-slash-mean girls have Amy, who wrestles with vanity — not hugely successfully IMHO (Amy would be a demon with textspeak and indeed probably the first social media star from Massachusetts); romantics have Beth and her chronic timidity and pulmonary weakness; and tomboys, bookworms and would-be writers, of course, have Jo to teach them that they can earn a living in unfeminine ways, refuse to marry the boy next door and find a way to be free without cutting off all ties.

It is unusual even now to give young readers, and especially young female readers, so many options with which to identify in a single book — plus a beloved but imperfect Marmee — and to give them all their own specific energies, interests and flaws. In 1868 you could go so far as to say it was unheard of. Even in Alcott’s native America, which had skipped more lightly over the moral and religious tales that had gradually developed into, and still highly influenced, the children’s literary tradition in the old country, juvenile tales remained at least partly aimed at helping parents shape their offspring into good (traditionally masculine) men, and even better (traditionally feminine) women.

Anne Boyd Rioux’s book, published to coincide with Little Women’s 150th anniversary, is a compact but rich account of Alcott’s life, how she came to write her most famous and enduring work, and its effect on her and American literature, complete with a wide-ranging exploration and analysis of how its public, literary and critical reception has varied since its publication.