Little Women

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Novels

Little Women
Author	Louisa May Alcott
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Family / Drama / Comedy / Coming of Age
Publisher	Louisa May Alcott
Publication date	1868
Media type	Print ( Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	NA
Followed by	Little Men

Little Women is a novel published in 1868 and written by American author Louisa May Alcott. The story concerns the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. It was based on Alcott's own experiences as a child in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, with her three sisters, Amy (May), Meg (Anna), and Beth (Elizabeth).

History, release and sequels

Alcott wrote Little Women during 1867 and early 1868, writing furiously for two and a half months. She drew heavily on her experiences growing up with her three sisters in Boston, Massachusetts and Concord, Massachusetts. The novel was first published on September 30, 1868, and became an overnight success, selling over 2,000 copies immediately. The critical reception was also overwhelmingly positive; critics soon began calling the new novel a classic. Readers clamoured for a second volume, and Alcott received many letters asking for a sequel.

In response to this demand, Alcott wrote a second part and a first part of the book, which was published in 1869. Both parts were called Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Part II picks up three years after the events in the last chapter of the first part Little Women ("Aunt March Settles The Question"). In 1880, the two parts were combined into one volume, and have been published as such in the United States ever since. In the UK, the second part was published under the title Good Wives, though Alcott had no part in the decision.

Alcott later wrote Little Men and Jo's Boys which followed the lives of the girls' children.

Plot introduction

Alcott's original work explores the overcoming of character flaws (many of the chapter titles in this first part are allusions to the allegorical concepts and places in Pilgrim's Progress). When young, the girls played Pilgrim's Progress by taking an imaginary journey through their home. As young women, they agree to continue the figurative journey, using the "guidebooks"--bibles--they receive on Christmas morning. Each of the March girls must struggle to overcome a major character flaw: Meg, vanity; Jo, a hot temper; Beth, shyness; and Amy, selfishness. The girls must work out these flaws in order to become mothers, wives, sisters, and citizens.

In the course of the novel, the girls become friends with their next-door neighbour, the teenage boy Laurie, who becomes a particular friend of Jo's. As well as the more serious and sadder themes outlined above, the book describes the activities of the sisters and their friend, such as creating a newspaper and picnicking, and the various scrapes that Jo and Laurie get into. The story represents family relationships and explores family life thoroughly.

Characters

• Josephine "Jo" March: The star of the novel. Jo is a tomboy and the second-oldest sister at fifteen. She is very outspoken and has a passion for writing. Her bold nature often gets her into trouble. She is especially close to her younger sister Beth, who helps her become a gentler person. She is employed by her Aunt March, in taking care of her well being. Jo cuts off her long , chestnut brown hair — "her one beauty," as Amy calls it — and sells it to a wig shop to get money for her mother to visit their father, a wounded Civil War chaplain. She refuses the proposal of marriage from family friend Laurie (despite many letters sent to Mr. March to have them married), and later marries Professor Fritz Bhaer. They have two sons, Rob, named after his grandfather, and Teddy, named after Laurie. The character of Jo is based on Louisa herself.

• Margaret "Meg" March: At sixteen, she is the eldest sister. She is very pretty and somewhat vain about her looks, with smooth hair and small, white hands. She is the most responsible and helps run the household in her mother's absence. Meg also guards Amy from Jo when they have fights, just like Jo protects Beth. Due to the family's poverty she must work as a governess for wealthy friends, the King family. After having bad experiences with some rich people (first, the Kings' eldest son is disinherited for bad behaviour, and later she visits her friend Annie Moffat and discovers that her family believes Mrs. March is plotting to engage her to Laurie only for his family's wealth), the greedy Meg learns to tolerate being poor, and eventually discovers that true worth does not lie with money. She falls in love with Mr. John Brooke, Laurie's poor tutor. She eventually marries Mr. Brooke and bears twin children, Margaret "Daisy" and John, Jr. "Demi" (short for Demi-John), and a third child, Josephine (called "Josie"), who is mentioned in Little Men.

• Elizabeth "Beth" March: The second-youngest sister, at about thirteen, is a quiet, kind young woman and an exceptional pianist. She also enjoys looking after her dolls and cats. She is docile and shy to a fault; she is homeschooled due to her chronic shyness. Beth also is engaged with charity; while her mother is nursing their father, she contracts scarlet fever from a poor German family. She survives the illness but is weakened greatly, and eventually dies of bad health. She is described as having a round, rosy face, shiny brown hair and appearing younger than her years. She is especially close to Jo, despite their very different personalities.

• Amelia Curtis "Amy" March: The youngest sister at age twelve when the story begins, and a talented artist, Amy is described as a pretty young girl with golden hair (in curls) and blue eyes (she is described as having the general traits of a "snow maiden"). Her nose however is rather flat, and Amy obsesses over this minor flaw, apparently having acquired it after a small accident she had as a three-year-old, when she was playing with Jo. She cares about her family, but is also "cool, reserved and worldly", showing more compassion when she became a wife. In her youth, she is vain and spoiled and is inclined to throw tantrums when things do not go her way, being often "petted" since she was the youngest. Her relationship with Jo in particular is often strained, due to Jo's bad temper and Amy's immaturity. She eventually travels abroad thanks to her Aunt March (who originally wanted Jo to accompany her, but changes her mind, considering Jo's unladylike behaviour), and finally marries Laurie.

• Margaret "Marmee" March: The girls' mother and head of household while her husband is away. She engages in charitable works and attempts to guide her girls' morals and shape their characters, usually through experiments. She confesses to Jo after her big fight with Amy that she has a temper as bad and volatile as Jo's own, but has learned to control it to avoid hurting herself and her loved ones.

• Robert March: Formerly wealthy, it is implied that he helped unscrupulous friends who did not repay the debt, resulting in the family's poverty. A great scholar and a minister, he serves as a chaplain for the Union Army.

• Hannah Mullet: The maid of the March family, an older woman, who (from a letter written in the first person in the text) is described as kind and loyal, if lacking in formal education.

• Aunt Josephine March: Mr. March's aunt, a rich widow. She lives alone in her mansion and Jo is employed to wait on her each day. She disapproves of the family's charitable work and loss of wealth while hording her own except in a few select instances. Amy is sent to be Aunt March's "companion" when Beth is ill; though at first she is dismayed, her tenure there does the spoiled little girl good.

• Uncle and Aunt Carrol: Sister and brother-in-law of Mr. March.

• Theodore "Laurie" Laurence: A charming, playful, and rich young man who lives next-door to the March family with his overprotective grandfather. He is often misunderstood by his loving but severe grandfather, who worries that Laurie will follow in his father's footsteps. His father was a free-spirited young man who eloped with an Italian pianist and was disowned for that, only to die young of illness, and his wife soon followed. As an orphan, Laurie is sent to live with Mr. Laurence. After Jo refuses to marry Laurie he flees to Europe for vacation. While there, he falls in love with and marries Amy, who gives birth to their daughter Beth.

• Mr. James Laurence: A wealthy neighbour to the Marches. Lonely in his mansion, and often at odds with his high-spirited grandson, Laurie, he finds comfort in becoming a benefactor to the Marches. He admires their charity, and develops a special friendship with Beth, who reminds him of his dead daughter (Laurie's aunt).

• John Brooke: While a tutor to Laurie, he falls in love with Meg; she initially rejects him until Aunt March prohibits the match (she feared Brooke was only interested in Meg's possible inheritance as her niece), at which point she realizes she is in love as well and defies Aunt March. He serves in the Union Army after late 1861, and marries Meg after the war. He dies at the end of Little Men.

• The Hummels: Very poor German immigrant family. Marmee and the girls, though poor themselves, try to help them. Their baby dies of scarlet fever and Beth contracts it while caring for the child.

• The Kings: Family who employ Meg as a governess.

• The Gardiners: Wealthy friends of Meg's. Before the Marches lost their wealth, the two families were societal equals. The Gardiners are portrayed as good-hearted but vapid, and believing in marriage for money and position. Meg's friend Sallie Gardiner eventually marries her friend Ned Moffat, but is unhappy in her marriage.

• Mrs. Kirke: A friend of Marmee's who runs a boarding house in New York. She employs Jo as governess to her two girls, Kitty and Minnie, for a time.

• Professor Friedrich "Fritz" Bhaer: A poor German immigrant who used to be a well-known professor in Berlin but now lives in Mrs. Kirke's boarding house and tutors her children. He and Jo become friends and he critiques Jo's work, encouraging her to become a serious writer instead of writing "sensation" stories for weekly tabloids. The two eventually marry.

• Franz and Emil: Mr. Bhaer's two nephews whom he looks after following the death of his sister.

• Tina: The small daughter of Mrs. Kirke's French washerwoman: she is a favorite of Professor Bhaer's.

• Miss Norton: A worldly tenant living in Mrs. Kirke's boarding house. She occasionally takes Jo under her wing and entertains her.

Notable adaptations

Play

Little Women, a play in four acts, adapted by Marian De Forest from the story by Louisa May Alcott, opened on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre, on October 14, 1912. The production was directed by Jessie Bonstelle and Bertram Harrison. The cast included Marie Pavey, Alice Brady, Gladys Hulette and Beverly West. It ran for 184 performances.

The play was revived on 18 December 1916 at the Park Theatre for 24 performances.

Another revival opened on 7 December 1931 at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City in a production directed by William A. Brady, Jr. with Jessie Royce Landis as Jo, Lee Patrick as Meg, Marie Curtis, and Jane Corcoran. It ran for 17 performances.

In 1995 the play adaptation "Louisa's Little Women" by Beth Lynch and Scott Lynch-Giddings premiered in a production by the Wisdom Bridge Theatre Company at the Harold Washington Library Centre in Chicago. The play covers the events of Part One of Alcott's novel, interspersed with scenes depicting complementary aspects of her own life, including the influence of her father Bronson Alcott and her acquaintance with Henry David Thoreau, Julia Ward Howe, and Frank Leslie.

There is another adaptation of the play by Emma Reeves which is being performed this autumn at GSA in Guildford, Surrey, England. This Version of "Little Women" made its American debut in Washington at the Whidbey Island Centre for the Arts

Literature

In 2005, Geraldine Brooks published March, a novel exploring the gaps in Little Women, telling the story of Mr. March during the Civil War. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Film

• 1933 version: Katharine Hepburn as Jo, Spring Byington as Marmee.
• 1949 version: Elizabeth Taylor as Amy, June Allyson as Jo, Janet Leigh as Meg, Margaret O'Brien as Beth, Mary Astor as Marmee, and Peter Lawford as Laurie.
• 1978 version: Meredith Baxter as Meg, Susan Dey as Jo, Eve Plumb as Beth, William Shatner as Friedrich Bhaer, Greer Garson as Aunt March, and Robert Young as Grandpa James Lawrence.
• 1994 version: Susan Sarandon as Marmee, Winona Ryder as Jo, Kirsten Dunst as the younger Amy, Samantha Mathis as the older Amy, Christian Bale as Laurie, Claire Danes as Beth and Trini Alvarado as Meg.

Additional versions appeared in 1917, 1918, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1958, 1970, 1979, and 2001 .

Opera and musical

• In 1998 the book was adapted as an opera by composer Mark Adamo.

• On January 23, 2005, a Broadway musical adaptation of the same name opened at the Virginia Theatre in New York City with a book by Allan Knee, music by Jason Howland, and lyrics by Mindi Dickstein. The musical starred Sutton Foster as Jo March and pop singer Maureen McGovern as Marmee. The mixed-reviewed production ran through June 2005, garnering a Tony nomination for Sutton. While it had a disappointingly short life in New York, it had a very successful first national tour; Again starring Maureen McGovern, the tour began August 30 of that year, touring to 30 cities over 49 weeks. A second national tour is being planned for the 2007-2008 season. The Musical had it's European premier on the 7th of February 2008 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London England, and was a great success.

Anime

In 1987, the Japanese animation studio Nippon Animation did an anime adaptation titled Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari (The Story of Love's Young Grass). The series was part of the studio's World Masterpiece Theatre series of animated adaptations of classic Western literary works. The series was directed by Fumio Kurokawa with character designs by Yoshifumi Kondo. Saban Entertainment produced an English dubbed version (Tales of Little Women) which aired on HBO in the United States in 1988-89, and the series has also achieved immense popularity in Europe (Una per tutte, tutte per una in Italy, Les quatre filles du Docteur March in France, Mujercitas in Spain and Eine fröhliche Familie in Germany).

This series changed the name of the town in which the series takes place from "Concord" to "Newcord", and also added episodes depicting scenes not from the novel at the beginning as a way of introducing the characters and educating the Japanese audience about the American Civil War. It is otherwise a faithful and highly regarded adaptation. Nippon Animation also produced an anime adaptation of Jo's Boys in 1993 for the World Masterpiece Theatre, titled Wakakusa Monogatari Nan to Jou Sensei (The Story of Young Grass: Nan and Mrs. Jo) and directed by Kozo Kusuba.

Two other anime adaptations of Little Women were made in the early 1980s: a 1980 TV special produced by Toei Animation and directed by Yugo Serikawa, and Wakakusa Monogatari yori: Wakakusa no Yon Shimai (From the Story of Young Grass: Four Sisters of Young Grass), a 1981 Toei Animation/ Kokusai Eigasha TV series directed by Kazuya Miyazaki and from the same animation team. The 1981 TV series was also released in the United States on video, courtesy of Sony. Still, Nippon Animation's 1987 version is the most successful and also widely regarded as the best of all anime adaptations of the story. As an interesting aside, seiyuu Keiko Han was cast in both the 1981 (as Beth) and 1987 (as Meg) TV series.

A nod to the characters can be seen in the English release of the Nintendo 64 game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In the Forest Temple, the player must solve four puzzles hosted by ghosts by the names of Amy, Beth, Joelle and Meg in order to progress through the game.

It is also referenced in the anime Graduation M where the main characters (who are male), are forced to play the lead roles in the play "Little Women," for their schools ceremony.