Little Women

 

Little Women

By Louisa May Alcott

In case you didn’t know before, Greta Gerwig has proved it to the world: The story of the March sisters is a timeless tale of love, sisterhood, and growing up as a girl. When we first read it, we remember wanting so badly to be as pretty and poised as Meg and as strong-willed and smart as Jo. 

We also remember not being old enough to truly understand why she wouldn’t marry Laurie; being so upset with Amy (see: Laurie), and (spoiler alert!) being devastated when Beth dies. It’s a novel that’s 150 years old, and we’re still besotted with the March sisters—if that isn’t a classic children’s book, we don’t know what is.

Little Woman is a novel about coming of age written by the American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888).

The book was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, and Alcott wrote the book over several months at the request of her publisher. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy - and details their transition from childhood to womanhood. It is loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters: it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.

Little Women was an instant commercial and critical success, with readers eager to learn more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed the second volume (titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, although the name originated with the publisher and not Alcott). It also met with success. The two volumes were published in 1880 as a single novel entitled Little Women. Alcott later wrote two series of her popular works, both also featuring the March sisters: Little Maine (1871) and Goose Boys (1886).

The novel was said to address three main themes: “domestic life, work, and true love, all interconnected and each necessary to fulfill the individual identity of its heroine.”: According to Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new form of literature, one that took elements from children’s romance stories and combined them with elements of other sentimental novels, resulting in an entirely new genre. Elbert argues that within the Little Woman the first vision of the "all-American girl" can be found and that her different sides are embodied in the various March sisters.

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