Blog #1 Little Relationships

Little Relationships

In her essay, “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text,” Barbara Sicherman explains that Louisa May Alcott’s books survives the test of reader time due to the book's dynamic and nearly chameleon-like ability to adjust interpretation to each reader. Sicherman’s essay goes on to cite many readings of the book from feminist to historical. What Sicherman does not mention is the timelessness of the plot and themes that Alcott emphasizes in Little Women. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women remains relevant to today’s readers because it deals with the emotional turmoils that young adults experience when attempting to form and maintain relationships.

Alcott’s choice to continually emphasize family makeup allows the book to remain relevant to today’s readers. According to the Standford Institute for Economic Policy Research, “today’s average household is half as large as in 1850. The decline in fertility explains part of this change, as the average household today contains two fewer children of the head. However, other forms of cohabitation also have become less common. While in 1850 almost every household included a married couple, today less than half of households do” (Salcedo, Schoellmand, Tertilt 1). The “fertility changes” to which the authors refer is the rise in birth control; in the 1860’s, contraceptives were not widely used and families tended to be larger than families today. However, Alcott’s choice to limit the March family to a family of four girls is a believable family size for readers of today. Had the March family been made up of more children, today’s reader may be less inclined to connect with the text, and the complexity of adding two to three more voices may disengage readers that come from small households with fewer children. As Salcedo, Schoellman, and Tertilt point out, 1850’s households usually contained two parents whereas many modern households contain only one. Throughout volume one, Mr. March is absent. This absence results in the March women, mother and sisters, being alone in what can be construed as a single-parent, specifically a single mother household. This makes the text so much more relevant to all of the children of single parents and to the single parents themselves. It is not only through family makeup that the book remains relevant to today’s readers, but also through the relationships that the family members from outside of the home.

The initially awkward relationship between Laurence and the sisters remains relevant to readers today because many readers can see themselves reflected in some way in the relationship between Laurence and the March sisters. Awkwardness is a rite of passage in the adolescent world. The awkwardness of adolescence is, in part, the reason why there is a market for Young Adult literature. Alcott uses Laurence as a representative of adolescent awkwardness. Laurence as a character is, when the reader meets him, a bumbling shy-guy and a male Rapunzel archetype. He is stuck in his metaphorical tower until Jo comes along to rescue him. Aside from the blatant feminist deconstructive read of Laurence’s rescue, all readers, including today’s, can relate to a time that she or he felt like an outsider looking in, as Laurence was when he confessed that he often watched the March sisters forlornly from his study tower. Anyone who has ever felt awkward and cast off, immediately empathizes with Laurence’s feelings of loneliness. The relationship between Jo and Laurence appeals to all the young ladies and gentlemen who, in their preteens and teens, had best friends from the members of opposite sexes. Watching as Laurence’s brotherly love for Jo grows into something more appeals to all the readers who have suffered when friendship went awry due to the onset of unwanted sexual attraction. The idea of Amy growing to become Laurence’s wife appeals to those young ladies who still believe in happily-ever-after fairy tale endings, because in the end Amy is the youngest character who got precisely what she had always dreamed of-a rich and good husband.

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was and remains a text that is accessible to many readers from the 1860’s to contemporary readers because the plot and themes deal with timeless observances on forming and maintaining relationships. The success of the novel, as Sicherman points out, depends upon “readers’ experiences and aspirations” (656) in order to remain relevant. Alcott’s work in this novel appeals to a variety of readers from a variety of backgrounds because she deals with universal themes and creates relationships that act as a mirror to readers.

Works Cited

Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1880.

Google Play E-book.

Salcedo, Alaejandrina, Todd Schoellman, and Michele Tertilt. Families as Roommates: Changes

in U.S. Household Size from 1850 to 2000. Publication no. 09-01. Stanford Institute for

Economic Policy Rearch, Oct. 2009. Web. May 2015.

Sicherman, Barbara. "Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text." Introduction. Little

Women. New York: n.p., 2004. 632-57. Print. Norton Critical Edition.