I’m in a book club. Are you?

Every year, we pick at least one classic to read. Re-reading a classic is usually an interesting process for me. I read a lot as a child and my mother read to me before I was old enough to read. So, I got exposed to classics early. Those early exposures were mostly about story; very little about meaning.

This year’s book club classic was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I never read this book as a child. I tried at least once, but it just didn’t spark my interest. Maybe it’s because I grew up on a farm with five sister (and three much younger brothers.) The adventures of the March sisters, their goals, and their tribulations just seemed, well, boring.

But, I approached the assignment with an open mind. Still, I had a hard time reading Little Women. The story still seemed dull. So, I decided to delve into the author and consider the message she tried to convey. After all, authors are always telling us something besides a good story.

I did enjoy learning about Louisa May Alcott. After I learned a little, I looked at her writing differently. Alcott’s life and beliefs come out in her writing.

 Alcott was raised by an abolishest/feminist mother and a father who spent time with his children, but had a hard time earning any money for the family’s welfare. The family’s friends consisted on many of the movers and shakers of the time includng  Henry Thoreau, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson was known to bail the family out of financial trouble more than once. Her family also hobnobbed with a lot of politically active people, too. And her father founded a school, which ended up failing.

I found it interesting to note that the cohort that Alcott grew up around founded what is considered the first American philosophical movements:  Transcendentalism. Their belief was that humans and nature are inherently good, but are corrupted by society. They believed that people are truly at their best when  they can be independent. Transcendentalists saw divine experience inherent in the everyday. They thought of physical and spiritual phenomena as part of dynamic processes rather than as discrete entities.

The March girls in Little Women were each quite different. They each had time to develop their individual interests whether it was gardening, painting, fashion, or writing. Their adventures, though mild, helped them understand their own weaknesses and helped them develop into to adults they were destined to be.

Some people thought perhaps Alcott was transgender. This idea got me off on a tangent thinking about our desire to identify someone’s sexuality. Alcott is long-gone, her sexuality remains private, and has little or no bearing on what she leaves behind.

Alcott was what I grew up calling a tomboy. She had a lot of physical energy, and enjoyed the company and activities of boys. She was an independent thinker who preferred not to be tethered to a husband and family. She was strong-willed, a trait her father attributed to her mother. Her mother was a political activist married to a man that seemed unable to get his feet under him. This may have led Alcott to take “the road less traveled.”  (did you see what I did there?”)

I also read that Alcott was a bit disappointed that some of her other works were not as popular as Little Women, which she considered less important. She also wrote Hospital Sketches, based on her work as a nurse during the Civil War. She was an abolitionist, a feminist, and a prohibitionist. She really wanted to be as influential as some of the people she grew up listening to as a child.

I was determined to finish Little Women. After all these years, it still didn’t grab me. And whether a blessing or a curse, my library app stopped working after chapter 29, and I moved on to another book. I guess I was not as persistent as Alcott.

Have you read Little Women? What was your opinion?