Me the Reader Redux: Little Women

For true book lovers, there’s the first book that invites you to enter and live inside it. There’s also the first book that affects you so profoundly it shapes who you will become. For me, that was Little Women.

My Uncle Joe gave it to me for Christmas when I was in the fourth grade. The book itself was beautiful—the four sisters and Marmee, their mother, around a piano—and I disappeared into it that very afternoon. When I finished it, I started over again. I have a vivid memory of sitting in my fourth-grade class with the book in my lap, reading, when I was supposed to be paying attention.

It’s a good story, the girls and their mom living on reduced means while Mr. March is away. The friendship with Laurie, the wealthy boy next door who adores Jo but… The rich aunt—which sister will she take to Europe as a companion? Will Jo actually become a writer? Will their father survive the war?

I so envied the March family! The four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—who loved each other fiercely and whose squabbles and disagreements were always mended with tears and laughter. Marmee, who knew them all so well and guided them gently, but firmly toward the right path. Their father far away, serving as a chaplain for the Union Army, but ever-present in their thoughts and deeds.

I loved how the sisters produced Jo’s plays in the attic, with makeshift props and costumes. I loved their cozy, careworn house, and Laurie’s grandfather’s grand one next door. I loved that, instead of enjoying the Christmas dinner they’d been so looking forward to, they carried it to a poor family nearby.

If only I could be in that family, I thought. And, reading, I was.

Of course, I wanted to be Jo. She was a writer. She was a tomboy She strode. She was loyal and passionate. She was impetuous, outspoken. She had a lot of trouble being good.

Meg made me anxious. Too domestic. Too perfect.

Amy. Well, ugh.

But I loved Beth as Jo did, as I loved my own younger sisters.

I regret to say that the morbid drama of Beth’s illness and death thrilled me. No matter how many times I read the book, I was devastated when she died. Sometimes when I was angry or sad, I’d open the book to that chapter and read it, thinking about how people would appreciate me (finally) if I died—though the realization that I would be there to revel in it did take a bit of the pleasure away.

Some of the books that affect our lives profoundly hold up forever; some fall short when we reread them when we’re older.

Twenty or so years ago, one of my sisters was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an inoperable brain tumor—and died from it fifteen months later. It was a terrible, heartbreaking time. And when it was over and I was grieving, I returned to Little Women, thinking I might find solace there. Which I did, kind of. I felt what Jo felt in a new way. Beth’s death seemed real to me in a way it hadn’t before and I grieved again for Jo’s loss.

The rest of the book?

I saw how some of the ways Little Women had shaped me were problematical.  There’s an echo of it in my annual Christmas malaise: Shouldn’t I be wrapping up my special breakfast and carrying it to the closest poor person I can find? Shouldn’t I be telling people not to give me gifts, to use their money to buy presents for poor people instead? And if, by chance, I receive a present I don’t like, shouldn’t I be happy with it, anyway—like the March sisters were with their copies of Pilgrim’s Progress?

It’s in the little voice in my head that tells me that I should always, always think of others before myself. And though Beth’s death still moved me, I was shocked by what she says to Jo just before she dies. “You must take my place, Jo, and be everything to father and mother when I’m gone. They will turn to you, don’t fail them; and if it’s hard to work alone, remember that I don’t forget you, and that you’ll be happier in doing that than writing splendid books or seeing the world…”

Holy cow! I thought. There’s the source of that damned voice inside my head saying, “You shouldn’t be so selfish” every time I do something for myself.

I forgave Little Women, though.  The great gift the book gave me was worth it all: my first real glimpse of a writer’s life—and the absolute conviction that it was what I wanted my life to be.

Enough about the past. Onward to what I’m reading now, today—very soon. And OMG, it’s delicious!