"It saddened me that I liked it so much when I was a kid," says Katz. Mandy Katz, one of the mothers in the group, said re-reading the novel made her sad: "I really admire her and wish I could live up to her standards."Īnd there's the rub: Who could possibly live up to Jo's standards? she doesn't care what other people think," says 11-year-old Emily Martin. Though the girls mostly liked Jo and appreciated her lack of vanity, some of them felt that she presented too lofty a role model: "Jo always makes you think anything is possible and anything is possible for a woman," says Silvey.īut taking Jo March to a mother-daughter book club I discovered something of a backlash against this idealized vision of a woman who is at once a loving sister, a good daughter, a best friend, a career woman and a devoted wife. She makes Jo a much more lovable, accepted character than Louisa May Alcott herself ever was."Īt a time when women's lives were restricted to hearth and home, Jo represented the possibility of another kind of life.
"She really softens the hard edges of her life. "She very much wrote their story as she would have liked it to have been," says Silvey. Alcott responded by drawing on what she knew - her life with her sisters - except the life she created on the page was an idealized version of their story. Little Women came about when Louisa May Alcott's publisher requested that she write a "girls' book," says Silvey. " is very much a fantasy for Louisa May Alcott herself," says children's book expert Anita Silvey. She was an ideal, not only the kind of woman I aspired to be, but also the kind of woman Alcott wanted to be. So, of course, like every other girl who ever read Louisa May Alcott's novel, I wanted to be Jo: creative, strong-minded and independent. But I was certainly no Amy - vain, spoiled and self-centered. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy became templates against which to compare myself.Īs the youngest I couldn't possibly be Meg, the calm collected oldest. Growing up with three sisters, Little Women was more than just a book it was a parallel world. In writing Little Women, Louisa May Alcott drew from her experiences growing up with three sisters.
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