17 ms·

Why 'Little Women' Endures

39 points by samclemens 8y ago

sandworm101 8y ago
It endures because it is a fairy tale. It is a tale from a more simple time, but one with very modern characters as needed to soften the edges. In little women, it is the men that are softened. They arent the sexist pigs that were the norm of the time. The princess in the stone castle gets to marry the prince on the horse because she loves him, not to cement a deal between kingdoms: fairytale. Tolkien's hobbit/tlotr is much the same.
- golemotron 8y ago
  Times are as simple as our lack of information about them. When there are few sources of information about a time, we over value the ones that survive and end up with a false picture. I think if we were teleported back we'd see the same panorama of human nature that we see today.
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    This is literature, not history. The times were simple because the author made them simple. Whether the author's fictional world comports with historical truth is beside the point. The world of Little Women is objectively simpler because we are limited to the information given to us by the author. We don't see the complexity because it is denied us, something true of all historical fiction. People and information move more slowly, which facilitates the storytelling. Diseases are quickly diagnosed, and resolve themselves one way or another quickly enough to not stall the story. That is the simpler time/world that the author chose to use.
zwieback 8y ago
The Atlantic also had an article in the last issue - I didn't know that Alcott wrote a bunch of "sensationalist stories about murder and opium addiction" and felt that was her sweet spot. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/little-women-louisa-may-alcott/565754/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/little-...
microcolonel 8y ago
> Alcott uses the structures that hem women in—marriage, home, religion—both to attract and repel her readers. Geez, how did anyone get the impression that the institution of marriage was intended to "hem women in"? It is self-evidently pro-feminine, the only way (in a free society) that at least someone cares personally for women in their 50s. Today, western marriage is an institution for life-long near-unconditional male servitude to women past their (reproductive) prime; the only way to spoil these benefits is to be manifestly abusive and untrustworthy in a way which can be proven in court. Added: speaking specifically of the industrial age western form of monogamous marriage, which is the most common kind in the current and former British empire, with the exception of some parts of India.
- watwut 8y ago
  Are you trying to suggest that men are not allowed to ask for divorce? Or that children don't care about aging parents? Or that women die sooner then men at 50 and male husbands care about dying women?
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    > Are you trying to suggest that men are not allowed to ask for divorce? Generally divorce produces a disproportionate benefit (relative to other parties) to women, even when initiated with cause by the husband. > Or that children don't care about aging parents? Children become adults and end up with lives of their own (more so than husbands), and if the statistics are to be trusted, generally women who live alone (primarily in the legal sense) past their 50s die faster and suffer more. > Or that women die sooner then men at 50 and male husbands care about dying women? I don't know how you extracted that, but I meant that women generally become less appreciated (by strangers) by and past their 50s (and that's charitably, often its 40s), and have more trouble finding and maintaining companionship (and romance, if it's on their minds). For men the curve is basically the opposite, they're unwanted (except professionally) when they're young, and gain social/financial/sexual capital into their 40s. My point is that accounting somewhat for this imbalance (where women's appeal is front-loaded, and men's comes later) is an explicit purpose of the institution of marriage. P.S. before anyone gets in a tizzy and starts listing exceptions, note (if it's not already obvious) that I am speaking in generalities here.
billfruit 8y ago
Sometimes I wonder why Little Woman has been/is being adapted for film so many times, where as there hasn't been a proper adaptation of Huckleberry Finn.
- dpark 8y ago
  It's been a long time since I read Huckleberry Finn, but could it be adapted these days? A faithful adaptation would be heavily criticized for the racial slurs and an unfaithful adaptation would probably lose much of the flavor.
  - Uhhrrr 8y ago
    I reread some of the book after the last n-word-in-English-class controversy, and Jim comes off as witty and sympathetic. I don't know if that is enough to pacify the armchair mob. I also think it could probably survive the removal of one slur. It's a great book.
    - burkaman 8y ago
      It's just about the language, and it's not just an armchair mob. Serious people have serious issues with the book. I don't think it should be banned or even removed from curriculums, but it should be taught carefully, with a lot more instruction than just "this is a great book with some bad words that we don't use anymore". The characters are obviously racist, but the question is whether the author and/or the book are racist, and if so that needs to be called out explicitly and discussed in the classroom. Here's a good essay on it: https://www.vqronline.org/essay/jim-and-mark-twain-what-do-dey-stan https://www.vqronline.org/essay/jim-and-mark-twain-what-do-d... > In the middle of Huck Finn, Mark Twain let Jim step out from behind the racist stereotype that has proven a lot harder to destroy than slavery. The effect of the ending, though, is to put him back in blackface so the whites of his eyes will show more conspicuously when they roll. The ending of Huck Finn has been recognized as a problem for more than 50 years, although almost no one has emphasized how it changes Jim’s status within the novel. Charles Neider, in a new edition that Doubleday published for the centennial, grandly chose to cut 8300 words from this Tom Sawyer section. It does go on and on, becoming the longest episode in the novel—but that is the first thing that must be noted about it. The second is how hard Twain works in it to make his reader laugh, piling up witches, rats, mashed teeth, pouring melting butter over the whole. When he went back on the lecture circuit in the winter of 1884—85, he used the Evasion chapters as the basis for his new program, and in his letters home he brags about their effectiveness as a comic tour de force, a continuous series of snappers. That, especially in view of our modern unhappiness with the ending, should be the third thing to note: Twain used the 1884—85 tour to promote his forthcoming novel, and this was the part of it he chose to represent the whole. > [...] > We obviously cannot say what might have happened, either in the book or to the book’s reception, if Twain had not decided to turn Huck into Tom, and Jim into a comic stereotype. We must, however, reckon the price Twain paid for that decision. Huck can’t free Jim. Jim can’t free Huck. Between them, Huck and Jim could not free Mark Twain from the pact his need for popularity forced him to make with his public’s self-protective prejudices. Twain’s own sense of remorse is only a partial compensation for his betrayal of Jim. By Jim’s definition, which is surely entitled to be definitive, the ending of Huck Finn is “trash.” It is trash, though, that we cannot afford to throw away until we have finished learning what it has to teach us about our culture’s appetites.

39 points by samclemens 8y ago

It endures because it is a fairy tale. It is a tale from a more simple time, but one with very modern characters as needed to soften the edges. In little women, it is the men that are softened. They arent the sexist pigs that were the norm of the time. The princess in the stone castle gets to marry the prince on the horse because she loves him, not to cement a deal between kingdoms: fairytale. Tolkien's hobbit/tlotr is much the same.

golemotron 8y ago
Times are as simple as our lack of information about them. When there are few sources of information about a time, we over value the ones that survive and end up with a false picture. I think if we were teleported back we'd see the same panorama of human nature that we see today.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  This is literature, not history. The times were simple because the author made them simple. Whether the author's fictional world comports with historical truth is beside the point. The world of Little Women is objectively simpler because we are limited to the information given to us by the author. We don't see the complexity because it is denied us, something true of all historical fiction. People and information move more slowly, which facilitates the storytelling. Diseases are quickly diagnosed, and resolve themselves one way or another quickly enough to not stall the story. That is the simpler time/world that the author chose to use.

zwieback 8y ago

The Atlantic also had an article in the last issue - I didn't know that Alcott wrote a bunch of "sensationalist stories about murder and opium addiction" and felt that was her sweet spot. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/little-women-louisa-may-alcott/565754/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/little-...

microcolonel 8y ago

> Alcott uses the structures that hem women in—marriage, home, religion—both to attract and repel her readers. Geez, how did anyone get the impression that the institution of marriage was intended to "hem women in"? It is self-evidently pro-feminine, the only way (in a free society) that at least someone cares personally for women in their 50s. Today, western marriage is an institution for life-long near-unconditional male servitude to women past their (reproductive) prime; the only way to spoil these benefits is to be manifestly abusive and untrustworthy in a way which can be proven in court. Added: speaking specifically of the industrial age western form of monogamous marriage, which is the most common kind in the current and former British empire, with the exception of some parts of India.

watwut 8y ago
Are you trying to suggest that men are not allowed to ask for divorce? Or that children don't care about aging parents? Or that women die sooner then men at 50 and male husbands care about dying women?
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > Are you trying to suggest that men are not allowed to ask for divorce? Generally divorce produces a disproportionate benefit (relative to other parties) to women, even when initiated with cause by the husband. > Or that children don't care about aging parents? Children become adults and end up with lives of their own (more so than husbands), and if the statistics are to be trusted, generally women who live alone (primarily in the legal sense) past their 50s die faster and suffer more. > Or that women die sooner then men at 50 and male husbands care about dying women? I don't know how you extracted that, but I meant that women generally become less appreciated (by strangers) by and past their 50s (and that's charitably, often its 40s), and have more trouble finding and maintaining companionship (and romance, if it's on their minds). For men the curve is basically the opposite, they're unwanted (except professionally) when they're young, and gain social/financial/sexual capital into their 40s. My point is that accounting somewhat for this imbalance (where women's appeal is front-loaded, and men's comes later) is an explicit purpose of the institution of marriage. P.S. before anyone gets in a tizzy and starts listing exceptions, note (if it's not already obvious) that I am speaking in generalities here.

billfruit 8y ago

Sometimes I wonder why Little Woman has been/is being adapted for film so many times, where as there hasn't been a proper adaptation of Huckleberry Finn.

dpark 8y ago
It's been a long time since I read Huckleberry Finn, but could it be adapted these days? A faithful adaptation would be heavily criticized for the racial slurs and an unfaithful adaptation would probably lose much of the flavor.
- Uhhrrr 8y ago
  I reread some of the book after the last n-word-in-English-class controversy, and Jim comes off as witty and sympathetic. I don't know if that is enough to pacify the armchair mob. I also think it could probably survive the removal of one slur. It's a great book.
  - burkaman 8y ago
    It's just about the language, and it's not just an armchair mob. Serious people have serious issues with the book. I don't think it should be banned or even removed from curriculums, but it should be taught carefully, with a lot more instruction than just "this is a great book with some bad words that we don't use anymore". The characters are obviously racist, but the question is whether the author and/or the book are racist, and if so that needs to be called out explicitly and discussed in the classroom. Here's a good essay on it: https://www.vqronline.org/essay/jim-and-mark-twain-what-do-dey-stan https://www.vqronline.org/essay/jim-and-mark-twain-what-do-d... > In the middle of Huck Finn, Mark Twain let Jim step out from behind the racist stereotype that has proven a lot harder to destroy than slavery. The effect of the ending, though, is to put him back in blackface so the whites of his eyes will show more conspicuously when they roll. The ending of Huck Finn has been recognized as a problem for more than 50 years, although almost no one has emphasized how it changes Jim’s status within the novel. Charles Neider, in a new edition that Doubleday published for the centennial, grandly chose to cut 8300 words from this Tom Sawyer section. It does go on and on, becoming the longest episode in the novel—but that is the first thing that must be noted about it. The second is how hard Twain works in it to make his reader laugh, piling up witches, rats, mashed teeth, pouring melting butter over the whole. When he went back on the lecture circuit in the winter of 1884—85, he used the Evasion chapters as the basis for his new program, and in his letters home he brags about their effectiveness as a comic tour de force, a continuous series of snappers. That, especially in view of our modern unhappiness with the ending, should be the third thing to note: Twain used the 1884—85 tour to promote his forthcoming novel, and this was the part of it he chose to represent the whole. > [...] > We obviously cannot say what might have happened, either in the book or to the book’s reception, if Twain had not decided to turn Huck into Tom, and Jim into a comic stereotype. We must, however, reckon the price Twain paid for that decision. Huck can’t free Jim. Jim can’t free Huck. Between them, Huck and Jim could not free Mark Twain from the pact his need for popularity forced him to make with his public’s self-protective prejudices. Twain’s own sense of remorse is only a partial compensation for his betrayal of Jim. By Jim’s definition, which is surely entitled to be definitive, the ending of Huck Finn is “trash.” It is trash, though, that we cannot afford to throw away until we have finished learning what it has to teach us about our culture’s appetites.