Looking back a year, celebrating a birthday during this pandemic took on a whole new look. Last year, sisters, children, grandchildren, and a niece gathered and went out to eat in a local restaurant specializing in Southern cuisine and had a splendid time, little knowing what the next year would bring. So what do you do to celebrate in a pandemic? For me, the answer lay in treating myself to a reread of an old favorite, Little Women.
Husband Al asked a question I couldn’t answer as I began the book, “How many times have you read it?” Beginning at age twelve or so and through young adulthood, I read it at least once a year and have continue to read it again off and on. I know the book so well that if they had so much as failed to cross a “t”, dot an “i”, or moved a comma in my newest copy, I would have recognized the change right away. This copy has a foreword by Anna Quindlen, another of my favorite writers voicing the same familiarity and connection that I felt with the book.
This time I read from a different perspective, having done some scribbling of my own and with a view influenced by my Zoom critique group that has formed during the pandemic. Two major items would have come up for notice. There is more than a smattering of preachiness in the book, which Louisa Mae acknowledges herself once, “Jo must have fallen asleep (as I daresay my reader has during this little homily).” While most of her characters are well turned out with both flourishes and flaws, there are three that only have good traits, making them pretty unbelievable – Marmee, Father, and Beth. Since the novel finds its basis in her own family, I have found it interesting to read about Louisa Mae’s life and form my own conclusion that Marmee and Beth were remembered through rose-colored glasses and Father was a creation of the kind of parent she would like for him to have been instead of the person he was.
Do these flaws ruin the book? Decidedly not, since I found the reread a pleasant way to celebrate a coronavirus birthday. I related once again to a family like my own with four sisters. Once again, I became Meg in placement and personality and Jo in the love of scribbling. I considered what has made Little Women so beloved for me and for so many others. I think the answer is the same as Jo found with her first successful publication, “That’s the secret; humor and pathos make it alive. . . You wrote with no thought of fame or money, and put your heart into it.”
Just maybe, Louisa Mae Alcott (AKA Jo) found a secret that feeds the hopes of many writers who have risen in her shadow – the heart of the writer reaching out to touch the heart of her readers.