Let's write an ode to Louisa May Alcott

MEG, JO, BETH, AMY: The Story of “Little Women” and Why It Still Matters echo essay by Anne Boyd Rioux
Illustrated. 273 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $27.95.
Echo essay in The New York Times Book Review:

One reason I learned to read, writes Francine Prose, was so that I could understand “hard books” like “Little Women,” which was read aloud to me as a preliterate child. 

Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House created this exclusive notepaper to commemorate the 1992 decennial production of Litttle Women, by the Concord Players. Based on the beloved classic written at the House in 1868, the script was adapted for the stage by David Fielding Smith; the silhouette used here was designed by Steve Moyle.

I remember Louisa May Alcott’s heroines — the March sisters — more vividly than some real people I dimly recall from those years. Now Anne Boyd Rioux’s lively and informative “Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy” makes it clear why having these fictive young women implanted in my consciousness has been a good thing, helpful for every girl facing the challenges of growing up to be a woman.

Rioux’s book features a useful, highly compressed biography of Alcott and an account of how her most famous novel was written. Like Charlotte Brontë, Alcott was obliged to support a household. Her father, Bronson Alcott, a friend of Emerson and Thoreau and the founder of Fruitlands, a short-lived utopian community, was so focused on leading “a spotless spiritual life” that he’d forget he had a family. His periods of instability, his delusions and his refusal (or inability) to earn a living meant that the Alcotts moved often and were frequently separated. Yet Bronson recognized and nurtured his daughter’s gifts. Louisa was publishing stories at 20, and, after serving as a Union nurse in the Civil War, she began to write novels. Reluctant when her publisher asked for a book about girls, she told a friend, “I could not write a girls’ story, knowing little about any but my own sisters & always preferring boys.” But she persevered, and when “Little Women” was published in September 1868, 2,000 copies were sold in two weeks. In fact, the book has never gone out of print, and has appeared in hundreds of editions and dozens of foreign translations.

Katharine Hepburn (left) and Jean Parker in “Little Women.”Credit...RKO
Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003- d. Connecticut)

A chapter on the adaptations of the novel — for radio, stage and screen — is a compendium of fun facts, much of it about casting. It’s pleasant to imagine how liberating it was for Katharine Hepburn to play Jo March as a full-on tomboy in George Cukor’s 1933 film. Other roles were less successfully cast, a problem that would persist in films that valued star power over fidelity to the novel. In the 1933 film, “Amy, who is supposed to be 12 years old, was played by 23-year-old and secretly pregnant Joan Bennett. When she could no longer hide her condition, her costumes had to be altered. … Douglass Montgomery makes a much-too-polished Laurie, who is supposed to be 15; Montgomery was 26 and looked 30.”

Rioux, a professor at the University of New Orleans, tracks the literary works that owe a debt to Alcott: “Just as Hemingway claimed that all of American literature (by men) came from ‘Huck Finn,’ we can also say that much of American women’s literature has come from ‘Little Women.’” She considers the debate about “whether ‘Little Women’ tips toward realism or sentimentalism” and the ways in which feminists have praised — and critiqued — the novel for its (cramped or expansive) view of female experience. Ultimately, she argues for the positive influence exerted by the book and in particular by the character of Jo, who chooses the life of the mind over the lure of privilege, pretty clothes and boys. More recently the book’s readership has declined, and it’s only rarely taught in schools, where, Rioux suggests, many educators believe that requiring a boy to read a book with “women” in the title will forever turn him against reading.

“Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy” does what — ideally — books about books can do: I’ve taken “Little Women” down from the shelf and put it ontop of the books I plan to read. I’m curious to check in on the March sisters, and — inspired by Anne Boyd Rioux — find out how they seem to me now.

Francine Prose’s most recent book is an essay collection, “What to Read and Why.”

Let's write about finding our moment of clarity in meditation

A meditation published in Holy Moments, A handbok about th erest of yur life: by Matthew Kelly.

A moment of clarity:  When I was fifteen years old, I had a great spiritual mentor. I do not know how my life would have unfolded if I had not met him.  But, it is difficult for me to imagine that life wuld have been anywhere near as fruitful of rewarding as it has been.

Because, he encouraged me to read the Gospels.  He taught me how to pray.  He showed me how to care for the poor and visit the lonely.  He encouraged me to read great spiritual books.  He watched wthout judgement as I foolishly wrestled with God. He listened patiently to my questions, doubts, excuses and resistance.  And, perhaps most of all, he encouraged me to honor those sacred truths, that were emerging in my soul.  Somthing is missing, there is more to life, and you do have more to offer.

One of the fruits of this friendship was a moment of clarity so piercing that it has defined. my life.

I was walking home from meeting with him one day, when everything we had been discussing for months came together in a single clarifying thought.  Some moments are holy, some moments are unholy and our choices can guide a moment in either direction.

It was a rare moment of clarity in a chaotic and confusing world.  It was also a moment of intense joy.  I can still see myself walking down the street. I know exactly where I was in that moment of awakening.

Everything good in my life has been connected to that moment.  And, all the pain and disappointment I have caused myself and others has been the result of abandoning the wisdom that was revealed in that moment.  

It only took a moment in that moment I realized what was possible.  In that moment, I learned to collaborate with God and create Holy Moments.  It was a moment of grace like none other.  And, I have spent my life trying to help others to discover that same clarity and joy.  It is the only way I know to express my graitude for the infinate blessings that moment brought to my life.

It was a moment of awakening a moment of realization, a moment of discovery, a moment of clarity and a moment of pure unmitigated joy. It was a Holy Moment.

Now, it is your turn.  It is all of our turns.  This is our moment.  This is my moment.  The moment when we realize that despite what our lives have been up until now, and regardless of anything we have don in the past or what I have done in the past, what matters most is what you do next.  Let us meditate about how to choose to do good.

Let's write more about book censorship

Echo report published in The New York Times by Elizabeth Williamson:  Rich Boulet, the director of the Blue Hill Public Library, in Blue Hill Maine, was working in his office when a regular patron stopped by to ask how to donate a book to the library. “You just hand it over,” Mr. Boulet said.

‘My Heart Sank’: In Maine, a Challenge to a Book, and to a Town’s Self-Image.  Wealthy, liberal-leaning Blue Hill, Maine, prided itself on staying above the fray — until the library stocked a book that drew anger from the left.

The book was “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” by the journalist Abigail Shrier. The book posits that gender dysphoria (IOW, feeling dissatisfied) is a “diagnostic craze” fueled by adolescent confusion, social media and peer influence, and that teenagers are too young to undergo potentially irreversible gender transition surgery.

Many transgender people and their advocates say the book is harmful to trans youth, and some have tried to suppress its distribution.

Residents of Blue Hill, Maine, who objected to the book, “Irreversible Damage”, confronted the library director, library staffers and board members in the grocery store, post office and the library itself. Credit...Tristan Spinski for The New York Times

“If I’m being totally honest, my heart sank when I saw it,” Mr. Boulet recalled.

Founded in 1796, the library has a $7.9 million endowment in a coastal enclave popular among affluent summer residents. Blue Hill delivered a 35-point victory for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020, presidential race. The communities around it are a blend of liberal, conservative and none-of-your-business, all of which helped its library resist political proxy battles like those roiling the nation’s libraries.

But in mid-2021, the Blue Hill library and its leadership were tested in a way none of them anticipated.

“Irreversible Damage” did not reflect Mr. Boulet’s personal views, nor those of his staff. But because “I want the library to be there for everybody, not just people who share my voting record,” Mr. Boulet said he gave the book the same consideration he would any other, and concluded it should be on the shelves.

“I felt like it filled a hole in our collection of a lot of materials on that subject matter,” he said. His staff supported the decision.

Less than a week after the book went on display, the parent of a transgender adult told Mr. Boulet that she found it harmful.

“She and I have known each other for years, and we talked about it calmly,” he recalled. The patron filled out a reconsideration request, asking that the book be kept “under the desk,” available only by request.

The library’s collections committee voted unanimously to keep the book in circulation. “But I knew it wasn’t over,” Mr. Boulet said.

Residents who objected to the book confronted him, library staffers and board members in the grocery store, post office and the library itself.

“They would say ‘I can’t believe that the library is allowing this,’” said John Diamond, the library board president. “My feeling was, ‘I can’t believe the library would not allow it, based on its position on free access to information.’”

The harshest criticism was reserved for Mr. Boulet. One patron told him that if a trans youth checked out the book and died by suicide, “that’s on you,” Mr. Boulet recalled. 

Critical Facebook posts and negative Google reviews poured in.

Mr. Boulet defended the decision on the library’s Facebook page, which only fanned the discord. Painfully, Mr. Boulet knew many of the negative commenters.

Mr. Boulet appealed to the American Library Association for a public letter of support, which it offers to libraries undergoing censorship efforts. “They ghosted me,” he said. (IOW, no response.)

Asked about the letter, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the A.L.A.’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said Mr. Boulet’s request had generated internal debate, and delay.

“Our position on the book is, it should remain in the collection; it is beneath us to adopt the tools of the censors,” she said in an interview. “We need to support intellectual freedom in all its aspects, in order to claim that high ground.” Months after Mr. Boulet requested the letter, Ms. Caldwell-Stone saw him at a conference and apologized.

Mr. Boulet wrote an open letter in the local newspaper stressing that the library welcomes everyone, “not just your or my slice of the community.”

“The presence of an item in the library is not an endorsement of the ideas contained therein,” he added.

A friend of Mr. Boulet’s, a high school teacher, posted a response on social media, and sent it to the library board.

“The ‘All Lives Matter’ stance the Blue Hill library is taking is biased, harmful and manipulative hate speech,” it read. 

Irate, Mr. Boulet confronted the teacher in person, and the two are no longer friends.

And then by the end of 2021, the furor quieted, and the book remained.

Before the controversy, “I hadn’t really given intellectual freedom as much thought as I should have,” Mr. Boulet said. His conclusion, he said, is that “intellectual freedom or the freedom of speech isn’t there just to protect ideas that we like.”

Elizabeth Williamson is a feature writer for The Times, based in Washington.