Confession No. 2 - Louisa May Alcott

For this, my second confession, I want to confess that I read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and I liked it. Phew - There I said it, now we can talk about it.

Like most people, I read Little Women after my first visit to Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts. But this confession gets weirder...wait for it...wait...I first read Little Women when I was 22 years old.

I know men aren't supposed to read, let alone enjoy reading Little Women. But I love Louisa May Alcott and I don't care who knows it. (Ok, maybe there are a few people I don't want knowing this, it is not something I announce whenever I enter a room where a bunch of guys are gathered around a tv set watching a sporting event. But I doubt any of them are reading this blog. But just in case they are reading this...what I meant to say was I love Clint Eastwood movies...)

Look, I get it men aren't supposed to read Louisa May Alcott. Most people think of Alcott as a children's book author, who writes for women and little girls. But for me Little Women was like one of those gateway drugs they warned us about in high school (alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, Flintstone vitamin, etc.). You know the story, if a person used and abused a lesser drug it opened them up to using and abusing hardcore street drugs in the future and the hardcore street drugs lead to hardcore street crime and hardcore street knitting (not to be confused with hardcore street crocheting which I am told is the more reputable of the two).

I read Louisa May Alcott's novel and it lead me down a wayward path to reading the literary works of her fellow Concord neighbors -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. Reading Alcott, lead me to become a more serious reader, it inspired me to live a life of the mind.

Lets be honest, look closely and you will find that Little Women is a hardcore book. It deals with some pretty serious issues: war, poverty, death, the rejection of our personal selves by society - our ideals, values, creative work. Little Women is not a novel about girlhood or childhood. It is essentially a novel about adulthood. It is about how one becomes an adult in a confusing and often childish world. Alcott did not sugar coat it in her novel, life is a messy business and sometimes it will scare you into a corner. The moral of Little Women is don't stay in the corner. fight your way out.

I think Kurt Vonnegut said it best, when he wrote, "listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being." The March sisters know being a human being can sometimes be a huge bummer (you don't always get presents at Christmas) but they also know life can be a huge adventure (you get to write a book or travel to New York City or open a school). Alcott teaches us, that every trial and triumph in our life is all about the perspective and attitude we bring to it.

Louisa May Alcott served as a nurse during the American Civil War but only because as a women living in 19th Century America, she was not permitted to pick up a musket and charge against the enemy. If she had been allowed too, the war may not have gone on for as long as it did.

While serving as a nurse, Louisa contracted typhoid fever. Her doctors had prescribed calomel, a drug laden with mercury although Alcott recovered from the typhoid, she would suffer the poisonous effects from the mercury for the rest of her life. Most of the time, Alcott wrote in intense pain but still she managed to write novels, short stories, poems, plays, and hymns. When one of her hands cramped up, Alcott simply wrote with the other. Alcott was also an early feminist and abolitionist, championing the cause of women's rights and anti-slavery. She did not let life chase her into a corner and when it did she did not stay there.

To summarize, Louisa May Alcott was a bad ass in real life, Clint Eastwood just plays one in the movies.

Cheers,

Chad