Alcott Readathon 2018: Good Wives
Gossip
Laurie's power of persuasion must be a nice thing to have.
You see, having said that if Meg married 'that Brooke' she shouldn't have a cent of her money, Aunt March was rather in a quandary when time had appeased her wrath and made her repent her vow. :DDDDD
"Amy, you are getting altogether too handsome for a single lady." OTP foreshadowing.
Kitty Bryant is mentioned again. Nice continuity.
The First Wedding
Meg kissing Marmee is odd, and I can't imagine any non-fictional groom not being upset at it. But there are too few mama's girls in fiction and so I can't hate Meg for it.
PSA: Alcohol is bad.
Artistic Attempts
I want to see, on screen, Amy getting her foot stuck in plaster so much.
This scene makes more sense if you know that back then lobster was cheap, so Amy is embarrassed at looking poor. The Tudors were a real family, and one descendant, Tasha Tudor, was an author and artist who illustrated both Little Women and a collection titled A Round Dozen. I actually didn't know about the former until just now.
Laurie's birthday gift to Amy was a tiny coral lobster in the shape of a charm for her watch guard. And she treasured it forever as the first piece of jewelry her husband ever bought her.
Literary Lessons
It was a People's Course, the lecture on the Pyramids, and Jo rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the Pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.
WTF Jo, the point is to have fun. And yes, some poor people do find lectures on Egyptology fun.
"SLANG Northbury" plays on the writer EDEN Southworth.
In the hope of pleasing everyone, she took everyone's advice, and like the old man and his donkey in the fable suited nobody. A very good fable, that one.
Domestic Experiences
As for buttons, she soon learned to wonder where they went, to shake her head over the carelessness of men, and to threaten to make him sew them on himself, and see if his work would stand impatient and clumsy fingers any better than hers. Impatient to take your clothes off, eh, John?
Bread pudding and hash sounds delicious, actually.
Aunt March usually gave the sisters a present of twenty-five dollars apiece at New Year's. I like how it says "usually" as if she sometimes decides not to.
"Twins, by Jupiter!" was all he said for a minute, then turning to the women with an appealing look that was comically piteous, he added, "Take 'em quick, somebody! I'm going to laugh, and I shall drop 'em." LMA doesn't often get praised for her humor but she really is good at it.
I forgot that Demi was John Laurence. Cute.
Calls
After an Amy chapter, a Jo, and a Meg, this chapter should arguably be a Beth one but it isn't.
When it comes to clothes, I am definitely Jo.
Real life reference: May Alcott was known for riding, rowing, dancing, and as a girl once shocked Julian Hawthorne (son of Nathaniel) by asking him if he didn't think it was nice for girls and boys to bathe together (as in swimming).
Poor Jo!
Consequences
There's probably no trope that annoys me than "lol girls are catty backstabbing bitches" combined with the lack of boy-on-girl bullying in fiction. So I don't care for this chapter and have nothing to say about it.
I totally feel for Jo here. But it's not like Amy doesn't deserve a trip to Europe. And Jo wouldn't have wanted to be in Europe when Beth died.
Our Foreign Correspondent
I've seen the imperial family several times, the emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the empress pale and pretty, but dressed in bad taste, I thought- purple dress, green hat, and yellow gloves. Amy March, criticizing the queen's fashion taste.
Ha, Kate playing matchmaker.
Tender Troubles
Oh no, Beth crying over babies because she knows she'll never get to see them grow up.
Marmee is such a good parent.
she preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.
Aww, Beth thinking Jo wants her to take care of her papers.
Jo refers to Laurie as her boy which makes it sound like she considers him her son.
Jo's Journal
Fritz's brother-in-law was American? Huh.
"almost forty" - See, he's not old!
Franz and Emil *squees*
Kid-me spent so much time trying to combine Bear and Beer.
♥ Fritz dancing with little Tina ♥
A Friend
"sitting with their heels rather higher than their hats" - That description has always stuck with me.
"People want to be amused, not preached at, you know. Morals don't sell nowadays." Which was not quite a correct statement, by the way. LOL
She was beginning to feel rather than see this, for much describing of other people's passions and feelings set her to studying and speculating about her own, a morbid amusement in which healthy young minds do not voluntarily indulge.
I don't think I agree with that. I guess if passions is an euphemism for sexual passions, it makes sense why LMA would think that, but if you take it as non-sexual passions and feelings, I don't see how studying them is a bad thing. I also dislike the idea that Jo, at 20 or 21, is too young for this. She's a grown woman. Infantilization is not okay.
Ah, Jo, never doing anything by halves! she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More, and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it.
The professor is in looooove.
Heartache
Aww, Laurie gave up billiards for Jo.
Too old, Jo? If you say so. I'm also confused by "you'd hate my scribbling" because in past chapters he's always approved of her writing, or at least the writing he knows about.
Beth's Secret
Jo: shipping Amy/Laurie before it even happened.
New Impressions
Finally, an Amy chapter, beginning with an edited passage from A Long Fatal Love Chase. It's now three o'clock instead of five, the Germans are sober instead of plain phlegmatic, the Russians are ugly instead of uncouth, and the French are lively instead of gay. And the Oxford comma exists in this book.
Christmas? We skipped the entire autumn.
Amy prefers to drive.
"Que pensez-vous?" she said, airing her French, which had improved in quantity, if not in quality, since she came abroad. Haha.
"Large-nosed Jew" really, Louisa?
Bossy Amy is bossy in bed.
On the Shelf
Ha, John thinking he forgot an anniversary.
Seriously Meg, just let Demi cry. To misquote Samantha Parkington's Grandmary, "Discipline is what turns boys into gentleman."
In her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names, but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and when John paused, shook her head and said with what she thought diplomatic ambiguity, "Well, I really don't see what we are coming to." I love this sentence.
A dull chapter, but some good advice for the girls reading it in 1869. Parents should take some time out for themselves, and it's good to attempt to take interest in your partner's interests. OTOH the whole "it's a wife's duty to make her husband happy" is outdated.
I hope Sallie Moffat nee Gardiner isn't too unhappy.
Lazy Laurence
I want to be great, or nothing. This is very much not a modern attitude, where we are constantly told to follow our dreams, shoot for the stars, dream big, and never give up. But really, it's okay to give up. Sometimes it hurts less to not try than to try and fail.
The switch from LW where only Jo gets something resembling the career she dreamed of and that fifteen years later, and Jo's Boys where everyone succeeds at their vocation is interesting.
"Quite right and proper, as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of your mother's girls." He's not wrong.
"You men tell us we are angels, and say we can make you what we will, but the instant we honestly try to do you good, you laugh at us and won't listen, which proves how much your flattery is worth." How little things have changed! (In some respects.)
You've compared Amy to Juno, Diana, and Athena.
The Valley of the Shadow
Remember in Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery when she goes to the library and reads this chapter to cheer herself up?
Seldom except in books do the dying utter memorable words, see visions, or depart with beatified countenances, and those who have sped many parting souls know that to most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep. As LMA would actually know.
Learning to Forget
I feel like all of this is Alcott working out her own feelings about her writing talent. She didn't expect to spend her career writing children's books and when young she might have dreamed of being Charlotte Bronte but she took the success that came to her.
I remember reading some conversation, I think on Livejournal, about the phrase wild oats. Someone said it was sexual and so it wouldn't be used in whatever canon they were talking about, I think Harry Potter. But since I first encountered it here I never thought of it as having a sexual connotation and was surprised at the idea.
He defines himself as Jo's Boy and clings to this identity, because it's hard to lose your self-definition.
This is the greatest love scene ever. I'm only slightly exaggerating.
I hate the musical for ruining their romance, for making it seem shallow and sudden and every second of its Amy characterization is off, completely and utterly off. I. Hate. The. Musical.
All Alone
Poor Jo, I feel for her so much.
Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral storybook, she ought at this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet, with tracts in her pocket.
You say that as if she isn't. But if you compare them to other books of the same period, the Marches are more lively and flawed than Elsie Dinsmore.
WTF, they knew about the Amy/Laurie engagement before the wedding? That's the most surprising part of the book so far. I remembered it wrong because that's how Emil does it in Jo's Boys and he specifically mentions that he did it because they thought it was funny the first time.
Surprises
"Almost twenty-five, and nothing to show for it." We feel you, Jo.
Best quote in the entire book: "Jo must have fallen asleep (as I dare say my reader has during this little homily)"
If I could draw, I would draw Laurie on his knees before Jo.
♥ Fritz playing with the twins ♥ And he bought a new suit to visit her.
What else of his does Jo prefer rampantly erect?
"I suspect that is a wise man." You suspect, Mr. March?
Oh gosh he kisses her picture. This is my favorite chapter, yes, even more than Learning to Forget.
My Lord and Lady
Madam Mother again!
"Men are so helpless, Mother," said Amy, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband. Misandry!
I love that Laurie and Bhaer are friends.
Daisy and Demi
Kid me didn't get the prattling Brooke pun.
Don't you love it when fictional children act realistically?
The Bear-Man ♥
"counterfeit philoprogenitiveness"
I adore Frank T. Merrill's illustration of Demi and March with their legs in the air.
Under the Umbrella
Fritz doesn't like tea.
But owing to the flutter she was in, everything amiss. She upset the tray of needles, forgot the silesia was to be 'twilled' till it was cut off, gave the wrong change, and covered herself with confusion by asking for lavender ribbon at the calico counter. I am Jo, again.
Ha, rainbows in his beard.
"Say 'thou', also, and I shall say your language is almost as beautiful as mine." I tried saying thou once as a kid but it got me a weird look so I stopped.
He's not old he's in his prime /Master and Commander reference.
This is my second favorite chapter. It makes me so happy.
Harvest Time
♥ Laurie being all grown-up and practical.
Every room in the big house was soon full. Every little plot in the garden soon had its owner. A regular menagerie appeared in barn and shed, for pet animals were allowed. And three times a day, Jo smiled at her Fritz from the head of a long table lined on either side with rows of happy young faces, which all turned to her with affectionate eyes, confiding words, and grateful hearts, full of love for 'Mother Bhaer'.
help help I'm dying of feels
Mr. March's name revealed in the final chapter: Robert.
That sentence has four semicolons.
a family apple harvest/picnic sounds like lots of fun I want to do it.
People can look down on happy endings all they want. I like a good one.
Next: An Old-Fashioned Girl
This entry was originally posted at https://nocowardsoul.dreamwidth.org/40112.html
Laurie's power of persuasion must be a nice thing to have.
You see, having said that if Meg married 'that Brooke' she shouldn't have a cent of her money, Aunt March was rather in a quandary when time had appeased her wrath and made her repent her vow. :DDDDD
"Amy, you are getting altogether too handsome for a single lady." OTP foreshadowing.
Kitty Bryant is mentioned again. Nice continuity.
The First Wedding
Meg kissing Marmee is odd, and I can't imagine any non-fictional groom not being upset at it. But there are too few mama's girls in fiction and so I can't hate Meg for it.
PSA: Alcohol is bad.
Artistic Attempts
I want to see, on screen, Amy getting her foot stuck in plaster so much.
This scene makes more sense if you know that back then lobster was cheap, so Amy is embarrassed at looking poor. The Tudors were a real family, and one descendant, Tasha Tudor, was an author and artist who illustrated both Little Women and a collection titled A Round Dozen. I actually didn't know about the former until just now.
Laurie's birthday gift to Amy was a tiny coral lobster in the shape of a charm for her watch guard. And she treasured it forever as the first piece of jewelry her husband ever bought her.
Literary Lessons
It was a People's Course, the lecture on the Pyramids, and Jo rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the Pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.
WTF Jo, the point is to have fun. And yes, some poor people do find lectures on Egyptology fun.
"SLANG Northbury" plays on the writer EDEN Southworth.
In the hope of pleasing everyone, she took everyone's advice, and like the old man and his donkey in the fable suited nobody. A very good fable, that one.
Domestic Experiences
As for buttons, she soon learned to wonder where they went, to shake her head over the carelessness of men, and to threaten to make him sew them on himself, and see if his work would stand impatient and clumsy fingers any better than hers. Impatient to take your clothes off, eh, John?
Bread pudding and hash sounds delicious, actually.
Aunt March usually gave the sisters a present of twenty-five dollars apiece at New Year's. I like how it says "usually" as if she sometimes decides not to.
"Twins, by Jupiter!" was all he said for a minute, then turning to the women with an appealing look that was comically piteous, he added, "Take 'em quick, somebody! I'm going to laugh, and I shall drop 'em." LMA doesn't often get praised for her humor but she really is good at it.
I forgot that Demi was John Laurence. Cute.
Calls
After an Amy chapter, a Jo, and a Meg, this chapter should arguably be a Beth one but it isn't.
When it comes to clothes, I am definitely Jo.
Real life reference: May Alcott was known for riding, rowing, dancing, and as a girl once shocked Julian Hawthorne (son of Nathaniel) by asking him if he didn't think it was nice for girls and boys to bathe together (as in swimming).
Poor Jo!
Consequences
There's probably no trope that annoys me than "lol girls are catty backstabbing bitches" combined with the lack of boy-on-girl bullying in fiction. So I don't care for this chapter and have nothing to say about it.
I totally feel for Jo here. But it's not like Amy doesn't deserve a trip to Europe. And Jo wouldn't have wanted to be in Europe when Beth died.
Our Foreign Correspondent
I've seen the imperial family several times, the emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the empress pale and pretty, but dressed in bad taste, I thought- purple dress, green hat, and yellow gloves. Amy March, criticizing the queen's fashion taste.
Ha, Kate playing matchmaker.
Tender Troubles
Oh no, Beth crying over babies because she knows she'll never get to see them grow up.
Marmee is such a good parent.
she preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.
Aww, Beth thinking Jo wants her to take care of her papers.
Jo refers to Laurie as her boy which makes it sound like she considers him her son.
Jo's Journal
Fritz's brother-in-law was American? Huh.
"almost forty" - See, he's not old!
Franz and Emil *squees*
Kid-me spent so much time trying to combine Bear and Beer.
♥ Fritz dancing with little Tina ♥
A Friend
"sitting with their heels rather higher than their hats" - That description has always stuck with me.
"People want to be amused, not preached at, you know. Morals don't sell nowadays." Which was not quite a correct statement, by the way. LOL
She was beginning to feel rather than see this, for much describing of other people's passions and feelings set her to studying and speculating about her own, a morbid amusement in which healthy young minds do not voluntarily indulge.
I don't think I agree with that. I guess if passions is an euphemism for sexual passions, it makes sense why LMA would think that, but if you take it as non-sexual passions and feelings, I don't see how studying them is a bad thing. I also dislike the idea that Jo, at 20 or 21, is too young for this. She's a grown woman. Infantilization is not okay.
Ah, Jo, never doing anything by halves! she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More, and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it.
The professor is in looooove.
Heartache
Aww, Laurie gave up billiards for Jo.
Too old, Jo? If you say so. I'm also confused by "you'd hate my scribbling" because in past chapters he's always approved of her writing, or at least the writing he knows about.
Beth's Secret
Jo: shipping Amy/Laurie before it even happened.
New Impressions
Finally, an Amy chapter, beginning with an edited passage from A Long Fatal Love Chase. It's now three o'clock instead of five, the Germans are sober instead of plain phlegmatic, the Russians are ugly instead of uncouth, and the French are lively instead of gay. And the Oxford comma exists in this book.
Christmas? We skipped the entire autumn.
Amy prefers to drive.
"Que pensez-vous?" she said, airing her French, which had improved in quantity, if not in quality, since she came abroad. Haha.
"Large-nosed Jew" really, Louisa?
Bossy Amy is bossy in bed.
On the Shelf
Ha, John thinking he forgot an anniversary.
Seriously Meg, just let Demi cry. To misquote Samantha Parkington's Grandmary, "Discipline is what turns boys into gentleman."
In her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names, but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and when John paused, shook her head and said with what she thought diplomatic ambiguity, "Well, I really don't see what we are coming to." I love this sentence.
A dull chapter, but some good advice for the girls reading it in 1869. Parents should take some time out for themselves, and it's good to attempt to take interest in your partner's interests. OTOH the whole "it's a wife's duty to make her husband happy" is outdated.
I hope Sallie Moffat nee Gardiner isn't too unhappy.
Lazy Laurence
I want to be great, or nothing. This is very much not a modern attitude, where we are constantly told to follow our dreams, shoot for the stars, dream big, and never give up. But really, it's okay to give up. Sometimes it hurts less to not try than to try and fail.
The switch from LW where only Jo gets something resembling the career she dreamed of and that fifteen years later, and Jo's Boys where everyone succeeds at their vocation is interesting.
"Quite right and proper, as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of your mother's girls." He's not wrong.
"You men tell us we are angels, and say we can make you what we will, but the instant we honestly try to do you good, you laugh at us and won't listen, which proves how much your flattery is worth." How little things have changed! (In some respects.)
You've compared Amy to Juno, Diana, and Athena.
The Valley of the Shadow
Remember in Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery when she goes to the library and reads this chapter to cheer herself up?
Seldom except in books do the dying utter memorable words, see visions, or depart with beatified countenances, and those who have sped many parting souls know that to most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep. As LMA would actually know.
Learning to Forget
I feel like all of this is Alcott working out her own feelings about her writing talent. She didn't expect to spend her career writing children's books and when young she might have dreamed of being Charlotte Bronte but she took the success that came to her.
I remember reading some conversation, I think on Livejournal, about the phrase wild oats. Someone said it was sexual and so it wouldn't be used in whatever canon they were talking about, I think Harry Potter. But since I first encountered it here I never thought of it as having a sexual connotation and was surprised at the idea.
He defines himself as Jo's Boy and clings to this identity, because it's hard to lose your self-definition.
This is the greatest love scene ever. I'm only slightly exaggerating.
I hate the musical for ruining their romance, for making it seem shallow and sudden and every second of its Amy characterization is off, completely and utterly off. I. Hate. The. Musical.
All Alone
Poor Jo, I feel for her so much.
Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral storybook, she ought at this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet, with tracts in her pocket.
You say that as if she isn't. But if you compare them to other books of the same period, the Marches are more lively and flawed than Elsie Dinsmore.
WTF, they knew about the Amy/Laurie engagement before the wedding? That's the most surprising part of the book so far. I remembered it wrong because that's how Emil does it in Jo's Boys and he specifically mentions that he did it because they thought it was funny the first time.
Surprises
"Almost twenty-five, and nothing to show for it." We feel you, Jo.
Best quote in the entire book: "Jo must have fallen asleep (as I dare say my reader has during this little homily)"
If I could draw, I would draw Laurie on his knees before Jo.
♥ Fritz playing with the twins ♥ And he bought a new suit to visit her.
What else of his does Jo prefer rampantly erect?
"I suspect that is a wise man." You suspect, Mr. March?
Oh gosh he kisses her picture. This is my favorite chapter, yes, even more than Learning to Forget.
My Lord and Lady
Madam Mother again!
"Men are so helpless, Mother," said Amy, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband. Misandry!
I love that Laurie and Bhaer are friends.
Daisy and Demi
Kid me didn't get the prattling Brooke pun.
Don't you love it when fictional children act realistically?
The Bear-Man ♥
"counterfeit philoprogenitiveness"
I adore Frank T. Merrill's illustration of Demi and March with their legs in the air.
Under the Umbrella
Fritz doesn't like tea.
But owing to the flutter she was in, everything amiss. She upset the tray of needles, forgot the silesia was to be 'twilled' till it was cut off, gave the wrong change, and covered herself with confusion by asking for lavender ribbon at the calico counter. I am Jo, again.
Ha, rainbows in his beard.
"Say 'thou', also, and I shall say your language is almost as beautiful as mine." I tried saying thou once as a kid but it got me a weird look so I stopped.
He's not old he's in his prime /Master and Commander reference.
This is my second favorite chapter. It makes me so happy.
Harvest Time
♥ Laurie being all grown-up and practical.
Every room in the big house was soon full. Every little plot in the garden soon had its owner. A regular menagerie appeared in barn and shed, for pet animals were allowed. And three times a day, Jo smiled at her Fritz from the head of a long table lined on either side with rows of happy young faces, which all turned to her with affectionate eyes, confiding words, and grateful hearts, full of love for 'Mother Bhaer'.
help help I'm dying of feels
Mr. March's name revealed in the final chapter: Robert.
That sentence has four semicolons.
a family apple harvest/picnic sounds like lots of fun I want to do it.
People can look down on happy endings all they want. I like a good one.
Next: An Old-Fashioned Girl
This entry was originally posted at https://nocowardsoul.dreamwidth.org/40112.html