New to bookstore shelves as I write this introduction is novelist Katharine Weber’s contemporary spin on the Marches’ story, titled The Little Women. Weber’s third novel disrupts the sweet perseverance the girls demonstrate in Alcott’s original. Here, the three New York City Green sisters – Margaret, Joanna, and Amy (Beth had been a doomed turtle) – find out via e-mail that their English-professor mother has been having an affair. They run away from home in disappointment and outrage after their father blandly forgives her, and the younger sisters move into Margaret’s off-campus apartment at Yale University, where they try to set up an independent household. Weber even includes a lesbian subplot. Rather than employ a moralistic, Alcott-like omniscient narrator, Weber has Joanna tell the story from her perspective, with critical commentary in the form of “readers’ notes” from the other sisters. By granting the Green sisters a kind of divorce from their parents, Weber addresses the wishes of those readers who wanted alternative plots for Alcott’s Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. Although I haven’t yet found one, I wouldn’t be surprised to see an Internet site (like those that exist for pop-culture icons like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example) where Alcott admirers can post fan fiction they’ve composed based on the original. In fact, this is a great idea. If we don’t agree with the way Alcott handles the girls’ fates, we can take matters into our own hands – although we may find the task of creating an alternate universe as fully realized and as paradoxically timeless as Little Women’s much more difficult than we’d imagined.
Camille Cauti has a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University. Her dissertation concerns the Catholic conversion trend among the London avant-garde in the 1890s, including such figures as Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, John Gray, and Michael Field. Other academic inter ests have included nineteenth- and twentieth-century English poetry (in particular, John Keats, the Pre-Raphaelites, W. B. Yeats, and the connections between them), and Irish literature generally. She has also published on Italian-American studies. Cauti is a teacher, editor, and critic in New York. She also wrote the introduction and notes to the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
<p><emphasis><strong>PREFACE</strong></emphasis></p>“Go then, my little Book, and show to allThat entertain and bid thee welcome shall,What thou dost keep close shut up in thy breast;And wish what thou dost show them may be blestTo them for good, may make them choose to bePilgrims better, by far, than thee or me.Tell them of Mercy; she is oneWho early hath her pilgrimage begun.Yea, let young damsels learn of her to prizeThe world which is to come, and so be wise;For little tripping maids may follow GodAlong the ways which saintly feet have trod.”Adapted from JOHN BUNYAN{1}
<p><emphasis><strong>Part One</strong></emphasis></p><p>1</p><p><emphasis>Playing Pilgrims</emphasis></p>Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
“We’ve got Father and Mother and each other,” said Beth contentedly from her corner.
The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but darkened again as Jo said sadly, “We haven’t got Father, and shall not have him for a long time.” She didn’t say “perhaps never,” but each silently added it, thinking of Father far away, where the fighting was.
Nobody spoke for a minute; then Meg said in an altered tone, “You know the reason Mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army. We can’t do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don’t.” And Meg shook her head, as she thought regretfully of all the pretty things she wanted.
