"Little Women by Louisa Alcott" How to Wonderfully Fumble at the Finish Line

 

    How in the world did Louisa May Alcott ruin the ending of this novel so hard? I will say this off the bat, Little Women is a good novel, I enjoyed it much more than most of the other "older" books I have read, specifically Laddie A True Blue Story, and Pride and Prejudice, that said though, is this really a feminist masterpiece? What I mean by that is that, the ending kind of sucks. You cannot tell me that Jo marrying Mr. Bhaer was realistic, and you can very much tell it was a product of the time. I suppose it was too bold to have Jo not marry, even if I thought she should have ended up with Laurie. Like, I don't know if it's my modern sensibilities, but the age gap between Mr. Bhaer and Jo is so creepy, I don't care if they were older (Jo was 25 and he was in his 40's), but it's legitimately baffling how they ended up together. I do not recall a single moment where she actually shows affection for him, and I thought it was a wholesome mentor, mentee relationship, but nope. I feel like they shoved Jo's marriage in the end because some publisher told Alcott that all the women needed to be married or dead.

    Speaking of death, what they did to Beth was a travesty, she's legitimately hoed so hard in this entire ordeal. Being the youngest, Beth hardly gets any chapters or pages dedicated to her, which is fine, someone has to draw the short end, but to add injury to insult, she is basically treated as an invalid the rest of the time she's alive. No chapters about how she's coming to terms with her own mortality as all her siblings are away? She falls ill because all of her other siblings are lazy, then stays that way until she withers away, without ever being of much consequence. It's actually insulting because I loved how much of an angle Beth was, so wholesome never complaining about anything, only to be shafted to the ends of the earth.

    And who do we get in return? Amy. Poor Amy, I feel bad for her, because is it not weird she fell in love with a dude everyone clearly knew was in love with her sister? It happened so abruptly too, I feel like there are fewer and fewer childhood loves that actually exist, because when you call someone your brother, it can be very difficult to call them a lover. I don't actually hate the idea of Jo and Laurie not being together, though to me they were endgame, I was just disappointed that it was mostly pawned off to Amy. At least it wasn't Beth like Jo thought. I know I'm complaining a lot about how this novel ended, but that's because I was actually quite enraptured with it, despite it not really being a genre I typically seek out, and being almost 500 pages.

    Honestly, I was impressed with it. I was afraid it would be too verbose for my liking, as I find many older novels are, but it wasn't. I thought it might be too dull for my liking, but the change of page following different girls was done pretty well. All this to say that I didn't enjoy the ending because I feel like it could have made the novel that much better. I mean it was pretty predictable once you found out that Jo rejected Amy, and once you saw Amy and Laurie together I simply knew what was about to happen. It wasn't as bad when I saw Mr. Bhaer show up, because I had a feeling with the foreshadowing that they were going to marry Jo off, I just hoped it'd be some new random guy we never met.

Final Score: 65/100

    500 pages is a lot, and honestly I usually reserve such high page counts for fantasy novels, in which there are many characters, multiple plots, and lore so deep you literally spend your sleeping hours dreaming about it and how you might adjust it to your own likings. I'd probably just tell you to watch the movie, and I only read this book because I had to for a class. I wouldn't say it's a waste though, but be warned, I am almost certain the ending is going to piss you off, because I know it did for me.