Little Women
Alcott wrote the novel that set the shape of girlhood in American literature, four sisters growing up during the Civil War, each finding her own way.
Read this if you…
- want a very warm positive pro-family book (this is one I recommended to my mom)
- are reading all the transcendentalists (this one is the least like the others)
- saw the Greta Gerwig film (which is also fantastic)
- want a female dominated book (4 sisters are main characters)
Skip this if you…
- hate families
Why It Matters
Alcott wrote the novel that set the shape of girlhood in American literature, four sisters growing up during the Civil War, each finding her own way. Jo March's ambition and independence and refusal to behave made her the model for every headstrong literary heroine after her. The book has never gone out of print because every generation keeps recognizing itself in it.
Where to go next
- The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Little Women built on it. - *Little Women* opens "Playing Pilgrims" for a reason — Alcott built the whole first volume as a domesticated retelling of Christian's journey - In chapter two each sister is given her own copy of Bunyan's book; its language threads through the chapter titles and the girls' private struggles - Read it first and the March sisters' "burdens" stop being a quaint metaphor and become exactly what Bunyan meant — the load of sin and self you carry toward the Celestial City
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Little Women built on it. - Jo March has a clear literary mother: Brontë's Jane, the heroine the young Alcott loved best - Alcott called *Jane Eyre* a favorite and modeled her teenage first novel on it, even studying Charlotte Brontë's life for inspiration - Read Brontë first to see where the headstrong, plain-spoken heroine begins — the type Alcott then made her own in Jo
Depicted in Art
The four March sisters — Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy — posed together in Smith's signature soft-focus watercolor style.
Jessie Willcox Smith, 1923
Professor Bhaer with little Tina perched on his foot, the boarding-house scene that warms Jo to him.
May Alcott, 1869
The four March sisters gathered together — the original frontispiece introducing Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy.
May Alcott, 1869
Jo and Beth March together in a tender sisterly moment from Good Wives.
May Alcott, 1869
Jo March in conversation, hand gesturing — a characteristic Merrill portrait of Jo's energy.
Frank T. Merrill, 1880
Recommended Editions
Penguin Classics
1989
Elaine Showalter's Penguin reads the March sisters against Alcott's own ambivalence about domesticity. A clean, well-annotated text and a sharp introduction that finds the teeth in a book that gets sentimentalized.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.”
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”