Little Men Reread Part III: Writing

With my Little Men reread I couldn't help noticing that stylistically it isn't like books we see today. It doesn't follow what I've learned about writing. This doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. It means it was written in a different period when different tastes prevailed.

Point of View.

This is the first thing that struck me while reading Little Men. It's written in the third person and moves around from character to character's head. This isn't something we see a lot of these days. It's not that it's wrong. It's just that it's much more popular in days of old than it is now. Now, particularly in children's and YA fiction, we see first-person narrators. When we do see a third-person narrator, it's often a third-person limited narrator. Meaning the book is written in the third person from one character's point-of-view, getting into only his/her head. That character is on stage always, and the reader can only know what he/she knows. Little Men isn't like that.

That Third Person Narrator

Little Men is written in the third person, except for every now and then when it's not. The first line of Chapter II: "While Nat takes a good long sleep, I will tell my little readers something about the boys, among whom he found himself when when he woke up." The second paragraph begins with "To begin with our old friends." In the middle of Chapter III: "I don't know whether the man understood the child's mute language or not, but when the boys were all gathered together in Mrs. Bhaer's parlor for the Sunday evening talk, he chose a subject which might have been suggested by the walk in the garden." We see "I" again in Chapter IV. Chapter V. Hmm. Does it happen once a chapter? However often it happens, it happens. Who is the mysterious I? We never know.

There's No Real Story Here

There's no main character. There's no one particular something that happens to somebody. These days, we usually expect a character with a goal in books. A character with a problem to solve or with something to want that he or she has trouble getting. This isn't me being finicky or obsessive, by the way. At the beginning of Chapter VIII, "I" says:

"AS there is no particular plan to this story, except to describe a few scenes in the life at Plumfield for the amusement of certain little persons, we will gently ramble along in this chapter and tell some of the pastimes of Mrs. Jo's boys. I beg leave to assure my honored readers that most of the incidents are taken from real life, and that the oddest are the truest; for no person, no matter how vivid an imagination he may have, can invent anything half so droll as the freaks and fancies that originate in the lively brains of little people."

Not something you see a lot of these days.

Fat Shaming

Fat shaming, as such, may not have been "a thing" in the nineteenth century. As such, it probably wasn't a thing when I read this book over and over again when I was a child. I hadn't even heard the term when I read this book to my sons when they were little men. But, man, the fat shaming in this book is hard to ignore. It's all directed toward one character, George, who is called Stuffy by everyone. (Because he stuffs himself, see?)  George's weight, and more particularly, his desire to eat and eat a lot, defines him. It most definitely appears to be considered a character flaw within the world of Little Men. Readers first hear of him as "the fat one."

There used to be a feeling, and perhaps there still is, that the values of the present age cannot be imposed upon the people of an earlier one. For instance, the medical world didn't know about germs until the end of the nineteenth century, so we can't condemn doctors before that period for not washing their hands between patients and thus spreading disease. (Do other viewers cringe while watching the ungloved, unwashed doctors on Mercy Street?) Perhaps someone has done a study of nineteenth century literature, journals, and letters and can attest to the era's attitude toward people like poor George who is, in Little Men, probably not even in his early teens. Maybe this is just the way things were back then.

However, I can't help but find it striking that in a book that pushes values, gives us at least one scene with a story about Jesus, goes on and on about achieving goodness, no one recognizes the cruelty of name calling. While we see examples of one boy protecting another from bullying or pain inflicted by others, no one does this for George. The Professor and Mrs. Jo also do little to protect this child. When Jo's mother (that would be Marmee, Little Women fans) sends little cakes made in various shapes for the boys,  George's is in the shape of a fat pig. When the rind of the melons he's been growing all season is carved with the word "pig," Jo is sympathetic, but instead of punishing the vandals, she helps George play a very lame trick on them.

I have two contemporary YA novels on my Kindle that appear to have overweight main characters. I hope now to get around to reading them soon.

Well, I'm Glad I'm Done With This

Remember how closely I feel my adult life followed a Little Men type of arc? Yeah, this reread has, as I said yesterday, made me feel just dandy about that. And, yet, I now want to reread Little Women and get hold of a copy of  Eden's Outcasts. Because I have trouble leaving this alone.

Check out Little Men Reread Part II Not everything I thought it was.
Check out Little Men Reread Part I My life as Jo Bhaer.

Little Men Reread Part II: Content

My Little Men

As I suspected in yesterday's post, as an adult I'm nowhere near as fond of the book Little Men as I was when I was a child. Unfortunately, my life is a sort of ode to that book. I could have done worse, I suppose. I read a lot of Marvel comic books as a kid, too. Inappropriate adult spy novels. Historical romances. Nearly everything Agatha Christie wrote. At least in Little Men young boys living in a boarding school are exposed to a lot of improving generic spiritual stuff about sorting out your faults and taking care of your conscience. I don't recall seeing that in The Avengers.

 

 Does Alcott Romanticize Poverty And Women As Wives And Mothers?

I ask that question because she does it in An Old-Fashioned Girl. So, you know, I wondered.

Money. In Little Men it's not so much that Alcott romanticizes poverty, it's that she holds wealth, and particularly how it's achieved, in low regard. Jo and her husband, Professor Bhaer, run a boarding school and their student Jack represents the evils of business. He's introduced as "sly." "Many men would have thought him a smart boy, but Mr. Bhaer did not like his way of illustrating that Yankee word, and thought his unboyish keenness and money-loving as...an affliction..." Jack's uncle is described as setting a bad example for him, presumably with the keenness and money-loving. Yes, Jack steals from one of his classmates, lies about it, and lets someone else take the blame for it. But that's his function in the story. He's interested in money, so he's bad. Seriously, Jack has warts. He's even physically marked.

Laurie from Little Women darts in and out of Little Men. He has great wealth, but even though there's a reference to him being in business, he is a beloved character who uses his money for good. Why? He's known Jo and her family for years, is married to her sister, and they have had an improving influence upon him. "I'm the first boy Mrs. Jo ever had to take care of...she has been working on me for years and years."

So a variation of the poverty vs. wealth/business issue appears in Little Men.

Women. The women in Little Men are particularly intriguing. First, we have Daisy, Jo's niece, and Nan, an unrelated student. Poor Daisy appears to be being trained for service to family. She attends real classes, but we never see her in the classroom. Her interests appear to be all domestic, and she loves doing things for others, particularly for her male classmates. Her playing involves domestic tasks like cooking and, I kid you not, doing laundry.

Nan is a wild child, not traditionally domestic. Her interests do involve care giving, though. She's already headed for a career in medicine. (I've read Jo's Boys.) Jo believes she will make a "capital doctor" and wants to convince Nan's father to support her, because Nan "...wants something to live for even now, and will be one of the sharp, strong, discontented women if she does not have it." I'm not sure what that means. Do more domestic women like Daisy not have something to live for? Is being sharp and strong and discontented a big negative?

A reader could argue that in Daisy and Nan Alcott is presenting women's choices, choices that most women probably didn't have in the 1860s when this book was written. Then there is little Bess. What about her?

Bess is Laurie's very young daughter, making her another of Jo's nieces, who only visits the school. She is beloved by all, primarily because she is a beautiful child. She may be beautiful inside and out, but the outside gets a lot of attention. Her big chapter is called "Goldilocks."

And then there's Jo. Not once in Little Men do we see a reference to Jo writing, which pretty much defined her in Little Women. (I think it may come up in Jo's Boys.) Nor does she teach at the  school she runs with her husband, not in the traditional sense of the word. She influences all as a loving mother figure, one who teaches through spiritual analogies, and, I guess, mother love. There's a lot of talk of sowing, gardening, and reaping in this book, for instance. There's a lot of intuitive knowing what her boys need. When she was hanging drapes and folding clothes and fitting Nan for a new pinafore, I kept thinking, Jo, Jo, what happened to you? And this exchange between Jo and her husband was a little chilling:

"But needlework is not a fashionable accomplishment, my dear."
"Sorry for it. My girls shall learn all I can teach them about it, even if they give up the Latin, Algebra, and half-a-dozen ologies it is considered necessary for girls to muddle their poor brains over now-a-days."

Yiiiiiikes.

Just as with An Old-Fashioned Girl, there's a lot of romanticizing of women as wives and mothers in Little Men and then one different kind of woman (in this case, Nan) thrown in. It's hard to figure out what is going on here.

And Speaking of "Old-Fashioned"

Alcott uses the express "old-fashioned" a number of times in Little Men and very favorably.

"These were the boys and they lived together as happy as twelve lads could, studying and playing, working and squabbling, fighting faults and cultivating virtues in the good old-fashioned way."

""Once upon a time," began Mr. Bhaer, in the dear old-fashioned way, "there was a great and wise gardener who had the largest garden ever seen." I told you there was a lot of garden talk in this book.

""You shall ferule me in the good old-fashioned way; I seldom do it myself, but it may make you remember better to give me pain than to feel it yourself."

"""First of all, put on this clean cap and apron. I am rather old-fashioned, and I like my cook to be very tidy.""

""Miss Crane kept a school for boys in a quiet little town, and a very good school it was, of the old-fashioned sort.""

"This yearly festival was always kept at Plumfield in the good old-fashioned way..."

"Old-fashioned" is always used to describe something good (except for that feruling business), just as it is in An Old-Fashioned Girl.

What Are You Driving At, Gail? You Are Driving At Something, Right?

Ah...I don't know. Little Men is sometimes considered part of a Little Women trilogy, but it seems to owe a lot to An Old-Fashioned Girl, which was published just the year before. The whole domestic goddess thing I see in these books seems so much at odds with what I know about Alcott's life. She was a woman who had to do what she condemns Jack for in Little Men, care about business and make money. In fact, Susan Bailey says at Louisa May Alcott is My Passion that Alcott wrote Little Men to provide financial support for her young nephews after the sudden death of her brother-in-law. (The John Brooke chapter in Little Men.)

Now, I need to reread Little Women at some point. Also Eden's Outcasts, a double biography of Louisa and Bronson Alcott. (Her father. Yeah. If anyone had understandable father issues, it would be LMA.)

Tomorrow

Sadly, I am going to have to do a third Little Men post, because there are some things I want to share about how the writing of the book differs from what we expect today. And I've got to get the fat-shaming business off my chest.

Part III. Writing.

The "Little Men" Reread Part I: Why?

I wanted to take part in Read-at-Home-Mom's Old School Kid-lit Reading Challenge sometime this year. This month the Challenge's category is Books You Loved In Childhood. This was a 'fall into Gail's lap' sort of situation because my favorite book from childhood is Louisa May Alcott's Little Men, which is certainly old school, and I've been interested in rereading it for years. Thus I'm beginning what I hope will be a two-part (no more) Little Men Old School arc.

Some Backstory. Lots Of Backstory, To Be Honest

Read to death.

What do I mean when I say that Little Men was my favorite book from childhood? I mean that I read
our house copy until the last page fell out. By "house copy" I mean an edition published in 1913, which I think came from my mother's family, though she has no recollection of it. So I may not have to have read it very often to make that page drop out and disappear. As it turns out, I still have this copy, and it's what I read this month. As you  can see, time has not been kind to it. The front cover was already close to coming off, but this last read toasted the back.

Husband with beard. Two sons.

You used to hear that all girls wanted to be Jo in Little Women. I wanted to be Jo in Little Men. To a very great, and bizarre, extent, I succeeded. I wrote books like Jo. Like Jo, I married a man who eventually grew a beard. (He isn't a professor, but his father was.) We had two sons.

Running boys

For years, my yard was full of boys. I mean, full of boys. And while I didn't run a school, I volunteered at our elementary school for probably eight or nine years, taught Sunday school for maybe eleven, and was an assistant taekwondo instructor for three. I will argue that my teaching time is comparable to Jo's because she spends a lot of time in Little Men hanging curtains and darning socks.

  

Look at all the boys!

 At any rate, I felt I was one of the lucky few who had lived the   dream.

And Then...

...I read Alcott's An Old-Fashioned Girl. I found it "hardcore nineteenth century instructive, improving literature for the young. In her Preface, Alcott is very clear that this is no accident. She knows exactly what she's doing:

'The 'Old-Fashioned Girl' is not intended as a perfect model, but as a possible improvement upon the Girl of the Period, who seems sorrowfully ignorant or ashamed of the good old fashions...'"

In OFG, Alcott romanticizes poverty  and  women as wives and mothers. Lots of stereotypes. Old- Fashioned Girl left me wondering, Was Little Men, which I'd kind of based my life on, like this, too?

 Part II tomorrow.