Little Women

I am rereading Little Women.  I haven't read it or watched the movie since I was a kid. The only thing I really remember about the story is that I wanted to be Jo, I always cried and I called my Mother "Marmee" for a while afterwards.

(from Anthropologie)

A while back I purchased this lovely Penguin Classics edition of Little Women. I suspect that reading from something so aesthetically pleasing enhances your reading pleasure. So far I am definitely enjoying.   I particularly liked the introduction by literary critic Elaine Showalter. Her reminder that the late, great Simone de Beauvoir was heavily influenced by Little Women as a girl tickled my fancy. Elaine Showalter opens her Introduction by quoting Beauvoir:

There is one book in which I believed I had caught a glimpse of my future self: Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott....I identified myself with Jo, the intellectual. Brusque and bony, Jo clambered up into trees when she wanted to read; she was more tomboyish and daring than I was, but I shared her horror of sewing and housekeeping and her love of books. She wrote; in order to imitate her more completely, I composed two or three short stories. 

To think of what seems like a quaint, moral American story having an impact on the mind of the future  feminist thinker and co-founder of Existentialism seems, to use Jo's word, a "lark".  Especially when you consider that Simone de Beauvoir lived a life that was considered quite scandalous at the time. I wonder if she took it to heart when Marmee cautioned Jo "...better be happy old maids than unhappy wives..."(p.98).

Simone de Beauvoir