Posts Tagged ‘jo march’

“November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year,” said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.

“That’s the reason I was born in it,” observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.

Now that November is coming to an end, it’s time to celebrate the birthday of Louisa May Alcott, who was born on this day in 1832.  And so, you’re in for a treat…Kelly O’Connor McNees, author of The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott , is here to give her thoughts on the very human LMA.  Welcome, Kelly!

I have always loved Little Women, of course, but Little Women is not really what made me want to write a novel about Louisa May Alcott. If I had never read any other novels or stories written by Louisa, nor any of the books written about her, I probably would have gone on happily rereading Little Women each year around Christmastime and not thinking very much about the woman who created it.

But one day in the library I picked up a copy of Martha Saxton’s biography of Louisa May Alcott. It stirred something in me and suddenly I wanted to read everything in the Alcott solar system but Little Women. This includes dozens and dozens of stories, a few novels, and one piece of thinly disguised journalism about her experience as a nurse during the Civil War. Next, I turned to Louisa’s collected letters and journals and the biographies by Madeline Stern and John Matteson.

The narrative voice of Little Women is polished and reserved, a spinster aunt telling a group of children a cozy story in which she has no personal stake. But the voice and content of Louisa’s other work, not to mention her letters and journals, is immediate and vibrant. This writing and the biographies reveal her to have been a person of intense and changing states of mind, one who was, in turns, passionate, depressed, prickly, angry, manic, lonely, and full of good humor. In other words, Louisa May Alcott was a real person. And realizing that is what made me want to write a novel about her.

I could list the facts that usually scandalize and/or surprise fans of gentle-mannered Little Women, and there are plenty—Louisa wrote sensational tales under a pen name and was very much motivated by money; she wrote about love gone violently awry, stalkers, and illegitimate children, as well as the experience of opium, to which she became addicted after years of chronic pain—but a mere list, without the context that life, day in and out, provides, seems to me a boring exercise.

I was and am interested in the choices Louisa made each day in her attempt to cultivate a certain kind of life that was rare indeed for a woman in her time: A life of independence and fulfilling work. We know, looking back, that she was destined to become one of the most famous women in human history, but until, at age 35, she wrote the book that became a bestseller, she did not know what the future held. And, yet, she rose each day and wrote until her hand cramped, determined to persevere to publication—not to be lauded, but so that she could provide for her family. Where does that drive come from? What hopes and wounds resided in the heart of this real woman? That’s the question I wrote The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott to answer.

Kelly O’Connor McNees is a former editorial assistant and English teacher. Born and raised in Michigan, she has lived in New York, Rhode Island, and Ontario and now resides with her husband in Chicago. The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott is her first novel.

Welcome to October, a month of writing, of working, of striving, and of celebrating.  I’m not sure how it’s possible, but The Heroine’s Bookshelf comes out in 19 days!  In the meantime, I find that a heroine is well-suited by October:

• ramblings
• conversations with dear friends
• rifling through the kitchen to find where the tea is
• thinking hard about best cardigan to value ratio
• shirking raking duty whenever possible!

How about you?  What’s on a heroine’s docket this October?

Jo was very busy in the garret, for the October days began to grow chilly, and the afternoons were short. For two or three hours the sun lay warmly in the high window, showing Jo seated on the old sofa, writing busily, with her papers spread out upon a trunk before her, while Scrabble, the pet rat, promenaded the beams overhead, accompanied by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was evidently very proud of his whiskers.

Quite absorbed in her work, Jo scribbled away till the last page was filled, when she signed her name with a flourish and threw down her pen, exclaiming…
“There, I’ve done my best! If this won’t suit I shall have to wait till I can do better.”
- Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

It’s a singularly exciting, overwhelming, and trying time these days.  I find myself on quite the rollercoaster of ups and downs in terms of my day job, my writing, my relationships, and my own self-image.

Maybe it’s some kind of lunar phase or solar phenomenon (since everyone I know seems to be in upheaval), maybe it’s my age or something in the water.  I’m certainly at sea, and it turns out that all I really know for sure is what I have known how to do since the beginning…read myself into comfort and some semblance of sanity.

These days that usually looks like a book by or about Louisa May Alcott, irascible and overworked, overwrought and feisty and cranky as can be.  You wouldn’t know it to read Eight Cousins or Rose in Bloom, which are replete with moral lessons even when they show life’s trials (which usually involve things like struggling to be as good as you should be, or contracting a fever which is healed by a cousin’s devoted care).  But I recently had reason to turn back to Little Women…well, more truthfully, I took advantage of my participation in GalleyCat’s World’s Longest Literary Remix Contest (results coming soon!) to revisit it.  And when I took a close look at Chapter 1, I was startled by the sheer restless, anxious energy that spews forth from the book’s first beloved pages.

Just look at the verbs and descriptions:  over the course of a few passages, Jo

• grumbles
• lies on the rug
• states her work makes her “ready to fly out the window or cry”
• laughs
• stretches
• puts her hands in her pockets and whistles
• pulls off her hairnet and shakes down her hair
• warms Marmee’s slippers
• chokes on her tea and drops her bread, butter side down, on the carpet…
• and sings with her sisters.

Could there be a better portrait of the restless energy of a 15-year-old girl too big for her body and outgrowing everything about her life?  Could there be anything more appealing to a modern girl (or struggling, tired, manic, stressed-out woman)?  The beauty, of course, is that some of that anxious spirit comes from Louisa herself.  And just one chapter in, I’m plunged back into one of my primary reasons for persevering:  my admiration of an unconventional “little woman” and of her creator, who had this to say about strife:

I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.

Be patient, Jo, don’t get despondent or do rash things, write to me often, and be my brave girl, ready to help and cheer all.

- Marmee’s last words as she leaves to take care of Father in Washington, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

When I update my friends and (gulp) fans about book progress, there always seem to be a million unanswered questions.  Is there a cover yet?  Have you seen it in print?  When will it be in stores?  Have any of the foreign rights sold?  How will you possibly wait until October to hold your book in your hands?  Believe me, these are questions I share, too.

From sale (May 1, 2009) to publication (October 19, 2010) will have been just about a year and six months.  But before that came an even longer wait…three years of having an agent and no book to sell, years before that writing books that will (thank God) never see the light of day, waiting, working, and more waiting.  And I’m one of the lucky ones.  So many writers wait what seems like eons before finding the right publisher or agent for their work, before honing their craft or moving on or finding their perfect project.

Like Jo March, patience has never exactly been my strong suit.  I am quick to solidify an impression and even quicker to get flustered when things don’t go my way.  So this entire process has been an exercise in self-control.  Now that the years seem to speed by like unruly comets, I know that October will be here before I know it.  My challenge is to fill the wait with both enjoyment (this is my only time to enjoy being a first-time author, to experience the mystery of seeing my debut come into the world) and productivity (it’s time to get cracking on other projects so there is some kind of literary future ahead of me).  When people used to ask me about being a writer, my first question would be “how hard are you willing to work?”  Now I add “how are you at the whole waiting thing?” to the mix.  A heroine might not always be patient, but she can learn to love the wait, right?

Jo March – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

“Sorry you could find nothing better to read. I write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it.”

Born in 1832, Louisa May Alcott was as restless and energetic as her most beloved character, Jo. After a life of overwork and boundless ambition, Louisa died a beloved author in 1888.

For Book Clubs:

1. Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women for the sake of her finances (and on a tight deadline). How are work and money described in the book?.

2. Though Jo bashes against the barriers of traditional femininity, in many ways she stays a “little woman.” Discuss gender roles and restrictions in the novel.

3. Though the book has been lauded as a portrayal of positive sisterly relationships, it in fact shows many struggles between siblings. How do sisters fight in Little Women? What, if anything, do these struggles add to Alcott’s narrative?

4. Discuss the men of Little Women. Are they central or peripheral to the book’s narrative power?

5. Is Jo a heroine or an anti-heroine? Why or why not?