Welcome to Little Women Month, and
what better place to start than with the original classic? In case you haven’t read it (and I don’t
doubt that most of my readers were assigned this book in grade school), Little
Women is the story of four sisters living in Civil War-era New England. The March girls are individually quite
different – the eldest, Meg, is motherly but yearns to be part of the social
whirl; Jo is a tomboy with literary ambitions; frail and saintly Beth is a
talented musician; and hot-tempered, vain Amy yearns to be an actress, though
soon discovers artistic ambitions of her own. Collectively, they are charitable
and resourceful, and strive to grow into accomplished and gentle women like
their mother to make their battlefield-enmired father proud. Complicating things is mischievous boy next
door Theodore Laurence, who will become romantically involved with two of the
girls and become the love object of another.
