The two families become acquainted following these acts of kindness. Laurence has sent over a decadent surprise dinner to make up for their breakfast. When they return, they discover their wealthy, elderly neighbour Mr. When Marmee asks her daughters to give their Christmas breakfast away to an impoverished family, the girls and their mother venture into town laden with baskets to feed the hungry children. The mother and daughters face their first Christmas without him. Having lost all his money, their father is serving as a chaplain for the Union Army in the American Civil War, far from home. Plot summary Part One įour sisters and their mother, whom they call Marmee, live in a new neighbourhood (loosely based on Concord) in Massachusetts in genteel poverty. Other views suggest the title was meant to highlight the unfair social inferiority, especially at that time, of women as compared to men, or alternatively, describe the lives of simple people, "unimportant" in the social sense. Each of the March sister heroines has a harrowing experience that alerts her and the reader that "childhood innocence" is of the past, and that "the inescapable woman problem" is all that remains. Explanation of the novel's title Īccording to literary critic Sarah Elbert, when using the term "little women", Alcott was drawing on its Dickensian meaning it represented the period in a young woman's life where childhood and elder childhood are "overlapping" with young womanhood. : 335–336 The completed manuscript was shown to several girls who agreed it was "splendid.” Alcott wrote, "they are the best critics, so I should definitely be satisfied." : 37 She wrote Little Women "in record time for money," : 196x2 but the book's immediate success surprised both her and her publisher. But Niles's niece, Lillie Almy, read them and said she enjoyed them. : 335- "I plod away," she wrote in her diary, "although I don't enjoy this sort of things." : 37īy June, Alcott had sent the first dozen chapters to Niles, and both agreed that they were dull. : xiii She later recalled that she did not think she could write a successful book for girls and did not enjoy writing it. I said I'd try." : 36 Alcott set her novel in an imaginary Orchard House modeled on her own residence of the same name, where she wrote the novel. In May 1868, Alcott wrote in her journal: "Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girl's book. : 207 Louisa confided to a friend, “I could not write a girls' story knowing little about any but my own sisters and always preferring boys”, as quoted in Anne Boyd Rioux's Meg Jo Beth Amy, a condensed biographical account of Alcott's life and writing. Niles pressed her to write the girls' book first, and he was aided by her father Amos Bronson Alcott, who also urged her to do so. : 2 At first, she resisted, preferring to publish a collection of short stories. In 1868, Thomas Niles, the publisher of Louisa May Alcott's works, recommended that she write a book about girls that would have widespread appeal. The book has been translated into numerous languages, and frequently adapted for stage and screen. Elbert argues that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the " All-American girl" and that her various aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters. The novel has been said to address three major themes: "domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity." : 200 According to Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new form of literature, one that took elements from romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels, resulting in a totally new genre. Alcott subsequently wrote two sequels to her popular work, both also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). The two volumes were issued in 1880 as a single novel titled Little Women. Alcott quickly completed a second volume (titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, though the name originated with the publisher and not Alcott). Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success, with readers eager for more about the characters. Loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters, : 202 it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy-and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. Originally published in two volumes in 18, Alcott wrote the book over several months at the request of her publisher. Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888).