sunshowerdandelion: (read)
[personal profile] sunshowerdandelion
I expected the book would be full of pat lessons, but it's actually really characterful. I think I noticed it quite late - the scene with the limes, where the teacher doing the smacking-around was characterized nicely. Sometimes it feels very playful, like the characterization emerges within the context of the sermons, and moralizing (the book's own words!) - like towards the end, where the sisters attempt to moralize themselves out of a problem, but fail to do so. I cried at several bits: The bit where Mr. Laurence is reminded of his deceased daughter by Beth's playing and at the end when it seems like a character's died but is actually sleeping soundly. I like how grouchy Aunt March is occasionally right (especially at the end!) and how the parents seem to have their own problems.

The book is a total frame, I think: This is how the world seems, reads, feels to these Protestants and it does a good job of disturbing that frame sometimes. That things occasionally are not explicable according to the frame. I sensed that the bits about Catholicism were put in because there was anti-Catholic prejudice at the time?

I'm looking forward to Part II but I think I'll read something with more exotic adventure in it first!

June 2025

S M T W T F S
12 34 5 67
8 910 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 1819 20 21
22 232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 24th, 2025 10:56 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios