Day 59.2: Little Women, Part I

[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!