Volume 52, Number 17 · November 3, 2005
Liberated Girls
By Alison Lurie
Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys
by Louisa May Alcott
Library of America, 1,092 pp., $40.00
An author who creates characters that become wildly popular, and take on a kind of independent life, may eventually tire of them and even turn against them, sometimes violently. Conan Doyle grew so weary of Sherlock Holmes that he had the famous detective murdered by the arch-villain Professor Moriarty. Later, Conan Doyle was forced to bring Holmes back to life by pressure from desolate readers. Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and its sequels were by no means her favorite works: she once called her children's stories 'moral pap for the young,' and preferred her more dramatic—even melodramatic—tales for adults. Yet popular demand and financial necessity kept Meg, Jo, and Amy March alive through three sequels (though Beth, of course, dies in the second volume of the series).
Review, 2752 words
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