Little Women

The other day I finished a book while on the subway and I had enough of a commute left and no internet that I decided I had to read something that was already on my Kindle. Because of copyright law and the Gutenberg Project, there are many free books available online, and I've downloaded quite a few classics for times of need or ambition. This was a time of need and not ambition, so I decided to reread one of my absolute favorites: Little Women.


Little Women
Louisa May Alcott

Growing up, my parents limited the amount of television my sister and I were allowed to watch, so I spent most of my years before middle school playing pretend with my little sister, running around the backyard, and reading. I was also really shy when I was younger, and reading was a wonderful escape for me in awkward situations and most social environments. But more than any of those things, I learned early on what a fantastic, magical thing reading can be for its ability to take you anywhere and let you be anyone.

When I read (and reread) little women, I always felt so inspired by the girls, and have felt varying degrees of empathy for their situations. Each time I read it, I notice different details and commiserate with the characters in different ways. But overall, I feel the most for Jo, and I don't believe it is just because she is the main character to a certain extent. I understood her love of reading and escapism, her desire to write and perform, her awkward and stubbornly blunt way of dealing with others, and her impatience for that which doesn't make sense. I love this book for its comforts, lessons, stories, and lovely portrait of a family.

Below are some of the underlines I made this time around. There is so much that I love in this book, but these were the ones that stood out to me this time. Partly I was in the framework to think about love and loss due to what people in my life are going through, and partly these just seemed to be really lovely moments and thoughts.

"But I lost her when I was a little older than you are, and for years had to struggle on alone, for I was too proud to confess my weakness to anyone else. I had a hard time, Jo, and shed a good many bitter tears over my failures, for in spite of my efforts I never seemed to get on. Then your father came, and I was so happy that I found it easy to be good. But by-and-by, when I had four little daughters round me and we were poor, then the old trouble began again, for I am not patient by nature, and it tried me very much to see my children wanting anything." "Poor Mother! What helped you then?" "Your father, Jo. He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him. He helped and comforted me, and showed me that I must try to practice all the virtues I would have my little girls possess, for I was their example. It was easier to try for your sakes than for my own.' 

Jo's breath gave out here, and wrapping her head in the paper, she bedewed her little story with a few natural tears, for to be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end. 

Laurie thought that the task of forgetting his love for Jo would absorb all his powers for years, but to his great surprise he discovered it grew easier every day. He refused to believe it at first, got angry with himself, and couldn't understand it, but these hearts of ours are curious and contrary things, and time and nature work their will in spite of us. Laurie's heart wouldn't ache. The wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember. He had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it. He was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon. He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze. There was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish passion was slowly subsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken to the end.

In spite of the new sorrow, it was a very happy time, so happy that Laurie could not bear to disturb it by a word. It took him a little while to recover from his surprise at the cure of his first, and as he had firmly believed, his last and only love. 

His second wooing, he resolved, should be as calm and simple as possible. There was no need of having a scene, hardly any need of telling Amy that he loved her, she knew it without words and had given him his answer long ago. It all came about so naturally that no one could complain, and he knew that everybody would be pleased, even Jo. But when our first little passion has been crushed, we are apt to be wary and slow in making a second trial, so Laurie let the days pass, enjoying every hour, and leaving to chance the utterance of the word that would put an end to the first and sweetest part of his new romance. 

It seldom is, at first, and thirty seems the end of all things to five-and-twenty. But it's not as bad as it looks, and one can get on quite happily if one has something in one's self to fall back upon. At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be. At thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully. Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. And looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time. That rosy cheeks don't last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and that, by-and-by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now.

The Proxy Bride

The Proxy Bride
By Maile Meloy

A friend of mine posted this short story on facebook from the New Yorker yesterday, and he made it sound like it would be really heartwarming. I guess it could be in some ways, but I'm a little undecided on whether or not I love it.

I did like the writing style and the story concept. I'd never heard of a proxy marriage before, though it makes sense as something that would be useful. 

Maybe what I didn't like about the story was that it was primarily about unrequited, frustrated love, and I guess I sort of empathize more with that. While some aspects of the dedication that unrequited love embodies is admirable, looking at it from an outside perspective, it's hard not to get irritated with the person who is not responsive. I waffle between understanding that someone might just not recognize the feelings another person has and thinking that it really is willful ignorance and insensitivity. I suppose when you're young, you might not have the experience to know what's really going on, and you're already so egocentric anyway. Since that is the age of the characters in the story, maybe I should cut her some slack. And the way the author wraps it up at the end maybe is a more human and realistic love story than the perfect happy endings of most stories. 

Love in the Time of Cholera

I was given this book by a professor in college. He gave our entire class copies of it because we read a review of it by Thomas Pynchon (the course was Nabokov and Pynchon), which was, of course, incredibly poetic. Read it here, and I highly recommend that you do (though it does tell what happens, so if you want to avoid spoilers, wait).

Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I actually read another of Garcia Marquez's books when I was teaching a course on Forbidden Fictions, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, which was a very short but, as you may be able to determine from the title, is quite the book. I loved his writing style, and as I was paying especially close attention to his craft because I was going to be teaching it, I really appreciated it. I am a little fuzzy on it now because it was three years ago (where does the time go?!), but I would like to reread it.

At any rate, even though I really liked Memories, I couldn't get myself to read Love in the Time of Cholera until recently. Even then, I had a similar experience to when I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; that is, many people whose opinion I appreciate greatly for literature had recommended it, but I just couldn't get myself committed to reading it the first few times. Love is somewhat slow to get going, and not because nothing happens - in fact, it begins with a suicide. Instead, it is Marquez's incredibly detailed writing style that is so hard to adjust to, I think, in a world of instant gratification and lack of such heavily written sentences. There is a plethora of detail and commitment to description that we tend to shy from in our reading and writing. But Marquez is so good at it that once you are accustomed to it and expect it, it is so beautifully rewarding that you wouldn't want him to use less. Except, perhaps, in the parts when he describes the less politically correct and polite activities of some of the characters, but that he attends to all that his characters experience in such detail, whether it is easy for readers or not, is part of the beauty of his writing. Sexuality is an element of every human's experience (even the unindulged) and depravity part of almost everyone's, to varying degrees. So to include it is to write a truth, even in fiction, about the human experience. It just requires the reader recognize that were their story told, these parts would be put to words and likely seem just as strange on a page.

The moment that caught me in the book was when one character exclaimed to another, "Only God knows how much I loved you." Now this is not so an incredibly creative of a line, but it was at such a poetic and almost comical moment, and such a thing to hear, that it really moved me. I suppose I was particularly susceptible to this and always am because I'm such a romantic, but at that moment I was hooked. And from then on, it was a love story. A stranger one than what we are used to, and unsettling at times, but a love story nonetheless, and is it not a pleasant surprise to read a story in which you cannot predict the outcome or course of events and twists and turns?

I think I will reread this book again after some time to see how my experience and opinion of it shifts after a different perspective and frame of mind, so for now, I leave you with some words from Pynchon's review:

It could be argued that this is the only honest way to write about love, that without the darkness and the finitude there might be romance, erotica, social comedy, soap opera -- all genres, by the way, that are well represented in this novel -- but not the Big L. What that seems to require, along with a certain vantage point, a certain level of understanding, is an author's ability to control his own love for his characters, to withhold from the reader the full extent of his caring, in other words not to lapse into drivel.