I read this book, in part, to prepare for reading Geraldine Brooks’s March, and also in part to find out what all the fuss is about; and perhaps to learn a thing or two about the Alcotts, who have had such a major impact on American culture and history. It certainly hit the mark on all those fronts, though I suppose the quality has to be viewed with an eye towards different norms in writing, almost 150 years since the publication date.

My first impression is that it’s almost an insufferably moralizing book, to the degree that almost every chapter seems to conclude with some kind of entirely unsubtle lesson. Relatedly the character development is quite slow and by and large uninteresting. Everyone is good and well-intentioned, and all of the March girls are perfect little angels, each in her own innocently charming way. It’s sickening, but one wonders if that’s the sort of thing a woman would have to do to get a book published at the time.

So that’s the first impression, but here is the second: I think Alcott meant this book to be a sort of modernization of the prevailing moral code, an answer to the Civil War and all its horrors. That is not such a novel idea, of course, and her constant allusions to Pilgrim’s Progress are the most obvious evidence in favor of it. In large part she took that story, replaced the masculine characters with feminine ones, replaced the journey motif with a domestic one… et voila, a morality tale for the post-Civil War era is born. In this one, domestic virtues are of utmost importance, and of these the paramount one is that of honest work - through virtuous physical labor can be found all manner of spiritual benefits. It is, in its way, a herald of the women’s temperance movement which is to follow, in which a woman’s role in domestic tranquility is also the foundation of her political power. In that sense I found this book tremendously fascinating.

The role of the Civil War in this book deserves its own consideration, because in some ways this is a very strange kind of war novel. Although it must have been an incredibly traumatic experience for Alcott and her contemporaries, there is almost no mention of the horrors of war here; the closest we get to it is Mrs. March’s emergency journey to Washington. The book begins with a supremely tranquil, maybe even sedate, scene, and does not really get much more exciting from there. And yet Alcott does not leave the war out altogether, as she might have done (for example, by writing Mr. March out of the story, let’s say with a death that precedes the events of the book). She mentions it, but does so only lightly. I think that is because, in her view, the “war” on the domestic front - various struggles of a personal nature, such as Jo’s struggle to rule her temper, Amy’s struggle with greed, etc. - are more important than the political war. It’s quite a striking point of view, if you think about the importance of abolition in Alcott’s circles, and of course the overwhelming role the war played in American life in that time, and so forth.

While I was not as a general rule thrilled with these characters, I really enjoyed reading Jo; she was the most rebellious daughter, so little wonder. As best as I can tell she’s also the autobiographical character… so I suppose you can say it’s a fairly conceited flourish on Alcott’s part, but I think that’s an excusable indulgence.