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Daily · Classics

Little Women

Louisa May Alcott · novel, 1868·14 hrs in the original·original at Project Gutenberg
The 30‑second version14 hrs → 50 sec
  • Christmas opens with four sisters complaining about being poor. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," Jo grumbles on the rug, and Amy complains that "some girls have plenty of pretty things." Beth is the only one who says "We've got Father and Mother, and each other."
  • Jo sells her hair for twenty-five dollars to help her sick father. She walks into a barber shop on impulse after seeing a black tail priced at forty dollars in the window, and asks what they would give for hers. She hands her mother the roll of bills saying "That's my contribution toward making Father comfortable," then takes off her bonnet to show the cropped head.
  • Laurie proposes to Jo by a stile, and she turns him down flat. "I've loved you ever since I've known you, Jo," he says, choking on the words while decapitating buttercups. She answers "Really, truly, dear," and he lays his head on a mossy fence post rather than walk on.
  • Beth dies at dawn while a bird sings outside her window. Alcott writes that "the tide went out easily" in the dark hour before dawn, "with no farewell but one loving look, one little sigh." Jo finds a poem Beth wrote her, folded inside a copy of Pilgrim's Progress, that begins "Sitting patient in the shadow."
  • Jo inherits a mansion and turns it into a school for boys. Aunt March leaves her the estate Plumfield, and Jo tells the family "The crop we are going to raise is a profitable one... Boys. I want to open a school for little lads." Laurie calls it "a truly Joian plan."
  • The book ends with Marmee gathering her daughters for one line. Sitting under the apple trees with grandchildren at her feet, Mrs. March says, "Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!"
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•Why it earns a slot

Why it earns a slot: it turned domestic poverty and a sister's death into bestselling drama without a villain in sight, proving that a book about chores, rejected marriage proposals, and a sickroom could outsell the adventure novels of its day.

Four sisters grow up poor in wartime Massachusetts, and each has to choose between what she wants and what her family needs.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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