Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Synopsis:
This novel follows the lives of the four March sisters- Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy from their childhood to their adulthood. Their father is a chaplain in the Union Army during the Civil War, and their mother Margaret (Marmee) runs the house while her husband is away and is loving, caring and gentle. They live in Massachusetts.
Meg is sixteen and the family beauty and is the most domestic and traditional and manages the household when her mother is not there. She is a governess for the Kings and marries John Brooke, Laurie’s tutor, and they have twins Margaret (Daisy) and John Laurence (Demi).
Josephine (Jo) is fifteen and is strong-willed and stubborn and more of a tomboy and less feminine. She is a caregiver for her great-aunt March. Jo loves literature, reading and writing. She marries Professor Frederick Bhaer and has two sons Robert (Rob) and Theodore (Ted).
Elizabeth (Beth) is thirteen and is kind, gentle, honest, shy, and quiet. She plays the piano and is the peacemaker of the family and dies of scarlet fever.
Amy is twelve and an artist and is spoiled, can be vain and self-centered at times. She marries Theodore (Laurie) Laurence, and they have a daughter named after her sister Elizabeth (Bess).
On Christmas Day, a year after the beginning of the book, their father returns home from the war.
Review:
I loved this book and the story of the four sisters and their bond with one another. I found it to be very heartwarming and touching.
“His love and care can never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness and strength.”
“Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.”
“For love is the only thing we carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”
“I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved and respected; to have happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with as little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send.”
“They were not all there. But no one found the words thoughtless or untrue; for Beth still seemed among them, a peaceful presence, invisible, but dearer than ever, since death could not break the household league that love made dissoluble.”
“To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing that can happen to a woman.”