The Toast’s previous literary pilgrimages can be found here.
As soon as I say the word “Concord” to the woman selling rail tickets, I’m terrified that she knows everything about me.
After all, if you don’t have a car of your own, you have to actually tell someone you want to go to Concord before you can get there. With a population of only 17,000, it’s not a destination for anyone to visit casually. You either live there, or you’re going on a pilgrimage.
I was, on that day in 2010, wearing the Kate Beaton shirt that features the three Brontë sisters. I had a notebook. There was only one place I could be headed.
Orchard House is about a mile and a half away from the rail station. You take the Fitchburg/South Acton line, get off, and walk.
I’m nervous that everyone I pass on the road knows everything about me.
You have to pass Emerson’s house before you get to the Alcott home, and I felt like he was watching me from the transcendental beyond and feeling a bit snubbed. Most people I saw on the road were headed towards Orchard House. Gillian Armstrong has yet to make a film about Ralph Waldo Emerson that stars Winona Ryder and Christian Bale.
I mean, to be fair, I loved Little Women before the 1994 movie. I think most of the people who take the Fitchburg/South Acton line out to Concord and then walk the dusty road in the shadow of the same trees that shaded Louisa May Alcott and her sisters (and Emerson too, whatevs) loved Little Women before the 1994 movie.*
We carry with us the sister we are “most like” (Amy, thanks to the whole talent isn’t genius chapter, though I’ve felt like all of them at various points in my life) and the film adaptation we like most (sorry, Katharine Hepburn). We have very, very strong opinions about Professor Bhaer.
Little Women is one of the rare books that still has something to teach us every time we read it. It’s telling that the story opens with each sister receiving a book that they are intended to read and re-read throughout their lives, but most of us these days skip Pilgrim’s Progress and re-read Little Women instead. Alcott literally outwrote her source material.
Those of us walking along the path to Orchard House have probably also seen the Armstrong film at least five (or fifteen) times**, which is why the building itself is instantly familiar, and why I had the strange sensation, standing in the Alcotts’ parlor, that I had been there before. Unlike previous Little Women films, Gillian Armstrong and her team recreated much of Orchard House for the 1994 movie (pictured). Once you’re inside, you already know where to turn to see the stove where Amy dropped the potato or the table where Marmee and Aunt March sat for tea.
In the film, of course, the house is bigger. Here, there is barely space for six people in any individual room, along with the slightly bored docent who explains quickly at the beginning of her presentation that when she is not docenting she is a professional actor, as if to apologize for being the only person in the room who isn’t happy to be there.
(The majority of the people who have made the pilgrimage to Orchard House that afternoon are female and white, although there are also several people of color taking the tour. There are women who have come alone and there are families. The person who appears most excited to be there is a young boy, who is very eager to answer the docent’s apologetic, rote trivia questions.)
The two most striking parts of Orchard House are not included in the Armstrong film: Louisa’s desk and May’s walls. Louisa’s desk — “she wrote Little Women here,” the docent explains as if that weren’t a miracle — is tiny, a half-circle of painted white wood placed into a wall between two windows. Her father built it for her.
Amos Bronson Alcott also constructed May’s room. The doors and ceilings are designed both so that the unusually-tall May would not have to stoop, and so she could use them as a perpetual canvas, painting over the sketches she did not like and keeping the ones she did. Her drawings still remain, all over the walls and the woodwork.
There is something wonderful about Amos Bronson Alcott building his family home so that Louisa could write and May could draw. (The feminist part of me knows that his wife Abigail Alcott must have been involved too, although the docent presents this information as if it were entirely Amos’s work.) I’d like to assume that he would have built equal space for his other daughters Anna and Lizzy, had either of them claimed Orchard House as their home.
That’s the big reveal, of course; the one that even the docent knows is a disappointment. Louisa May Alcott may have written Little Women at Orchard House, but she and her sisters never lived there as children. In fact, the four sisters never lived together at Orchard House at all. Anna Alcott lived there for only two years before marrying John Pratt in 1860, and Elizabeth Alcott died before the family took residence.
It’s a sharp reminder that even though you feel like you’ve seen this home before, like you know it as well as you know the Von Trapp estate from The Sound of Music or the stairs that lead to the spare room in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, you don’t actually know Orchard House at all. It doesn’t carry the memories you think it does; those were crafted later, by a woman at a small desk shaped and painted like a half-moon.
And so I returned from my pilgrimage a bit wiser, passing women along the road heading in the opposite direction and thinking I knew everything about them — and they, in turn, everything about me: that we would walk the mile-and-a-half from the commuter rail station to see a building where a book was written because we loved the story that much, and because we thought the characters in that book lived there.
I walked away from Orchard House knowing half of that was still true, and asked for a ticket back to Boston.
*
*Except people born after 1994 who are somehow old enough to read this article because time works in mysterious ways and I wish that time would just stop working like that.
**Unless you were born after 1994 and spent the entire time watching Hannah Montana or something; I have literally no idea what you did with your lives.
Tags: books, literary pilgrimages, little women, nicole dieker
Amy > Jo
IF ANYONE HAS SHIT TO SAY ABOUT AMY MARCH, THEY CAN COME AT ME RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
I HAVE SHIT TO SAY
I HAVE SHIT TO SAY ABOUT HER
All I will say is that I was a horrible little brat as a kid and I KNEW I was a horrible little brat and I remain convinced that the Amy March/Mary Lennox combo was the only thing which saved my soul through hope of possible redemption.
OK a few more things:
1) Many of the Amy March attackers I have encountered react to her destruction of Jo’s manuscript with the most self-righteous venom I have ever encountered and all I want to say to that is I hope to God (I HONESTLY AND SINCERELY HOPE, I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC) that you have no deeds of senseless, brutal cruelty from your childhood which make you twist in discomfort at their memory, because I should hate for you to be held to your own exacting standards of childhood piety. Because I certainly do, and I am eternal grateful that my family and friends were able to forgive me for my hateful conduct in a way I’ve never been able to forgive myself. Because it is real. It is a real thing that children do, and it’s horrible, and the grace we afford them is almost divine.
2) Much of the other Amy hatred seems to be so rooted in aspects of her femininity (vanity, blonde hair, affinity for the fine arts) that it seems to verge on “But-I’m-not-like-the-other-girls”y-misogyny in a way which is fundamentally undefinable but makes me deeply uncomfortable.
3) I will never be convinced that the remaining criticism against Amy (“SHE GETS EVERYTHING SHE WANTS”) isn’t rooted in a projection of smart, brunette, bookish girls who identify with Jo (throwing myself 100% onto the pyre here, I was this way for about 10 years, this is complete self-flagellation) feeling angry that Amy “steals” both Laurie and the Europe trip, and manifesting their own frustrations about things they felt IRL were rightfully theirs also being “stolen” by those they view as less intelligent/spirited/deserving.
(And yes, I understand that this is more a response to Amy March criticism than a Defense of Amy March’s character. I wanted to start with a pre-emptive strike.)
Meg is also feminine and vain with a taste for pretty clothes, and yet she does not inspire such hatred. I wonder why. Perhaps because she actually cares about her sisters?
And no, I never willfully destroyed the most precious possession of any loved one or acquaintance during my childhood. If that makes me self-righteous, I’m ok with that. And Amy is basically a teenager when that happens, not a kid by any means.
If you think Amy March does not care for her sisters, then we’re reading fundamentally different books. And that’s OK! But it’s important to recognize before we proceed..
I also don’t believe that Meg and Amy’s vanity can be made equitable because a) Meg’s is passive while Amy’s is active (allowing the Moffats to make you up vs.walking around with a clothespin on your nose) and b) Because Meg’s is instantly and IMHO unsatisfactorily resolved by Laurie shaming her, which I always found to be major-league bullshit. Like, Laurie, you are a BOY who has never wanted for a single material thing in your life. What do you know about feeling embarrassed about the shabbiness of your dress?
And if Amy is a “basically a teenager” when she burns Jo’s manuscript, then Jo is absolutely a teenager (and then almost an adult!) when she ATTEMPTS TO MURDER HER SISTER. I find it ABSOLUTELY INSANE that people not only seem to view that as equal retribution, but totally deserved. It is completely beyond me that Amy is made out to be the unlikable one here.
And for you, personally, I am delighted (really, honestly delighted! Again, I realize this could sound sarcastic, so I want to clarify that it’s not) that you never did anything truly awful as a child. But I did. I know others who did. I’ve known them as children who did the deed and as adults who remember. And for all of us, it was only through the love and grace of our friends and family that we were saved from the ego of childhood to some semblance of civility as adults.
Put it this way: I’ve never known anyone as saintly as Beth. I’ve known PLENTY of people as difficult as Amy. And that, to me, is something I value FAR more in a novel, particularly one which represents such a wide spectrum of femininity. To accept only the comfortable/cozy characters (and Jo’s faults of being too stubborn and too spirited are absolutely comfortable IMO) in such a book about women and growing up is, to me, to miss the point entirely.
But I’m also projecting.
I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading your Defense of Amy March. A+ would read and refer to again.
The reason Meg doesn’t inspire hatred is because she is too damn boring to inspire any strong emotion of any kind. The most interesting thing that happens to her in the entire book is that some dude steals one of her gloves.
The Domestic Day from Hell chapter is pretty terrifying. “The jelly wouldn’t gel!” sounds like a joke today, but making that stuff was a really nasty, tedious, frustrating chore. Contemporary readers would have totally gotten it.
They would have gotten it, sure, but does that necessarily make it compelling? I mean, I get why it would have been frowned upon for a young lady to attend a dance wearing stained gloves, and why it totally sucks to burn off a lock of your hair when trying to curl it, but being able to sympathize doesn’t make the character interesting.
People are angry that Amy “steals” Laurie? How is it “stealing” a man from another woman when that woman has rejected him over and over again and made it clear that she’s not interested in him romantically?
Projection.
That whole go to the play/burn ms/ice skating chapter has always made me profoundly uncomfortable. I almost always skipped it when reading.
I do think now, as an adult, that Amy overreacted. As a child, I really identified with her. I thought she was completely justified in feeling hurt and left out of the play. Yeah, it’s rude to try to invite yourself along, but Jo was pretty rude to her. The book burning never bothered me when I was a kid. I felt sneaking admiration that someone would have the guts to retaliate that effectively. It was badass. I never would have dared. I didn’t get why Jo was so upset about it, to be honest. She had it coming.
She’s pretty and perfect and tasteful and graceful and marries well in *every possible way imaginable* and gets everything she wants forever. Her one sorrow, her frail daughter, doesn’t even stay sickly into adulthood. Instead, the daughter turns into an even better version of the mother. Amy doesn’t *need* your loyalty the way poor Jo does.
She gives up her dreams in favor of her strengths.
But talent isn’t genius, right? Can you “give up” on something if you know it’s impossible for you? I think it’s more that she recognizes that she couldn’t have been the famous artist she wanted to be anyway and instead chose a more realistic path. She still gets to paint and do art and decorate her big fancy house.
I think giving up on something that you know is impossible for you is one of the big lessons of adulthood. Meg does a bit of it too when she chooses not to keep up with Sallie Moffat, although that’s more of a “I’m part of a team now and I can’t make choices that benefit only me” story.
MY PEOPLE.
AMY FOREVER.
I will defend Amy until my dying die (and throw limes at the haters)
Meg > everyone else.
Similarly, I’m also of the firm opinion that Sansa > Arya.
When I was young, I liked Beth the most, which… ugh.
Right on both counts.
The one thing that disappointed me about the book is that Meg kind of disappears after she and her hubby stop quarreling. I feel like she isn’t done much justice that way.
She has more to do in Little Men and Jo’s Boys, though we never really get to see inside her head anymore. 🙁
Yes, yes. I had a big Madame Alexander doll of Beth when I was little, so I think that’s why I liked her best, but over the years Meg became my favorite. I’m always vaguely ashamed to tell people this because she’s seen as such a wet blanket, but domestic oldest sisters who care about practical things gotta stick together.
(Jo was like, the alter-ego of my soul — spiky and dark and creative and brave — but not who I really was.)
When I was little and first read this book, I was all “oh, I am TOTALLY a Jo because I like reading and sometimes fight with my cute blonde little sister and act like a tomboy.” Also, she’s ostensibly the main character, and who doesn’t want to be the main character?
Years later, after a) learning to get along better with all three of my younger siblings, b) coming to painful terms with the fact that no, I will never be independently wealthy and I cannot afford really nice clothes, c) realizing that I would MUCH rather have a stable relationship than have anything to do with romantic drama ever, and d) having a ton of meltdowns over kitchen experiments that in retrospect probably weren’t that terrible (let us not mention the Turnip Soup Episode of 2011), I can safely say that my parents gave me the correct name.
CONTRARIANISM AT ITS WORST
But mostly because Louisa May Alcott hated herself.
Hey, if men can have their admired yet self-loathing Marty Sue protags, why can’t we?
The difference is that those male authors clearly think their self-loathing protagonists (and themselves) are the greatest. LMA, not so much.
I was recently twitter-wondering if my remembrances of Amy’s terribleness are greatly exaggerated and this thread is VERY informative. MAYBE, self. Maybe.
No, she is really terrible.
That’s cause we’re seeing her through a biased narrator.
This piece was wonderful! “I’m nervous that everyone I pass on the road knows everything about me,” so real! (See fat, white, 14 year-old me with combat boots and Jiji backpack making the trek to the Ghibli museum outside of Tokyo.)
Also, who has read Eden’s Outcasts, the dual biography of Bronson and Louisa Alcott? It’s SO GOOD.
I’ll tell you what I didn’t read, and that was “March.” Got about 1/3 in, to the point where the narrator was all “They called her Marmee because her name was Margaret Marie,” and I was all “um her name is MARMEE because that is how the little girls originally said MOMMY, I don’t care if I’m not the one with the Pulitzer Prize here.”
Yes! I dismissed that on principle. Who looks at Little Women and thinks, “You know what this needs? A MALE NARRATIVE.”
Ugh for March. One thing I have never wanted to imagine: Marmee getting it on. No thanks. I’m not a prude, but Marmee is Marmee.
As Meg says in the 1994 movie: “I can’t believe you did this four times.”
I looked it up. A *woman* wrote it and it won a prize?
WTF?!
I had to read March for book club ages ago, and HATED it. Way to make everyone total a-holes, lady.
As a fanfic writer the very concept of that book getting the Pulitzer made me hiss. I haven’t read it, but I’ve read her People of the Book and was deeply unimpressed by her skills.
Good call – I had the exact same reaction to the Margaret Marie=Marmee thing but I kept going. A bit further on March is horrified by witnessing Marmee’s temper and thinks to himself that what she needs is a husband to teach her self-control and guide her on proper behaviour. After that I hate-read the rest to see if it got any better. It didn’t.
(Also I just placed a hold on Eden’s Outcasts at the library. Thanks for the tip!)
Ooh I just read that earlier this year! It was alternately frustrating and fascinating. Every time I made up my mind that I wanted to murder that self-centered, lazy, pompous Bronson Alcott, he’d do something actually pretty nice for his family. Louisa certainly seemed to adore him.
LITTLE WOMEN SQEEEE. I have read Little Women so many times I have lost count and I always list it as a favorite book, and I’ve never been to New England but I’m so glad people are visiting Orchard House! As I get older and people ask why I love a “kids book” so much, and I just stare at them like – WHAT?!?? I feel like it is meaningful in a new way every time I read it.
I agree. I love the sections about how they manage their adult lives even more than the early chapters.
LOVE literary pilgrimages. I got to do this one in 1994 BEFORE I saw the movie (if that gets me any points). I borrowed a car from a friend in Providence and went to Concord for Alcotts and Emerson and Hawthorne, Amherst for Emily Dickinson, and so on. They were all interesting but Orchard House was the very best and I still have a poster of May’s owl.
Haha, this is the article that finally brings me out of lurking… I loved the piece, and I love that people love Orchard House! I worked as a tour guide there the summer between high school and college, it was THE BEST. I bet I could still give most of my tour…”Actually the house was made from two preexisting houses put together–they just slid one house down the hill and joined them to make the structure you see today! Little Women has been translated into more than 50 languages–in Japan, it is called “Young Blades of Grass”. If you’re into the Alcotts, definitely check out Louisa’s Fruitlands Diary, an account of the family’s failed attempt at a utopian/commune lifestyle–it is fascinating and hilarious (Fruitlands is also an awesome museum complex now that’s really fun to visit if you’re in Massachusetts)
This is awesome and I want to know more.
Fruitlands is gooooorgeous–my wife and I considered having our wedding there, actually, but the $$$, which is hilarious when you consider the utopian commune angle.
Young Blades of Grass is an amazing alternative title! What an interesting piece of information. I’m glad you had more fun than the tour guide above!
You know what? I read Little Women several times when I was younger but never learned anything about the author, and did not know that she had sibilings–much less a sibling with the same middle name, much-much less a sibling who went by that name–so seeing references to Louisa and May as two separate people confused me a great deal and made me wonder, no joke, if they were conjoined twins who wrote the book together.
Bronson might have built the desk and May’s room, but Anna Alcott kept that house upright through sheer force of will and character.
And Emerson’s fine. He has self-reliance (and he already received ample devotion and pilgrimages from little Louisa May herself)!
Screw Laurie (actually no, I still love him)–while I’ll never get over Amy burning Jo’s manuscript (I don’t care that she was a child; she knew what it meant, especially as an artist herself, albeit one who never helped keep their family afloat, ahem), the second greatest injustice is Amy getting to gallivant off to Europe after a little bit of time dealing with Aunt March, whereas Jo was impressed into her service for years. And not coming back when Beth was dying (and Jo was taking care of her, ahem), but rather sealing the deal with Laurie and getting to play Lady Bountiful for the rest of her life. Whatever Amy wants, Amy gets.
Actually, that is 100% fair and I hadn’t thought of it that way. See also: Jo writing hack stories to support the family while Amy “explores her art.” Amy does not, for example, become a hacky painter even though she could probably have Kinkaded her way to a bit of cash.
(Though Amy ended up in Europe because she was courteous while Jo was a snob, yes?)
Sorry, my comment below is meant to be a reply to you!
The more I think about it, the more I can see a parallel horror story about Amy and her development: “Little Sociopath.”
Sadly, Jo sabotaged herself badly in the house calls chapter. She hadn’t realized she was taking a final exam in suitability.
Yes, Jo sealed her fate with Aunt March by being rude and irreverent on a particularly trying afternoon (I think after Meg forced Jo to make a series of calls).
Amy is the snob, though, always trying to sound fancy instead of actually improving her knowledge, and skilled at playing the upward mobility game by cultivating those who are useful to her. And spoiled as all get-out, from the limes (which her sister gets her), to not having to attend school after the lime incident, to getting everyone to buy her goods at the bazaar, etc, to Aunt March’s ring, Europe, Laurie, and her precious princess daughter with whom she can sculpt all day. I’m a baby sister myself, but that is extreme!
The one time she doesn’t get what she wants, to go to a play with Jo, Meg, and Laurie at the last minute when they already have tickets, she goes for the nuclear option of vindictiveness with the manuscript burning. Give me rudeness any day over that! I would feel immensely lucky to have Jo, Meg, and Beth (sob) as sisters, but Amy almost frightens me.
I get the idea of resisting Amy’s devaluation as the more stereotypically feminine sister, but Jo is actually much more nurturing, caring, and loyal, as well as protective.
Maybe Amy grew up to be Lady Audley. Or the protagonist of Pink & White Tyrrany. I mean I know what Alcott said Amy grew up to do but maybe she LIED because given Amy’s childhood behaviour she is perfectly poised to become the Angel in the House who is secretly a sociopath.
… Actually now that I wrote that I am reminded that what Alcott REALLY wanted to write was sensation fiction, not girl’s books. Hmmmmm.
Yes! It all fits. We’re through the looking glass here, people!
And in retaliation for *that*, Jo almost leaves Amy to die! Talk about escalation. If they’d been in an Icelandic saga, the whole neighborhood would have gone up in smoke fifty chapters down the line and seven lawsuits later.
My full name (without the surname) is Amy Elizabeth, so I spent quite a bit of time as a kid figuring out which sister I resembled more. Sadly, I have to report that the choice is probably Amy: Beth is far too saintly, although I think the full humanity and poignancy of the character come through beautifully. (That’s the role in which I first noticed Claire Danes.)
At least Amy made it to adulthood (having scrupulously avoided all those ghastly visits to the poor that Beth loved so well).
All I am saying is that there are TWO CHARACTERS in literary history that other characters describe as “being able to walk into any situation imaginable including Buckingham Palace and know exactly how to make other people feel comfortable.”
Those two characters are Amy March and Dickon.
*mic drop*
Oh, Dickon! Now I can’t stop thinking of him as Raggedy Katharine Hepburn on meth from Jaya’s “Secret Garden” essay.
But I bet he could get lots of animals to pose for Amy’s drawings! And then Amy would sell them for $$$ and send him and Martha the occasional postcard from Italy.
I am so here for this crossover fanfic
Girl, I’m here for you.
YESSSSSSSSSSSS
This is great, and anyone wanting to know more about Alcott should read MARMEE AND LOUISA, a highly readable (or in my case, listenable) biography of Alcott and her mother. It’s wonderful and depressing and will make you hate Bronson even more, if that’s possible. And also pity him, a little, because he was so magnificently outclassed by the women in his life.
We brought our daughter (who loves the book and movie) to Orchard House this spring. She was awestruck too and thankfully, we had a great docent who nerded out about all things Louisa. That helped add to the excitement.
I was never as much of a fan as I was of, say, Jane Eyre, so I went through the house maybe a little more detached. I did have an epiphany, though and I’d be curious to know what you think. May’s room was, to me, the darkest, most awkward room in the house. It occurred to me, having grown up with extremely artistic women and girls, that this might’ve accounted for the general unhappiness with life and, specifically, with her throwing the manuscript in the fire. An artist would be especially upset about being in the shittiest room in the house (at least for light). Did you notice that? Am I extrapolating? Probably.
Also, I just now got that Amy is an anagram of May and that makes me happy. So happy, too, about your pilgrimage. A mile and a half walk from the train station seems especially appropriate, considering your destination.
I’ve been team Jo since I was 10. She (along with Anne of Green Gables and Meg from A Wrinkle in Time) gave me hope that adulthood might be better than childhood for me – if Jo could transform from an awkward nerdy difficult teen into a successful, cool seeming woman, maybe I could too.
I have to say that Little Women didn’t hold up as well as Little Men or Jo’s Boys for me, when I reread them as an adult. I think my favorite LMA is Old Fashioned Girl (or maybe Eight Cousins / Rose in Bloom).
Me too! Jo and AWIT Meg were my absolute favorites, though Jo’s Boys always struck me as utter fantasy.
So, I never made it past the childhood portion of Little Women, but I did see the 1994 film as a wee youngling, and even then I knew Jo ending up with Professor Bhaer instead of Laurie was horseshit of the highest order. People with better knowledge of the book, care to confirm or deny?
Also, I was in a high school production of Little Women, and I played one of the girls who teases Amy.
When I was devouring the “classic books and absurd monsters” series a few years ago, trying to get through major depression, I read Little Women and Werewolves, which was both ridiculous and amazing (not as good as Android Karenina, though). The main takeaway I had was that even as an adult, I still hated Amy’s guts. Some things don’t change…
If you’re in Massachusetts and have another day or so to dally, head on out to Fruitlands, which is where Bronson Alcott built his short-lived utopia.
Fruitlands is maybe an hour or so from Concord. It’s also the former site of a Shaker community and is home to a small but comprehensive gallery of Native American art and artifacts. Finally, you can see an attic that will appeal very much to all the Jos out there. (Make sure to have a guide walk you through the Alcott house.)
Ooh I just read that earlier this year! It was alternately frustrating and fascinating. Every time I made up my mind that I wanted to murder that self-centered, lazy, pompous Bronson Alcott, he'd do something actually pretty nice for his family. Louisa certainly seemed to adore him.
As with the Emily books, LW made me realize that I would never survive in the 19th century. Because…shut it, Bhaer! Let Jo write her damn trashy fiction! It pays well! Stop being all moralistic and mainsplainy, and go back to Germany, and SHUT UP.
And LAURIE! Let Meg have a little fun and show off the girls: chick is sixteen and wants a good time for one night OH MY FUCKING GOD I HATE YOU PEOPLE.
Professor Bhaer may have been a tribute to Emerson. I suspect that he was originally written solely as a father figure/mentor, and only became Jo’s husband when Alcott got pissed off at all the Laurie fangirls shipping Jo/Laurie.