She wants her cup of stars.

So I’m listening to Little Women in my car—it being my habit to listen to children’s books when NPR starts to make my stomach hurt—and I’m surprised how much I like it still. It’s got a rap for being sentimental and schmaltzy, but it’s actually a very smart and sophisticated book in a lot of ways. One of the things that interests me in particular is the way in which it deals with the political conflicts faced by an intelligent and educated woman in a society that affords her no real prospects. Like many works of women’s literature from the 19th and early 20th century, there is a real tension between breaking convention and maintaining it. The March girls are raised to be independent and free-thinking, but are still expected to uphold their duties as members of the softer sex (obedience to father, good works, sewing for the army, etc.). Jo is a tomboy, happily trodding the middle ground between male independence and female affection. Laurie, the boy next door, even calls her a “fellow” when chumming around with her. Alcott clearly takes a lot of pleasure in describing Jo’s roguish and ungirlish ways, but then, by the time Father comes home from the war, Jo has settled down and become a nurturer, nursing Beth back to health as best she can. Later Jo refuses her wealthy Laurie when he asks her to marry him, on the grounds that they are a bad match and that she is too fond of her own independence to marry; but then she weds a much older man who is explicitly a father figure, who is interested in molding the young girl.

There are tons of little examples, and since I am listening instead of reading I haven’t circled them all so as to find them later, so sadly I can’t prove my case more completely. Alcott’s struggles, though, remind me a good deal of Jane Austen’s, or the Bronte’s, in creating women who are more savvy and self-reliant that the status quo, who end up making their peace in some way or another with the status quo. You know, how Marianne ends up marrying Colonel Brandon in spite of initially lukewarm feelings, and how Emma has to learn to keep her smarty-pants self kind and sweet in a society in some ways unworthy of her. And so on.

I always find myself as a reader trapped in this conflict when reading stuff like this. In some ways I feel a little like shrieking: run away! Run away! Go live on Lesbos or something! Go start a commune of Bodacea-worshipping warrior priestesses! But more often I’m dazzled by the writer’s courage. I mean, for starters, can you imagine growing up with such an unbelievably pervasive misogyny, and still having the presence and insight to educate yourself, to engage in a world (be it of letters or politics or thought in general) that wants no part of you? These women found ways to challenge some of the most grievous parts of their societies in a way more or less palatable to those who might otherwise defend the status quo. And they depicted female characters trying to find something of a place in their own society rather than rejecting it outright—that may not be what we all want, but how admirable to have the guts to fight your way in.

Okay, so there are dissertations on this very subject that are more articulate and well-argued than my little blog, but I was thinking about it on the way to work today. And I’ve been so surprised to find so much smart social criticism in a book most of the world dismisses as saccharine. Just goes to show how ignorant it is to disregard kid’s lit.