Plumfield Moms

Book Review: Emily of New Moon; Emily Climbs; Emily’s Quest by L. M. M. Montgomery

Besides loving L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables because it’s a great story with a timelessly loveable heroine, it is special to me because it is one of the few books my mom introduced me to that she had loved when she was young. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon is special to me because my daughter and I discovered her together. I still feel a bit of a traitor because . . . I like Emily better.
As I read Emily again recently, I tried to pay more attention to what about her appeals to me.  I realized that she makes more sense to me than Anne does because Emily is more like me.  Shortly after my Emily reread, I read L. M. Montgomery’s The Alpine Path: The Story of my Career, a short work that was published in installments in a women’s magazine in 1917. This was about six years before Emily was published. Several comments in this little story made me think, “Aha, Emily is more like Montgomery as well.”  Montgomery includes some of her own family history in Emily’s, and incorporates a relative or two of her own into Emily’s family circle. Some seemingly less significant aspects of her childhood also make it into Emily’s story, such as Montgomery’s wish to go to school barefooted and being forced to wear an ugly apron to school.  She says of herself, “I dared not attempt to use verses and hymns in current conversation [like a girl in a story she had read].  I had a wholesome conviction that I should be laughed at, and moreover, I doubted being understood.”  This is a repeated theme in Emily.
The charge I often hear that Emily is darker than Anne is, perhaps, just.  The story certainly deals with certain aspects of life more starkly.  Montgomery was almost fifty when Emily was published.  Maybe she was working out some of her own darkness in this story.
When the story opens, Emily lives with her loving, understanding father. Her mother has been dead since Emily was very small.  She knows her father isn’t well, but doesn’t realize just how sick he is until he dies. Her mother’s family descends on the funeral, and they draw lots to see who will take Emily in. No one really wants her, but the Murray Pride will not allow for her ending up in an orphanage.
Her father’s death turns Emily’s life upside down. She has to go live with Aunt Elizabeth, Aunt Laura, and Cousin Jimmy, whom she had never met before. She has to choose between her two beloved cats because she is only allowed to take one to New Moon. Her father had taught her at home, but at New Moon she is immediately sent to school. There she experiences the usual challenges of adjustment. Because she is from New Moon, the other girls assume she will think herself above them, so they tease her and play a mean trick on her. Her teacher is a nasty, sarcastic woman. Emily also makes one very good friend, Ilse, and the hired boy at New Moon becomes a protector.
For me, seeing Emily orphaned at the beginning of the story, witnessing a little of the happiness she loses, and watching her struggle with the aftermath, add depth to her plight. She is not a naturally outgoing, bubbly person. She has to work at happiness. She makes few friends, but those friends are fiercely loyal, as she is in return.
Much of the darkness comes from frequent references to the deaths and peccadilloes of neighbors and ancestors. Occasionally Emily accidently overhears these, but she also has relatives to whom it doesn’t occur to soften these for Emily’s ears or to make sure she isn’t listening. In one instance, Emily goes to look at an abandoned well on the neighbor’s property where two brothers had quarreled and one killed the other by hitting him over the head with a hammer.
While visiting Aunt Nancy, Emily hears what is supposed to have happened to Ilse’s mother. She disappeared when Ilse was small, and everyone assumes that she ran off with a man she knew before she married Ilse’s father.
One day Emily slips off a cliff by the shore and is trapped. While she waits and hopes for help, she thinks about what will happen if no one ever finds her. “The crows or the gulls would pick her eyes out.”
The way Emily and Ilse discuss their attempts to work out what they believe about God may be troubling to some readers. Ilse’s father has entirely neglected her upbringing. His reaction to his wife’s disappearance is, among other things, to decide not to believe in God, so Ilse doesn’t either. Emily sometimes refers to her father’s God as opposed to Aunt Elizabeth’s God.  he doesn’t believe there are two Gods, but she is trying to sort out what he must be like when her father’s God is so loving and Aunt Elizabeth’s is so stern. As part of Ilse’s ever-developing belief system, at one point she decides to believe in God, but to call him Allah because it sounds nicer. This is a passing comment rather than a concept that is developed in the story. The questions about God feel like realistic musings of children who have questions the adults in their lives are not equipped to answer.
Toward the end of the book, the school gets a new teacher who turns out to be a great encouragement to Emily. However, it is well-known among the students that he has a drinking problem.
Another aspect of this story that makes it more appropriate for older children than Anne is the frequent references to romance. Emily is only eleven at the beginning of the book, but the adults in her life often refer to whom she might marry. Perry, the hired boy, tries to get her to promise to marry him. Though they are still children, there is occasionally some jealousy between Ilse, Perry, and the other good friend in their circle, Teddy. Emily seems relatively unaware of her power over the boys, but the reader is made aware of the tension.
When Emily is contemplating death on the cliff, she is rescued by her cousin Dean who is at least twenty years older than she. He is taken with her and begins making comments she doesn’t understand about waiting for her, teaching her about love talk (so she can write novels), and how her life belongs to him now that he’s saved her.
Emily writes her father that the only time she doesn’t like Aunt Nancy is, “when she begins talking about the different parts of me and the effect they will have on the men. It makes me feel so silly.”
Though I mention these references as cautions to parents who want to shield their children from questions of romance until they are mature enough to handle them rightly, they are less disturbing when viewed through the filter of Emily’s time. Emily’s family is prominent on the Island. This is still a time when appropriate marriages are considered essential for the sake of the family name. Many of the marriage references by adults are cautions to Emily about forming relationships to boys who are “beneath her.”  Most readers will sense that, from what we know of Emily’s nature, class distinctions are not going to figure prominently into her choice of a husband.
I love Emily’s stark honesty. Several times, when an adult says something to her like, “I’m sorry you will have to be punished,” she comes back with, “No, I don’t think you are.” She doesn’t intend to be disrespectful, she is simply telling the truth. I am the mother of one such child.
A large portion of the story is told through letters Emily writes to her father. Though he is dead, she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to about how she feels or what she really thinks, so she pours it out onto a stack of letter-bills Cousin Jimmy has given her. Montgomery uses this device to fill us in on Emily’s perspective on her world. Her innocence, her misspellings, her frankness and searing observations are delightful. I also appreciate that this is how she tries to understand many of the baffling aspects of the adult world. Because Emily is an introvert, she often doesn’t ask questions about things she doesn’t understand, but holds onto them until she has more information. This is one way in which I identify with Emily. Unlike Anne, Emily is never publicly effusive. She wants to be a famous poetess, but she keeps that to herself unless she is with someone she feels will understand. She doesn’t give way to raptures on a flower or spring or a sunset except in poems or in letters to her father.
Emily does her best to be obedient and is mindful that stern, and sometimes unfair Aunt Elizabeth is bringing her up at her own expense, but there is a streak of iron in Emily that must sometimes say, “Thus far and no farther.” On more than one occasion, Aunt Elizabeth is forced to realize she is wrong. This changes the relationship between Emily and Aunt Elizabeth for the better ever so slightly over time.
I think perhaps what may be perceived as darkness in Emily’s story is Montgomery trying to tell the truth about life. It is hard. People can do horrible things. Death happens. Pride does make people behave selfishly and unreasonably. Children are often helpless before the whims and foibles of the adults who are in charge. But there is also room for forgiveness, redemption, and love. Not every aspect of the story is tied up neatly in the end, but there are generous portions of reconciliation.
This is available via Audible.

Book Review: Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

https://plumfieldmoms.com/plumfield-moms-book-reviews/freckles-a-girl-of-the-limberlost
 
“The scene was intensely attractive. The thickness of the swamp made a dark, massive background below, while above towered gigantic trees. The men were calling jovially back and forth as they unharnessed tired horses that fell into attitudes of rest and crunched, in deep content, the grain given them. Duncan, the brawny Scotch head-teamster, lovingly wiped the flanks of his big bays with handfuls of pawpaw leaves, as he softly whistled, ‘O wha will be my dearie, O!’ and a cricket beneath the leaves at his feet accompanied him. The green wood fire hissed and crackled merrily. Wreathing tongues of flame wrapped around the big black kettles, and when the cook lifted the lids to plunge in his testing-fork, gusts of savoury odours escaped.” –Freckles
Now isn’t that a fine start to a story!? This third paragraph of the first chapter of Freckles brilliantly sets the tone for the story that is about to unfold. Sure, we know little of the story itself, but this paragraph in all of its sensory description invites us into a scene pregnant with life and natural beauty. Not only is Duncan singing in accent, but the cricket accompanies him. The large hard-working bays are dwarfed in size by the enormity of the gigantic trees surrounding them. The cooking fires are fierce and untamed like the thick surrounding swamp, which is anything but safe. In all of this, Duncan, the man, is taming the wild by using those tree leaves to rub his horses down, and the cooks are using the fire to make something savory and delicious for the teamsters to eat. This is the way Gene Stratton-Porter writes. A daughter of the Limberlost, she is captivated by the beauty and the wild and wishes for her readers to be so also. Her stories are as much about the natural things as they are about the human ones.
So often in stories, authors attempt to describe the scenic beauty of their story setting. In the really good books, these scenes can be well done. Rare is it, however, that such scenes are intrinsically connected to the story. Something more than window dressing, but not really something entirely of its own, this kind of description is usually applied to enrich the story. In the case of Porter, however, it is the other way around. Her stories are often the vehicle through which we are invited into the natural scene. Instead of being where the story is set, they are the inspiration for the story itself. To Porter, the Limberlost (or any of the other natural settings she writes about) was a vibrant and exciting living thing. She saw the swamp as a character onto itself.
In this article I must review Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost together. While each story is capable of standing on its own, and Girl is not exactly a sequel to Freckles, the two stories are part of a set. For some reason, many booklists recommend A Girl of the Limberlost for teenage girl readers and Freckles for teenage boy readers. I suppose this is because the title characters are respectively, a girl and a boy. But I think this is a serious miscalculation. These two books are a set and probably should be read as such. Also, readers of Girl will have some of Freckles ruined for them if they read out of order. When Girl opens, Freckles has left the swamp, his success is well known, and his specimen box and “Cathedral” are left in the care of Elnora. Later in the story, his future life is revealed. While I do not love the ending of Freckles, I would not have wanted it ruined for me by reading these books out of order. Also, Girl is a darker and harder book. If you are reading with young people, it is so much better to approach it with the happy memories of Freckles in your heart.
I lead a book club for young readers in my local community. This summer we read Freckles and Girl together in August. Our discussion was exciting! This particular club was for girls 10-16. Half of the girls strongly preferred Freckles and half cherished Girl. All universally agreed that the ending to Freckles was cheesy, but that we all loved seeing Freckles and The Angel in Girl. Nearly two-thirds of the girls thought Elnora was “too perfect” and unbelievable. One-third had a soft spot for her and understood that, like Emily of L.M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon, Elnora was living in a hard situation that demanded her to be as perfect as possible. All of my girls thought Porter’s writing was something like Montgomery’s and Alcott’s, and they are eager to read more.
Freckles is an orphan with one maimed arm, an Irish lilt to his speech, and no proper name. Not much more than a boy, he is friendless, homeless, and hungry. But while the world rendered him incomplete, God preserved the character and hope that were Freckles’ defining characteristics. And, as the story unfolds, that is really all that matters.
When the story opens, Freckles uses all of his Irish stubbornness and his God-given good character to convince Duncan to hire him as a Limberlost guard. Duncan, not only the teamaster but partner in the timber company, needs a “reliable, brave, strong man who will guard (200 acres of the Limberlost) every hour of the day and sleep with one eye open at night.” For one year, such a guard will walk the length of the trail twice a day to check that none of the trees are being stolen by lumber thieves. It is a hard, cold, terrifying, and dangerous job. The Limberlost is dangerous all on its own with rattlesnakes, swamp pits, and severe winter weather. But, more than that, a disgruntled and desperate gang of men are trying to mark and steal the trees before Duncan’s crew can finish the work they are on and move to the Limberlost land. Our plucky title character does get the job and proves his worth more than once before the end of the story.
“Freckles,” he said at last, “we never know the timber of a man’s soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong.” – Freckles
This is part of Porter’s genius. By having Freckles guard the unoccupied Limberlost, the swamp itself must become a character in the story. Freckles spends a year with very little human interaction. He lives with a good family on the edge of the lease, he develops an excellent relationship with Duncan, near the end he becomes a help to the Bird Woman and her pretty young helper; but all of Freckles’s days are spent in the woods and his friends become the critters that dwell there. With this story line in place, Porter is able to help us fall in love with the natural life of the swamp just as Freckles does. We learn how he learns to identify birds, how he captures butterflies, and what he sees in the flora.  We are enchanted by the “Cathedral” that he builds out of the plants and flowers of the Limberlost. It is impossible not to want to run out on a nature hike while reading this marvelous story.
I have hinted that the ending of Freckles is strange. I think it is. Without spoiling it, I will say that it is a break from the rest of the story. Apparently, Porter did not want to end the book a certain way but her publishers required it of her. Giving them what they wanted and not what she thought was right, she wrote an over-the-top saccharine-sweet ending that almost ruins the book. I have read Freckles at least four times and am sure to re-read it many more times. The ending has never prevented me from wanting to read Freckles again. The rest of the book is just too good to take the ending too seriously.
Freckles is truly wonderful. My nine-year-old daughter has listened to it on Audible many times. In fact, she loves it so much that when she finishes it, she starts it again. She loves the innocence and integrity of Freckles. Not unexpectedly, she struggled to listen to A Girl of the Limberlost and did not care for it. I knew she was too young for the book. She didn’t want to skip the book club, however, so I let her try. I am sure that she will appreciate Girl much more in a few years when she is more mature and ready for something harder and darker.
At 479 pages, A Girl of the Limberlost is 125 pages longer than Freckles. It really is a different kind of book.
“Elnora walked by instinct, for her eyes were blinded with tears. She left the road where it turned south at the corner of the Limberlost, climbed a snake fence and entered a path worn by her own feet. Dodging under willow and scrub oak branches she at last came to the faint outline of an old trail made in the days when the precious timber of the swamp was guarded by armed men. This path she followed until she reached a thick clump of bushes. From the debris in the end of a hollow log she took a key that unlocked the padlock of a large weatherbeaten old box, inside of which lay several books, a butterfly apparatus, and an old cracked mirror. The walls were lined thickly with gaudy butterflies, dragon-flies, and moths. She set up the mirror, and once more pulling the ribbon from her hair, she shook the bright mass over her shoulders, tossing it dry in the sunshine…. Behind her lay the land on which she had been born to drudgery and a mother who made no pretence of loving her; before her lay the city through whose schools she hoped to find the means of escape and the way to reach the things for which she cared.” – A Girl of the Limberlost
Elnora Comstock is the daughter of a heartbroken and bitter woman who watched her husband die in the swamp when she was in labor and unable to save him. Mrs. Comstock blames, resents, and harshly treats the innocent Elnora. Despite loving the Limberlost, Elnora wants to find a way out of the emotional prison. She hopes that school will be that way out.
For nearly half of this book, I felt for Elnora as I had felt when reading L. M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon. I had such pity for the resilient and bright soul who was suffering from neglect and abuse. The good news is that things do change. Something incredible happens and the second half of the story is completely different from the first half. Like night to day. In both halves of the story, however, the cause of Elnora’s grief, the Limberlost, is also the source of her salvation.
“Is the Bird Woman at home?” she asked of the maid.“She is at lunch,” was the answer.“Please ask her if she will see a girl from the Limberlost about some moths?” inquired Elnora.“I never need ask, if it’s moths,” laughed the girl. “Orders are to bring any one with specimens right in. Come this way.” -A Girl of the Limberlost
I love it when an author writes herself into the story. In both Freckles and Girl, Porter wrote herself in as The Bird Woman. I love the author and I love the character! At the first fateful meeting between Elnora and The Bird Woman, Elnora confesses some of her struggles. The Bird Woman, not usually affectionate, kisses the pitiable girl.
“Finish your lunch,” she said, “and I will get my price lists, and take down a memorandum of what you think you have, so I will know how many boxes to prepare. And remember this: What you are lies with you. If you are lazy and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose, among the only ones who live past the grave in this world – the people who write books that help, make exquisite music, carve statues, paint pictures, and work for others. Never mind the calico dress, and the coarse shoes. Dig into the books, and before long you will hear yesterday’s tormentors boasting that they were once classmates of yours…”
Even more so than in Freckles, Porter worked in gorgeous descriptions of moths, butterflies, and other beautiful Limberlost treasures. After reading this book, my kids and I purchased a stash of petri dishes so that we could keep their collected specimens. At one point in the story, some of the specimens are destroyed because the live and trapped moths war with each other ripping each other apart. We learn that the correct way to collect these delicate creatures is to put a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol into the petri dish with the live specimen. Within two hours each of our creatures die peacefully and are easy to keep in good shape.
At one point in the story, Porter dresses the girls in dresses which were made specifically to resemble moths. The photo above captures the beauty of that!
Photo Credit: Elizabeth Laumas
These two stories are wonderful in every way. The gorgeous language, elegant descriptions, noble characters, and realistic challenges are truly inspiring. I consider these two books must-reads for my children in their middle school/high school years.

Book Review: Eight Cousins & Rose In Bloom by Louisa May Alcott

https://plumfieldmoms.com/plumfield-moms-book-reviews/rose-campbell-books
 
“Keep good company, read good books, love good things and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can…” -Rose In Bloom
My friends and readers of this blog are likely to know that I consider Louisa May Alcott to be in my list of very favorite authors. I say very favorite even though Diane would remind me that the word “very” rarely adds anything of substance to a statement because in this particular case I think that we bibliophiles are apt to have “favorites” and “very favorites.” Very favorite to me means an author I cannot live without. While some consider her old-fashioned, preachy, unrealistic, and strident, I find her to be a balm for this world-weary mama’s heart and a friend to the innocent tender-hearted young people in my life. In Rose In Bloom, I think she demonstrates particular skill as an inspirational and sophisticated storyteller.
“It does seem to me that some one might write stories that should be lively, natural, and helpful tales in which the English should be good, the morals pure, and the characters such as we can love in spite of the faults that all may have.” ―Eight Cousins
In a format that is similar to the Jo March books, Alcott wrote a pair of books about Rose Campbell and her seven male cousins. Eight Cousins is easily compared to Little Men and is at least equally charming. Shy and sickly Rose Campbell is an orphaned heiress. After the death of her parents, she moves to the “Aunt Hill” – a neighborhood of houses occupied by aunts, great aunts, and cousins while she waits for her guardian, Uncle Alec, to return from foreign travel. Because of a family estrangement, Rose barely knows her extended family, and her grief is compounded by the strangeness of her new situation and so many family members to know and try to please. Very quickly, however, Uncle Alec returns home to set things to rights and all is more than well.
“If she really had any doubt, the look in Dr. Alec’s face banished it without a word, as he opened wide his arms and she ran into them, feeling that home was here.” ―Eight Cousins
When the reader enters into Eight Cousins, Rose has been living with her great-aunts for a year. She has been smothered with their strong Victorian notions of girlhood and generally finds her situation to be suffocating. A submissive child, she is docile and complies with all of their whims, but she is sickly and painfully shy. She fears the day that Uncle Alec will return because she hardly knows him and worries that she will not be able to adequately please him.
“If you dear little girls would only learn what real beauty is, and not pinch and starve and bleach yourselves out so, you’d save an immense deal of time and money and pain. A happy soul in a healthy body makes the best sort of beauty for man or woman.” –Eight Cousins
Alcott spares us any anxiety on this point. Uncle Alec enters the scene quickly and with as much genuine charm as any character, Alcott has ever written. Uncle Alec loves and respects his aunts and sisters, but he, a doctor, quickly surmises that they have been ruining the poor child. He asserts his rights as guardian and prescribes for Rose a classic Alcott regimen: healthy exercise, nourishing food, good and beautiful books, lovely adventures, and hearty play with her cousins. He also goes to war with the aunts over Rose’s “costume,” freeing the girl from the constricting corset, the unsuitable fabrics, and any garment which dresses Rose up to look older than her youthful age. Without apology, Alcott is giving us a clear prescription for social and educational reform in the way in which Uncle Alec tailors Rose’s experiences. Due to exciting and creative circumstances, he also gets to try his hand at helping Phoebe (the little maid similarly aged to Rose), and cousin Mac.
“What do you want?” and Rose looked up rather surprised.“I’d like to borrow some money. I shouldn’t think of asking you, only Mac never has a cent since he’s set up his old chemical shop, where he’ll blow himself to bits some day and you and Uncle will have the fun of putting him together again,” and Steve tried to look as if the idea amused him.” ―Eight Cousins
My children were in fits of giggles throughout the story and moped around for two days after it ended because they missed the Campbell cousins. Alcott loves boys! She writes about boyish antics with so much joy and humor that it is impossible not to love them all. The girls have plenty of fun too.  By the time the story is over, the characters feel real to the reader and we are sorry to see the curtain come down on the play.
“Uncle, I have discovered what girls are made for,” said Rose, the day after the reconciliation of Archie and the Prince.“Well, my dear, what is it?” asked Dr. Alec…“To take care of boys,” answered Rose, quite beaming with satisfaction as she spoke.” Phebe laughed when I told her, and said she thought girls had better learn to take care of themselves first. But that’s because she hasn’t got seven boy-cousins as I have.”“She is right, nevertheless, Rosy, and so are you, for the two things go together, and in helping seven lads you are unconsciously doing much to improve one lass,” ―Eight Cousins
If Little Men was the school version of education reform, Eight Cousins is the home version of social reform.
At the end of Eight Cousins, we leave Rose and Phoebe as they are about to depart on an adventure designed to “properly finish” them before their coming of age. Eight Cousins is a delightful read aloud and family-friendly down to the youngest listener. The audio by Barbara Caruso is particularly lovely.
“Yes, Phebe was herself now, and it showed in the change that came over her at the first note of music. No longer shy and silent, no longer the image of a handsome girl, but a blooming woman, alive and full of the eloquence her art gave her, as she laid her hands softly together, fixed her eye on the light, and just poured out her song as simply and joyfully as the lark does soaring toward the sun.”-Rose in Bloom
When the curtain comes up on Rose in Bloom, Rose and Phoebe are on the deck of a steamer ship which is coming into port. This imagery is appropriate and makes it clear to the reader that this is a different kind of story from Eight Cousins. If Eight Cousins is equally charming to Little Men, it is a pleasant surprise that Rose in Bloom is markedly better than Jo’s Boys. Readers of the Jo March books seem to agree that her final Plumfield installment disappoints on many levels and seems to reveal a creative tiredness on Alcott’s part. Chief among the complaints, I think, is that she tries to tell too many stories by involving all of the characters. In Rose in Bloom, Alcott wisely prunes the character list by sending half of the cousins out into the world and restricting her story chiefly to Rose, Phoebe, and Mac.
If I were pressed to choose my very favorite Alcott book, it would be this one. Despite my deep love for Plumfield, the girl in me cannot ignore the beautiful romances of this story. But more than that, this, of all of her stories, seems to have the most well-constructed story arc. It is a satisfying story, beautifully told, with romantic thrills. Rose, Phoebe, Charlie, Archie, Mac, and the family generally are complex characters with realistic motivations and relatable habits.
“My little girl, I would face a dozen storms far worse than this to keep your soul as stainless as snow; for it is the small temptations which undermine integrity, unless we watch and pray, and never think them too trivial to be resisted.” ― Rose in Bloom
More so than in any of her other books, Alcott takes young adult challenges head-on and allows us to see the consequences of decision-making. We are genuinely in fear for Rose’s moral happiness for more than a few chapters and we cheer for her when things come right in the end.
A friend on instagram said about this book that “quotes in that book slay me.” I could not agree more! Quintessentially Alcott, the quotes from this story are short sermons that are appropriately heavy-handed. While they might feel obnoxious in some other story, in this one, they are just what is needed. In our Gene Stratton-Porter articles, Diane talks about Porter being a watchman on the wall decrying the destruction of morals in American culture. There is no question that Alcott is of the same breed. What I love about both of these authors is that they masterfully created characters whom we care enough about to let them be real to us. And in so doing, we hear these sermons with our hearts and apply them to our lives.
“I thought it was only a habit, easy to drop when I liked: But it is stronger than I; and sometimes I feel as if possessed of a devil that will get the better of me, try as I may” ― Rose In Bloom
A wonderful coming-of-age story to hand to a maturing teenage girl, this book is probably not well-suited to the whole family as a read aloud. In this story, each of the young people wrestles with at least one coming-of-age challenge, and not all succeed in their moral quest. While Alcott is always wholesome, in this text she shows the dangers of alcohol abuse. Without meaning to spoil, I must remind the reader that Alcott tries to keep things realistic, and that usually means that at least one character dies. In this story, the death of a major character is poignant. But even in that, she gives us a beautiful gift in that she lets us see how the character prepares the heart and soul for death through repentance. A bit like David Copperfield, this morality tale makes us suffer while it teaches us its good lesson.
“No woman should give her happiness into the keeping of a man without fixed principles…” ― Rose In Bloom
I love Alcott’s An Old Fashioned Girl and think the little romances in it are pure delight. I think the romantic stories in this one are at least as good but probably better. Alcott successfully keeps us in suspense and throws in some curveballs that make the characters more real and more exciting.
One more fun thing! In this story, Cousin Mac spends some time in the mountains – with Thoreau! Alcott’s father was a close friend of Thoreau, so I loved seeing this inclusion. While the transcendental poet does not appear in the story itself, Mac raves about him and Emerson, and it is clear that Alcott is shaping Mac’s character with the best of those values that the Transcendentals had to offer.
Such a well-constructed set of stories, I have to think that Alcott learned from her earlier works and honed her craft while writing these. Eight Cousins comes almost ten years after Little Women, five years after , and four years after Little Men. As Alcott matured as a writer, her stories took on more and more themes of educational and societal reform. In many ways, I think this pair of books was the pinnacle of her fiction writing. Later works like Jack and Jill and Under the Lilacs were less robust stories (although still very charming) and more about philosophy than character development and story arc. I think Rose got the best of Alcott’s storytelling such that her philosophy was naturally expressed in her characters of Uncle Alec, Rose, Aunt Jessie, and Cousin Mac.
“Finish (the book) if you choose only remember, my girl, that one may read at forty what is unsafe at twenty, and that we never can be too careful what food we give that precious yet perilous thing called imagination.” – Rose in Bloom
A word to those who have seen the modern claims that Alcott was a repressed feminist who hated writing for children: read these two books and the matter will be settled in your mind. There is no possible way that someone who hated writing for children could so lovingly construct these characters and so masterfully guide them through interesting story development. It is ridiculous to say the least. And! Alcott as much as says so herself in each book when she censures the corrosive nature of what was passing for modern literature of her day. A feminist she surely was – but the kind of feminist we can all celebrate. A feminist who wanted young men and women to realize their full potential by exercising their bodies, nourishing their moral imagination, cultivating their good taste, nurturing their good will and charity, and developing their spiritual integrity. Alcott is the right kind of feminist for every age.