Little Women

LITTLE WOMEN

Louisa M. Alcott

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT was born in 1832 and died in 1888. She was the daughter of A. Bronson Alcott, the “Sage of Concord.” Her early surroundings were of a highly intellectual and literary character, and she naturally took to writing while still very young.

In her sketch “Transcendental Oats” she describes in an amusing way the experience of a year at Fruitlands, where an attempt was made to establish an ideal community.

Miss Alcott was obliged to be a wage-earner to help out the family income, and so taught school, served as a governess and at times worked as a seamstress. Wearying of this, she wrote for the papers stories of a sensational nature, which were remunerative financially, but unsatisfactory to her as a literary pursuit, and she abandoned this style of writing.

In a Washington hospital she served as a nurse for a time, but the work was so hard that she failed in health, and when she recovered she had to find new fields of work; then she traveled as attendant to an invalid, and with her visited Europe.

After several attempts at literature, Miss Alcott wrote “Little Women,” which was an immediate success, reaching a sale of 87,000 copies in three years. She wrote from the heart, and wove into the story incidents from the lives of herself and her three sisters at Concord. She afterward wrote “An Old-Fashioned Girl,” “Little Men,” “Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag,” “The Eight Cousins,” and “Rose in Bloom,” besides other stories and sketches.

In their old-fashioned New England home the little women lived with Mrs. March, their brisk and cheery mother, who always had a “can-I-help-you” look about her, and whom her four girls lovingly called “Marmee.”

Pretty Meg, the oldest, was sixteen, and already showed domestic tastes and talents, though she detested the drudgery of household work; and, a little vain of her white hands, longed at heart to be a fine lady. Jo, fifteen, was tall, thin, and coltish, and gloried in an unconcealed scorn of polite conventions. Beth, thirteen, was a loveable little thing, shy, fond of her dolls and devoted to music, which she tried hopefully to produce from the old, jingling tin pan of a piano. Amy, twelve, considered herself the flower of the family. An adorable blonde, she admitted that the trial of her life was her nose. For, when she was a baby Jo had accidentally dropped her into the coal-hod and permanently flattened that feature, and though poor Amy slept with a patent clothespin pinching it, she couldn't attain the Grecian effect she so much desired.

Father March was an army chaplain in the Civil War, and in his absence Jo declared herself to be the man of the family. To add to their slender income, she went every day to read to Aunt March, a peppery old lady; and Meg, too, earned a small salary as daily nursery governess to a neighbor's children.

Appointment with Death!

To accept life is to accept death. You, me, everyone you know, everyone I know, all of us have an inevitable prescheduled appointment with death that we cannot miss, we can’t be late for it and we can’t decide to not show up, it is going to happen. Today I know that acceptance is the key to all my problems. I realize at age 30 it is a bit ludicrous to be contemplating death, but as you age you come closer and closer to that appointment, my father who is 61 said to me, “once you get to be my age you don’t even worry about it anymore” I am not on my deathbed but as I watch the time go by I am cognizant of the fact that each and every breath I take, every word I write on this blog leaves me one less to my last. I am currently quite ill with Rheumatic Fever, and the extent of the damage done to my heart is not yet known, they are still running tests. Endless tests. I take psychiatric medication which is an absolute necessity, I take anti-convulsants for my form of epilepsy, I will be on anti-biotics for the rest of my life apparently, and of course I am taking anti-inflammatories and cortical steroids for my rheumatic symptoms, it gets harder and harder to make it up and down the stairs each day. I normally don’t pay attention to the news but I have an RSS feed from CNN on my screensaver and I noticed the early death of Syd Barrett, one of my heroes that was two days after seeing that Billy Preston had died. All I want is the same as everyone, Why am I here and for how long?

Dreams...

I was listening to Traditional Persian Music via Internet Radio, drinking a Coca-Cola, smoking a Pall Mall and thinking about how much pain my lower back was having at that particular moment when I recieved this e-mail from the Professor of my Ethics Class.

Dreams are the fuel that feeds our ambition, a source of strength, and cause for progress. Without dreams, hope dies. All great human achievements in the Universe started with a dream, a spark of imagination which turned into an idea which blossomed into an action plan. The end results are always a new way of life. Not all of us will have colossal ideas that change the course of humanity, but all of us have dreams that can better our own lives. Thosewho have dreams are full of life and a sense of purpose. Let goof dreams and you let go of far more than just a good idea or two, you also lose apart of yourself.

There are a lot of dream sabotagers out there that many use as an excuse to let go of their dreams: fear, lack of time, not enough money, and the list goes on. In a society conditioned
towards instant gratification, it can become easy to lose sight of long term possibilities. With every great dream comes the innovation to work through obstacles if enough effort is put forth. It is important to remember that dreams are a vital part of life. They
push us tobecome who we truly are, and to express ourselves as individuals.