This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Join me as I read an assortment
of classic and modern middle grade books. Each week I'll share my thoughts on a different
story and tell you if it is worthy of honor in the halls of the Fortress Fiction. You
can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
So let's start off the Fortress Fiction episode for Little Women with a little bit of information
about the book itself. Little Women is a coming of age novel, by the way I'm reading this
straight from the wiki, written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published
in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, which there's actually mention of that in the version of
the book that I listened to, which is kind of cute. The story follows the lives of the
Four March Sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, and details their passage from childhood to
womanhood. Loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters, it is classified
as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel. Very interesting. Also, it is a little
interesting that I'm including this in Fortress Fiction as a middle grade book because it
could be considered YA. I would say the first half of the book is definitely more in the
vein of middle grade and the second is in the vein of YA perhaps, or maybe a romance,
I'm not quite sure how to distinguish them, but together it definitely works. And yes,
together they definitely work as one cohesive story and as still something I think qualifies
as middle grade fiction. Just because the March girls are growing up doesn't mean that
it can't still be middle grade and it can't be appropriate for children as well. It is
very appropriate for children. So anyway, let me see. There's a little bit more of interesting
information I will talk about and then I'll share with you and then I'll talk about my
thoughts on the book. Little Women was an immediate commercial and critical success
and readers were eager for more about the characters. Alcott quickly completed a second
volume titled Good Wives in the United Kingdom, though the name originated with the publisher
and not Alcott. It was also met with success. The two volumes were issued in 1880 as a single
volume titled Little Women. Alcott subsequently wrote two sequels for her popular work, both
also featuring the March sisters, Little Men in 1871 and Joe's Boys in 1886. Very interesting.
I'm going to keep reading a little bit more. The novel has been said to address three major
themes, domesticity, work and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary
to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity. According to, I'm going to stop
there. I'm going to stop there. So very interesting. Here's another factor. The book has been translated
into numerous languages and frequently adapted for stage and screen. I think I know of three
Little Women movies alone. And there's an anime. I don't know if there's an anime or
not. There might be an anime. There's an anime of Emma. I know that for sure. Anyway, so
now I'm going to start talking to you about this book. This lovely, lovely book. So my,
let me see, what's the time right now? Okay. My one minute review of Little Women in the
context of fortress fiction is that this book definitely belongs in sconce in great honor
in the fortress fiction. It, I believe it, well, it is an entertaining book and it is
a positive uplifting book. It is a beautiful book and it encouraged me. It convicted me.
It inspired me to be a better husband, to be a better father. Uh, it made me, uh, it
didn't actually until this moment make me think about like what a rotten kid I was at
times, uh, because these characters are just so lovely and so wonderful and so good and
genuine and they have their foibles and their trials and they make mistakes and you get
to see this whole life captured in this story. And it really is beautiful. And I think everybody
should read this book. Definitely recommend for me. Now that being said, I want to go
ahead and talk about more of the book. What, um, interesting. So I just noticed that the
title, uh, from a very old document or manuscript or I guess document version of the book, it's
called Little Women or Meg, Joe, Beth and Amy by Louisa May Alcott, which is kind of
funny. I wonder if that's them. That must be done in birth order because yeah, I believe
that's them in birth order, which is a pretty cute, pretty quaint. Oh, also the, uh, the
original book has illustrations in it done by Louisa May Alcott, uh, or it says illustrated
by May Alcott, which I'm assuming that's her and not her sister, but you never know. Um,
but that's still really cool. It's one of these old books with the illustrations in
it, which I think is absolutely beautiful. It's classic. Um, even Bridget of Erythia
had illustrations in it and that was for me, uh, 1975, I believe. And where was it? 78.
I don't quite remember now, but regardless, uh, it's something very charming about these
older books. Now I listened to the audio book of it, so I didn't get the benefit of that,
but, uh, we actually have a copy of this, uh, like primo copy of the book that has, uh,
illustrations in it. So, but this is my first time reading it and, uh, just, you know, I'm,
I am a father and I had a sister or I have a sister, I don't know why I said it like
that. I have sisters. I'm a father. I've been, uh, a husband and a son and all these other
things, you know, specifically two women or in the context of having relationships with
women in my family in my life. And, uh, I have daughters as well. So, um, this book
was really interesting because it's a girl book. This book was written for girls, I believe,
uh, four girls, four women, and it's still beautiful and charming and funny and everything
that it needs to be to be entertaining to me as a man who didn't grow up as a little
girl. And it very honestly captured, I think in a heightened sense, what it's like to grow
up as a kid. Now, of course I did not grow up in the 1800s in America, in America, bonus
points if you're listening to this and you know what that's a reference to, just let
me know. And anyway, it like shouldn't, it shouldn't, I shouldn't be able to relate to
this what I do. And, uh, I think it's just because the characters are written in such
a real way. Again, they have flaws, they have issues, they have things that trouble them
and they're so good. Not the characters are good. Their flaws and their foibles are so
good. And despite the fact that these characters are so good and so noble, they still really
struggle and that's really endearing. Probably one of the things I like best about this book
is it's from a modern day perspective and from growing up with postmodern ideas and
things like that, which I basically reject. I like that this isn't a subversion of a romance
story. It is instead a family story, which contains romances in it and it contains heartbreak,
but it's not a book about a woman or a girl falling in love with a man and then living
happily ever after. It's a book about these sisters and their lives. And it just feels
very, it's like it's a book about these sisters and their lives and how they live to the best
of their ability, the ethics instilled in them by their parents. And I'm in the midst
of raising my children and instilling in them my ethics with my awesome wife, who's a hundred
percent my partner and we're very much in sync on like 90% of everything we're doing,
which is wonderful. It's so difficult and I can imagine doing it with somebody who I'm
not in sync with like this, but thank God that's not an issue for us. So we're very
much on the same page raising our children. And so are the March mother and father who
feature in this book, Marmee as they call her, who I don't know what her real name is,
but for some reason these young American girls from, I don't even know where they are. I
think they're in like Boston, maybe, maybe they eat lobsters at some point. So that makes
me think that they're like Northeastern. No, but then again, their dad's fighting in the
civil war as a, what do you call this guys? No, a parson, not a pastor, not a partridge
in a pear tree. Their dad is fighting or is serving in the war as a, you've got Muslims,
rabbis, pastors, or I should say imams, rabbis, pastors, priests who serve in this capacity
in war, chaplain. He's like a chaplain for a brigade or platoon or whatever it is. I
don't know all the military stuff and they don't go into all that in the book. But then
he comes back and while he's gone for a decent chunk of the book, their mother is raising
them kind of like a single mother and she's doing an amazing job. She is instilling, like
the kids already, like don't, they're not like at each other's throats. They have their
differences and they're a little minor, you could say, but they're definitely not at each
other's throats. They love each other and they help each other and they play and have
fun with each other. And there's glimpses of them having friends outside of the home.
I don't know what their schooling is like. They're all able to read, perhaps, I don't
know what I'm not going to speculate, but they're all able to read and write, which
isn't an issue for them. And you know, there's no TV, there's no video games, there's no
Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or anything like that. So they're not distracted by those
sorts of things. They don't have those technologies, those avenues of interacting with the world.
So instead they read books, they write plays together, they act in plays together, they
play with dolls, they take care of animals potentially, or to some extent. They do all
these different things that you would have in this early, you know, in this civil war
era America. And it's really interesting to see all their interactions with each other
and like how they make play and how they make entertainment for themselves and how they
make their lives because they're all very different from each other. And they're all
doing things very, like they're all fairly independent people, and they all have their
own avenues and silos of activity, or their areas of focus and expertise, because, well,
partly because that's their nature and partly because sometimes in a family you have to
kind of like claim something is yours. And you act a little bit in distinction to other
people so that you can have your thing. Or sometimes you copy, it kind of depends on
the family dynamic specifically. But for the March sisters, I don't think we have too
much of that kind of thing where like, oh, I'm not going to be like this person. Jo is
the most contrary of them all, but it's more specifically when she's told what's expected
of her, she kind of wants to do the opposite. And that's not, that's atypical of the other
sisters. But they all have their interests, you know, of course Jo has her own, but she
might for a turn pretend that she's not interested in something she's interested in if you were
to say something to her about it, which is kind of interesting. So they all have like
very distinct personalities and differences between each other. And Jo kind of feels like
the main character with this being semi-autobiographical, it makes sense. And I can see how that informs
the book and that kind of sets the tone for the book, but still like the ways that Marmee
raises the girls and like sets them up to go through life's trials and encourages them
to go through them with love and dignity and gentleness.
I want to switch gears now and talk about how Alcott or Louisa May Alcott being more
of a Jo being more of a man's woman. It makes sense why the men are so well written in this
book. I really feel like every man is very authentically written in this book. It's a
little bit shocking how well all these characters are written. Yeah, so Laurie, the neighbor
boy who the March sisters encounter and make friends with and make into a brother basically,
he's very well written. I don't know. I don't really want to spoil the book. It's a hard
to recommend. It's actually not only, you know what, I'm going to switch gears. I'm
going to say this instead. Not only is this book so good that it's a definite recommend
and I give it like a nine out of 10, by the way, I think by the end of the first chapter,
I thought, wow, this book is amazing. I'm going to give it a nine out of 10 if it continues
this way. But not so not only is it an excellent book and not only is it a definite recommend
for anybody and not only does it belong in the fortress fiction, it actually is something
that I will insist that people read. And I don't know what I need to do to pitch this
book to people to get them to read it other than saying it's amazing. It's very good.
It may be too. I'm going to say it may be too biblical for people because it's very
biblical and I hesitate to say Christian because while it is in fact Christian and the March
Sisters are in fact Christians, as is their father, who's a pastor or minister or something
like that. And while the book does reference Pilgrim's Progress by insert name of author
here, I do not remember the name of the author of Pilgrim's Progress at the moment, despite
the fact that I read it in high school. I'm going to say, hold on, you know what, I'm
going to look it up. Let's see. There may be an inspiration or a mention of who it was.
Excuse me while I do things. OK, John Bunyan. I was going to say John Milton, which is totally
wrong. But apparently John Bunyan wrote the Pilgrim's Progress. This is referenced several
times in the book or in Little Women, and it's referenced to amazing effect. It's if
you don't know Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory about Christians in Christianity with a character
whose name is Christian. And he goes through all these toils and meets all these characters
who are allegorical representation. Well, they're allegory characters. I don't know
how you say that any other way, any cleaner way. They're allegory characters representative
of all these different things, including a Polly on who is a weird Greek vacation of
the name Abaddon from the Hebrew Bible. And Abaddon, I believe, is a demon who is associated
with Sheol. Anyway, the whole angelology thing from Judaism is very strange to me because
angels are hardly referenced in the Torah and the Tanaf, and they're not very well
described except for they are like an Ezekiel. And then demons are hardly ever mentioned
either. But there's a whole angelology demonology that was developed in Judaism over the years.
And I believe the Catholic Church took a lot of that stuff and absorbed it into itself
when the Catholic Church rose to more and more power and prominence. And while this
is not a religious podcast, and it's not a podcast talking about religion, it's talking
about books. This is fundamental background. It's world building, for lack of a better
term to this novel, because you have all this all this stuff mentioned. In fact, one of
the chapters is called Joe meets her Apollyon. And because it's been so long since I read
John Bunyan's novel, I didn't think it was a reference to that. I thought it was a reference
to Greek mythology, perhaps. But then I looked it up and oh, yes, Apollyon, aka Abaddon,
aka Sheol or related to Sheol. And I thought, okay, it all makes sense. Now this this, okay,
I understand this makes sense. Because really, the book is I don't know how to sell it. I
don't know how to sell it. Because to my to Jews, I would sell it as look, it reverts
to Christianity, but it doesn't in a very, you know, to knock kind of way. And like there's
even mentions of like, oh, the friend who's always there for you. And it's speaking specifically
about God the Father, there's like no mention of a Trinity here. There's no I did. Does
the name does the word Jesus the name Jesus appeared all in the book? I don't know. But
it's an interesting. It's a very interesting representation of Christianity, because it's
more of like a whole Bible kind of approach. And it references like, maybe Heavenly Father
God the Father, once or twice, maybe three, three, four times the most, I think. And maybe
one Jesus in there, but probably not at all. The events take place at Christmas, the least
the start of the book does. And I don't remember if Easter is featured in this book or not.
I kind of feel like it isn't. But like there's no Thanksgiving, there's no Halloween. There's
the Christmas, then there's like different, like seasonal things. Oh, it's springtime,
we're going to go here. Or it's, you know, fall, we're baking this kind of thing or whatever.
But it's very interesting, because it's just like a very biblical book, like, fun fact,
two thirds, I believe, of the so called New Testament are quotes and references specifically
to things from the Tanakh, from the Hebrew Bible. You know, Jewish people don't say the
Old Testament, but they say it's the Tanakh, it's their Bible, it's the writings, it's
the Torah, the prophets and the writings, which is shrunk down into Tanakh and compressed
into a single word. And, you know, versus there's a Christian, one of the church fathers
at one point, at one point, a church father specifically said in order to distance Jews
and Christians from each other, said, that's the Old Testament, this is the New Testament,
we're better than them, we're replacing them, they need to go away. And if I can't make
them go away, I'll definitely make you think they're old and busted, and we don't need
to pay any attention to them. But anyway, that's getting a little far afield. But just,
it's interesting because the Marges don't seem to have that kind of perspective. It
seems like they would have been readers of the entire Bible and would have valued things
and Psalms and Proverbs and any of the exciting stuff going on in the book of Joshua or Judges
or anywhere throughout the Tanakh. So there's lots of great things you can find in there,
lots of great value. If you can look past it being old in comparison to your New Testament.
But that's just from a Christian perspective. So anyway, and actually, I'm saying that's
the Christian perspective. But the Christian perspective represented by Alcott is a very
soft one. It's not anti-Semitic, it's not anti-Jewish, it's not anti-Tanakh, it's just
like very pro, you know, God is your heavenly father, he's, you know, God the father is
your friend who will, you know, be there for you or whatever. And it's very much emphasizing,
again, the whole Bible and not, you know, a specific person who is difficult for people
to deal with at times. And at the same time, it's not. So that's what I would say to
Jews. To Christians, I would say this book is, I don't know, it's everything you would
want. Like it's very encouraging of you loving God and being a good person and living a life
of self-sacrifice and diligence and truth. And it talks about you being rewarded for
being good and you suffering for being bad, which that may sound like a more of a Jewish
thing, but it's really not. I think the best Christians are those who believe in truth
and hard work and in seeking, not necessarily seeking blessing, but blessing being the consequence
of obedience to God, which includes love of God and love of fellow man on equal footing,
which is exactly how it's presented in the Tanakh, by the way. And yeah, I think that's
definitely true of the best Christians. And it's just, it's a great book and, you know,
it's specifically, you know, Christian in name, even if there's room for a Jewish reader
to not take offense, relate anything in it, I think for the most part, maybe the Christmas
celebration. And then to the secular person, the person who isn't Christian, isn't Jewish,
doesn't really have a love for God in their hearts or in their lives, or that's not really
something important in them, or even just a, you know, kind of a religious person who,
a person who's the anomaly, they were born into whatever faith, but they don't really
practice it. It's just a good book. It's like a tone down, down to the Abbey. It's very
reminiscent of Jane Austen novels. There's less scandal in this book, but there's heartache
and there's heartbreak and there's sadness and there's all these different trials that
these characters face and face heroically. They face actually, some of them face their
challenges heroically. Some of them face their challenges less than heroically and there's
falls and redemption and people getting back up. It's, it's just good drama. It's good
human drama. And if you can appreciate the context of these people coming from a Christian
milieu, an early American Christian milieu, you know, religious perhaps is the better
way to say it. You can definitely appreciate the human struggle that's captured in these
pages and yeah, Joe feels she's not a feminist. I don't know. Feminism is a difficult topic
to handle, but she's a very interesting woman. She's a very nuanced woman and all the marches
who's get to be nuanced women and that makes them all the more interesting, I think. And
that makes the book all the more interesting. You know, the ideal of marriage and children
is there and it's achieved. Well, it's there and it's achieved. I'll put it that way because
I don't want to go into spoilers because it's such a good book and telling you things that
happen wouldn't really spoil it for you, especially if you've seen the movies or any other adaptation,
but it just, it makes it a richer experience for you to experience it yourself and to have
it all unfold for you as, you know, in real time as you're reading it. The, the, the foreshadowing
that's there, the things that dawn on you, the things that you think are going to happen
and then don't happen and then maybe they do and the back and forth of all it, it's
just, it's so, it's such an enjoyable trek to go on and you know, like Christian's Pilgrim's
Progress, the book takes you on a journey as the reader where you get to go through
all of this stuff and experience it along the March Sisters and it just, it just feels
so good and it's just, you know, it's a journey. It's a journey. It's a story. There's this
heart there and it's just, it's a gorgeous book and I don't really feel, and you know,
forgive me for having a, like long, you know, talking about religion, diversion in the midst
of talking about this book, but it feels, it's very important to the context of the
book, I think, but still you don't need to fear wherever, whatever camp you're in, it
has its appeal and it has a lot of value and there's, I would say there's not just value
in this book, there's virtue in this book, the lessons taught, the, it's funny because
it's not, some could accuse this book of being preachy. I would say, that's your opinion,
I would say it's not preachy, it's illustrative. There are characters, Marmee specifically
at one point, talks about her anger and how her anger had ruled her at one point and how
she has fought against her anger with God's help, with her husband's help and on her own
terms because she doesn't want to pass on the anger that so ruled her and caused her
to hurt other people and as a consequence of hurting other people, to hurt herself,
to harm herself, I'm not saying physically, like she hurt people and then those people
turned away from her or weren't there for her or were estranged from her and that hurt
her. She lived with the consequences of her actions, she made her bed and had to lie in
it and she doesn't want that for her daughter so she's trying to live a different way, she's
trying to elevate herself as a person, she's trying to do better and be her best self at
all times because she's living for those girls. Not that she doesn't have her own life with
Mr. March, that's not the case. They do have a love and a marriage and a romance and a
beautiful life together and they get to share that throughout the course of the book I'll
say and you can tell that's something that's important to them and that's what she wants
and she wants to be a mother and she wants to be a certain type of mother and she wants
to be an inspiration to her children and she gets to be and it's just beautiful. It's almost
Marmee's story, I don't know, it's peculiar, it's almost Marmee's story but it's obviously
not. It's definitely Jo's story but it's just Marmee and Jo and the other girls are so interwoven
into this narrative and Jo gets to be on the back burner, she gets to be a side character
in the book, she gets to be in all these different positions and there's all this different focus
and emphasis on all these different characters and it's such a rich book and the pains and
the sorrows and the heartache that people go through, you get to see, some of them just
happen, some of them are caused by them, some of them are consequences of their actions
and you get to see them over the course of their lives because the book starts when they're
very young, I would say the youngest is, I don't know, 10 or 12, I thought the youngest
and it ends when the girls are, I don't know, in their 30s, let's say. So it's a good span
of years, 15 or so years. 15 to 20 years is I would say, I would guess the span of the
book. It could be a little bit later, I'm not 100% sure but it's so interesting how
much of their lives it covers and in doing that and then facing the challenges they do
and the way they do it and because of the context that they have, you get to learn virtue
through seeing their mistakes and through seeing them fight their mistakes and combat
things and I don't know, it just seems like there's a rom-com section in there, like early
married life being a disaster rom-com but there's also just lessons to learn as a husband
and a wife, it's interesting because it's a book, it's a very instructive book but it's
a narrative first and foremost and that's really enjoyable to me and I think it's wonderful.
Again, if that didn't sell it to you, let me know. I definitely want as many people
to read this book as possible, it's just an amazing book, one of the top books, it's one
of the best books I've ever read. I jokingly told my daughter that it's better than Jurassic
Park. I love Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park is such a good book but it's like popcorn
garbage trash compared to this, like this is a good book, it's got amazing things and
not that Jurassic Park doesn't have its merits, it has merits, it's mostly entertaining, there's
some deeper things going on there but this has a story and it has value and virtue, it's
a virtue, it's almost a holy book, it's definitely a virtuous book and it's incredible, it's
incredible. So if, well I'm going to check and see if anybody's left any comments for
me on this book and I'm going to share them with you and regardless of whether they have
or not, if you have something to say about this book, I would love to hear it, leave
me a comment, there's a variety of ways you can contact me, through the show notes, through
the blog, MJMunoz.com is the best way to do it and yeah, I'm going to take a break for
now, come back with messages from people or not, thoughts and feelings on this book from
people or not if they decided to share at this time and on the other side of it I'll
wrap things up and then we'll part ways for now.
I did not obtain the feedback I was looking for but for now that's okay, I decided I'm
going to do something a little different now that I've come back to the episode and that's
that I'm going to tell you about other works from Louisa Malacat because I like this book
so much and I actually found out a little bit more in doing this light research. So
Little Women is the story of the girls when they're young, Good Wives is the second half
that is mentioned, oh the next part of this will be published if this first part has success
and that's what the book Little Women is now today. So it used to be Little Women and Good
Wives and now it's together in one volume. She also wrote a Little Men book in 1871 or
it was released in 1871 and then in 1886 she released Joe's Boys and that's a sequel to
Little Men and then she has other novels, The Inheritance, Moods, The Mysterious Key
and What It Opened which sounds like a great title, I want to read that book. An Old Fashion
Girl, Will's Wonder Book, Work, A Story of Experience, Beginning Again, A Continuation
of Work, Eight Cousins or The Ant Hill and then Rose and Bloom which is a sequel to Eight
Cousins and Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, A Village Story and apparently, huh, I wonder
if these were, oh A.M. Bernard, well anyway, three more books and I'll stop. Behind a Mask
or A Woman's Power that was as A.M. Barnard, a pen name she had, The Abbott's Ghost or
Maurice, Maurice, Their Herons Temptation and lastly A Long Fatal Love Chase which apparently
was not published until 1995 which is interesting. So anyway you may want to check out some of
those other books by Alcott if you like Little Women like I did. And as I'm rounding out
the episode I want to let you know the next Fortress Fiction episode will be, the next
book I'll be reading for Fortress Fiction is going to be Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
by Mildred D. Taylor originally published in 1976 and here's the little blurb for it,
In the Depression Era South, the Logan Family Fights Racism and Injustice and I listened
to a little bit of the, there was a very short intro on the Cloud Library version of this
book I found which you can find it there for free if you've got a library card. And I listened
to, yeah just a small, it has a very small intro like less than five minutes and it was
really interesting and then I listened to just a little bit of the book but I hadn't
done my Little Women recording yet so I had to stop myself but from the little snippet
I heard it sounds interesting so I'm looking forward to reading that book and talking about
it with all of you so again it's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, apparently
it's book four in that series which it's kind of, it reminds me of like the Little House
on the Prairie series because it's a series of books about a family and it's historical,
I know dramatized is the right way to say it or not but that's, it's a family story
written down in books and turned into these you know interesting successful stories that
touch people and I'll be curious to read this one.