Rose in Bloom

By: Louisa May Alcott


Published: 1876


Synopsis:


"In the sequel to "Eight Cousins", Rose Campbell returns to the "Aunt Hill" after two years of travelling around the world. Suddenly, she is surrounded by male admirers, all expecting her to marry them. But before she marries, Rose is determined to establish herself as an independent woman." (Amazon.com)

An Old Fashioned Girl

By: Louisa May Alcott


Published: 1869 (as a serial)


Synopsis:


If we said that Miss Alcott, as a writer for young people just getting to be young ladies and gentlemen, deserved the great good luck that has attended her books, we should be using an unprofessional frankness and putting in print something we might be sorry for after the story of the Old-fashioned Girl had grown colder in our minds. And yet it is a pretty story, a very pretty story; and almost inexplicably pleasing, since it is made up of such plain material, and helped off with no sort of adventure or sensation. It is nothing, in fact, but the story of a little girl from the country, who comes to visit a gay city family, where there is a fashionable little lady of her own age, with a snubbed younger sister, a gruff, good-hearted, mischievous brother, -- as well as a staid, sensible papa, a silly, sickly mamma, and an old-time grandmother. In this family Polly makes herself ever so lovely and useful, so that all adore her, though her clothes are not of the latest fashion, nor her ideas, nor her principles; and by and by, after six years, when she returns again to the city to give music-lessons and send her brother to college, Mr. Shaw fails, and the heartlessness of fashionable life, which his children had begun to suspect, is plain to them, and Tom's modish fiancee jilts him, and Polly marries him, and Fanny Shaw gets the good and rich and elegant Sydney, who never cared for her money, and did not make love to her till she was poor. That is about all; and as none of these people or their doings are strange or remarkable, we rather wonder where the power of the story lies. There's some humor in it, and as little pathos as possible, and a great deal of good sense, but also some poor writing, and some bad grammar. One enjoys the simple tone, the unsentimentalized facts of common experience, and the truthfulness of many of the pictures of manners and persons. Besides, people always like to read of kindly self-sacrifice, and sweetness, and purity, and naturalness; and this is what Polly is, and what her character teaches in a friendly and unobtrusive way to everybody about her. The story thus mirrors the reader's good-will in her well-doing, and that is perhaps what, more than any other thing, makes it so charming and comfortable; but if it is not, pleasing the little book remains nevertheless; and nobody can be the worse for it. Perhaps it is late to observe that the scene of the story is in Boston; at least, the locality is euphuistically described as "the most conceited city in New England"; and we suppose Springfield will not dispute the distinction with us." (The Atlantic Monthly, 1870)

Creation of Guileless

I began this blog because I wanted a way to compile a list within a very specific genre of literature for myself and like-minded readers. I am also hoping that whoever comes across this site will contribute titles that I haven't listed. I have always been a fan of women's lit between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth, but over the past few years I have gotten very specific. I like simplicity, I like a reverence of nature, goodness, purity, etc. and I think there are some authors who have found a way to create heroines that some people might find sickeningly sweet, but that are still interesting because they are flawed. L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables is a perfect example, the same with Jo March from Alcott's Little Women. Both writers had to discover this, but I even like their before works. Alcott's earlier protagonists were model young women who didn't even have flawed thoughts, and while that may be obnoxious at times there is something about an earlier age when virtue was still valued that I find very alluring. These young women make me want to be a better person. I find that most people like to identify with protagonists, and when they read about someone with issues much like their own (i.e. Holden Caulfield) they feel validated. I don't want to focus on my failings, I want to be excited about trying to become better.