Two books:

"Little Women", Louisa May Alcott, 1868/1869, protagonist: Jo March
"The Well of Loneliness", Radclyffe Hall, 1928, protagonist: Stephen Gordon

One is presumably about tomboyishness.
The other is about "sexual inversion". (Homosexuality not having been invented yet in 1928.)

Were these two books formative for you?
Did they resonate with you personally?
Do you think that they were really about gender identity?

Little Women is perhaps on of the most important, if not influential books ever written in America, no other book stands in the place of having been read by so many successive generations of girls and woman that it became such a touchstone and an icon in its own right.  To me Jo was the prototype feminist and it was not about being a tomboy as much as it was about self-identity and pursuing your own path - though in that I think it was more of a reflection of transcendentalism than anything else. Though Jo gets in trouble for being a tomboy, it's really her boldness not her behavior that is the root issue.  Granted she does turn down the traditional offer of marriage, but does marry, but on her terms.  Though I think Alcott did that out of public pressure (the book was a HUGE seller when it came out, with legions of fans who in an age of correspondence wrote to her, a lot), I think given her druthers Jo would have remained unmarried, as Alcott herself did.

Jo Marsh never needed to marry. Too bad Louisa found that Jo had to.

Never read Radclyffe Hall at all.

Jo Marsh never needed to marry. Too bad Louisa found that Jo had to.

Yeah, but Louisa needed, or at least wanted, money, which being fictional (to a degree, most LitCrit types see Jo as being Louisa) Jo never had a need for.  LMA was just doing what all stars do, just what the public asked.

Quote from: tekla on July 19, 2009, 11:53:30 AM
Jo Marsh never needed to marry. Too bad Louisa found that Jo had to.

Yeah, but Louisa needed, or at least wanted, money, which being fictional (to a degree, most LitCrit types see Jo as being Louisa) Jo never had a need for.  LMA was just doing what all stars do, just what the public asked.

Yeah, that part I get. And Louisa also had the example of her brilliant if ne'er-do-well father as a cautionary tale. If you can make money do so.

Kinda like Dumas and the follow-ups to The Three Musketeers and  Conan Doyle "having" to continue the Sherlock Holmes stories even though he himself didn't seem as taken with his hero as the public was.

Having the bread to eat when you're a writer isn't a half-bad idea.

Remember, that Allcott was HUGE in her day, and was one of the 'original' kind of NYT best sellers, so if you can do Beverly Hills Cop II, and get paid twice as much for it, even its only half the movie, well, do it.

I always loved, from the time I first read it like in 3rd grade, Alcott's writing.  It's pure, graceful and simple and, in direct contrast to much of today's writing, but perhaps due to the whole transcendental deal, had a depth of character development that few have ever reached.

So yeah, given her background, dad and all that, her literaly friends it makes sense.  Also, she is not only one of the first pop culture authors, she was a woman.  Matter of fact, I bet LMA made more money off of her own work (writing, but it doesn't matter what kind of work) than any woman in history had made up to that point.

As a precocious little kitty kat I was always being given books to read, and one teacher who though I would be a good writer started - and others continued - to school me in the cult of Stunk and White.  Which often struck me as funny as they were the same people telling me to read Dickens and Oliver Twist and Great Expectations were as far from S&W as you could get.  I mean old Chuck (did anyone call him 'Chuck'?) could prattle on, and on, and on.  S&W could have got Oliver Twist down to a paragraph and been outta there, you know?

But, when I found out that as an author, Dickens got paid by the word, well then it all made sense.  Of course he loved long run-on sentences (the mortal sin of S&W), because every word was another penny, and that stuff be adding up.

Quote from: tekla on July 19, 2009, 12:25:35 PM
But, when I found out that as an author, Dickens got paid by the word, well then it all made sense.  Of course he loved long run-on sentences (the mortal sin of S&W), because every word was another penny, and that stuff be adding up.

I loved both "Little Women" and "Eight Cousins." Mother, the human one, not the divine one bought them for me when I was about six and I read them again and again for years. Maid Marian and all ya know. Jo seemed to fit that pattern as well.

Yep, when Blackwoods or something of the sort was your means of support the idea was to never stint on the intricacy and the breadth of words. Tolstoy and Henry James, George Sand and George Eliot knew that as well.

Why are novels, with the exception perhaps of a a few of Jorge Amado's, not done that way today? Because they (authors) aren't being paid through magazines but through publishers of books. It's cost effective to write small and efficient novels that cost a publisher minimal copy-editing and proof-reading and are easily sent through press and taken home from Barnes & Noble by a reading public that, even though college-educated, in large part is basically illiterate in many respects.

a reading public that even though college-educated in large part is basically illiterate in many respects. Or even almost all respects.  The reading public of LMA's day were far better readers even without (or perhaps because of) the college degree. I mean LMA never went to college, but after having her father and Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller as teachers, college would have only been a dumbing down I guess. 

Her mom was no house-maid either. Well, she did work at that occasionally, butcha know what I mean.

I find it amazing when in Concord to understand just how close they all actually were: Hawthorne and Alcott at either end and Emerson and the remainder near the center of the village. And it is and was a village for goodness sakes!

You can really understand why Thoreau knew "I have traveled much in Concord."

I never knew any of this history behind the book posted here, but Jo March made me feel better as a little girl. Even thought maybe I was normal for a second.

I think I read every single Louisa May Alcott book in our library when I was a kid, but Little Women is still my favorite.  I loved her books, but I didn't like the preachy bits sometimes (never do what this child just did, it's bad, bad, bad!).  That wasn't much of a problem in Little Women, I'm mainly thinking of Jack and Jill.

The Well of Loneliness got me through my teenage years, before the internet was a popular thing, being able to read a book that spoke so much to me just about made life bearable. Strange that in many ways it is held up as such an iconic lesbian novel and yet i think Stephen is most definitely trans. So while some of the lesbian community are so willing to deny us they are quite happy to claim our literature. Well thats me on my band wagon sorry!!!

I haven't read Little Women and so cannot speak to that, but I read The Well of Loneliness not long ago and admired it immensely. The turn-of-the-century prose hit this old-fashioned English major right where she lives. As for the story itself, setting aside the despair, depression, and hopelessness, I share the view that Stephen seemed far more FtM (and straight) than lesbian. The childish role-playing as Lord Nelson, the then-unseemly equestrian competitiveness, the father-bonding, the horror at having a young man propose, and her eventual love affair with the femme Mary; all of them seemed to bespeak transsexualism rather than gayness.

Of course, it's impossible to know for sure, and I suspect that Hall herself may never have gotten it totally sorted out in her head. One thing seems certain: she endured a great deal of unhappiness in her life. For that, I'm very sorry.

~Lannie~