Little Women

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When our daughter Bethany was a girl, our wise and dear friend Arlene told her: “Don’t let your childhood go by without reading Little Women.” Bethany took Arlene’s advice. Bethany loved Little Women. I do, too. In fact, each member of our family loves Little Women. Our son John enjoyed it as a teenager, and Ray loves it, too. We believe it is a great way for boys and men to understand the “little women” in their lives.

Little Women teaches powerful lessons about being a daughter, a sister, a woman, a wife, and a mother. I’m thankful that I didn’t let my children-still-in-the-nest years go by without reading it as an adult. I just enjoyed it again. This time I listened to an audio version. In between my first reading and my just completed listening, I have watched the 1994 movie version probably dozens of times.

I can’t give an opinion about the newest movie version because I haven’t seen it. Right now I don’t have any plans to see it. I want to keep the lessons I learned from the book in my heart right now. As I listened to it this time, I kept thinking, “This is so much better than the movie.” Actually, I felt cheated. I remembered loving the book when I read it years ago, but the movie version had replaced too much of the story in my mind. The book story and that movie story are really quite different. The little women in the book version taught me much more.

Little Women is in the public domain, so I can quote from it freely. I’d like to share with you three short passages of Louisa May Alcott’s own words. They will give you a peek into the wholesome, helpful, spiritually-powerful lessons inside the book, Little Women.

When youngest daughter Amy went to stay with her aunt while her sister Beth recovered from scarlet fever, she turned to God to help her:

The little girl was very sincere in all this, for, being left alone outside the safe home-nest, she felt the need of some kind hand to hold by so sorely, that she instinctively turned to the strong and tender Friend, whose fatherly love most closely surrounds his little children. She missed her mother’s help to understand and rule herself, but having been taught where to look, she did her best to find the way, and walk in it confidingly.

During a conversation about the possibility of the girls marrying someday, Marmee says:

“Leave these things to time; make this home happy, so that you may be fit for homes of your own, if they are offered you, and contented here if they are not. One thing remember, my girls: mother is always ready to be your confidant, father to be your friend; and both of us trust and hope that our daughters, whether married or single, will be the pride and comfort of our lives.”

Concerning the relationships between parents and children:

The girls gave their hearts into their mother’s keeping, their souls into their father’s; and to both parents, who lived and labored so faithfully for them, they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death.

I am grateful to have begun this year with a book that encouraged me to do what Paul told the Philippians to do:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true,
whatever is honorable, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute,
if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise,
dwell on these things.
Philippians 4:8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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