Work: A Story of Experience Book

3.5

As a child, I read my copy of Little Women multiple times and then checked out from the library the rest of Alcott's writings for young people. As an adult, when Alcott's 'sensation' stories' originally published anonymously or under a pseudonym ' came to light, I read those. I didn't know of her novels for adults published under her own name until relatively recently: I read the first of these'Moods (written before Little Women) ' last year and now this one (written after Little Men).

Though Christie, the main character, is not Alcott, I'm guessing she shares some of Alcott's traits, including feeling irked at a young male character's treating her paternally, and I know she shares much of Alcott's own work experiences (the subtitle is important). Christie leaves her uncle's home to earn her living, not an easy thing for a woman in the 19th-century of course. Christie becomes, in turn, a servant, an actress, a governess, a companion and a seamstress before finding a safe landing-place after some horrific experiences. Afterward, she is a florist, a Civil War nurse (as was Alcott) and an activist for working women not offering pity as an alms, but justice as a right and content to lay the foundation…whose happy success I may never see. Yet I had rather be remembered as those brave beginners are…

While the first half can be repetitive, the themes and how Alcott writes of them are what is most intriguing and ahead of its time. (Originally, this book was two volumes, the second of which was titled Beginning Again, a Continuation of Work.) The phrase "angel in the house" is stated once, but Christie becomes much more than that, especially as she is not of the class that this phrase is normally attributed to (Christie's father was an impoverished gentleman, but her mother was a farmer's daughter); later there is a distinction made between "ladies" and "(working-) women." In the second half, during the Civil War, within the story of an obligatory love triangle (reminiscent of the one in Constance Fenimore Woolson's Anne), controversial ideas for the time abound. The husband of one of Christie's friends asks why he should go fight for the sake of the slaves (he calls them by another name) and his wife responds …ain't you got no heart? can you…call them poor, long-sufferin' creeters names? Later, a blameless male "hero" says he "owed" the potential sacrificing of his life to a female slave he doesn't know. (The novel was published in 1873.)

As did Little Women's Jo, Christie discovers that work can be a consolation during hard times, ultimately stating that she owes everything she can do to work and the efforts and the experiences that grew out of it, which is how she found independence, education, happiness, and religion. As far as that "religion" goes, orthodoxy is not at all what Alcott is espousing. And, yet, though Alcott professed to be tired of writing "moral pap for the young," some of this may feel that way to modern-day readers.

The most intriguing thing for me is how Alcott wrangles'as she did in Little Women (though in a different way)'a completely "feminine household" from her story before it is all over with: a loving league of sisters, old and young, black and white, rich and poor.

The book also contains one of my favorite quotes (said of Christie by an unsympathetic character):

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.