Just came across a post about this woman, the author Louisa May Alcott, and realized that I haven't posted about her in a long while!
I was given a book by Alcott when I was in grade school, soon after I had seen Little Women, the movie. I'm not seeing (in IMDb) the exact version of the story I remember seeing, so I'm wondering whether I imagined the movie completely. I imagine Jo March as a little like Helen Nordstrom, though the two characters are so different from each other.
In the mini biography of LMA that was posted, it was emphasized that she was quite uninterested in writing a moralistic story aimed at women. (Nevertheless, she was persuaded to write a story about girls, and she did.)
Then I was given the sequels Good Wives and Little Men, and what attracted me to them—and repulsed me at the same time—was how moralistic in tone they both were, the last one most of all. It was so—moralistic, that is— to the point of being emotionally manipulative. And now, not so many years later, I find that I have been influenced by these three stories so much, that sometimes I read a passage I've written, and think: jeeze, this reads just like Alcott on a really bad day. And many passages have that dreadful earnestness that makes one cringe, but really, I don't mind that. Earnest: OK. Moralistic: Yuck.
Aside: One thing I really miss in our current federal government, is earnestness. There are just a few people worth listening to: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is a huge contrast with Obama and his administration. And of course, the queen of earnestness: Michelle Obama. By leaving anybody out, I don't mean to imply that they're cynical, e.g. Kamala Harris, or Hilary Clinton.
To get back to influences, another big influence on me is L. M. Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables stories, which I hadn't read until I had finished most of the Helen stories. Those (Anne of Green Gables) stories are significantly more whimsical than the Jo March stories, so their influence is a little less—what's the word? Strong? Brutal? Obvious? Direct?—than that of the Alcott stories. Contrasting the two authors would be an interesting exercise, but I'm not sure it would get one anywhere, except for being an exercise in delicacy of characterization. Montgomery was Canadian, while Alcott was a Yankee, but I'm reluctant to base their contrasts on their nationalities. In any case, the folks of the Canadian maritime provinces of those times can't have been very different from their American cousins, though they would have no doubt insisted that they were (quite different).
In my own writing, the interesting characters really made their appearance later on in the story: Nadia Vander Wert, Lalitha, Sita, Marsha, Sophie, Marissa, Olive Gibson, Polly and Evelyn Woodford, and Isolde Wells.
Anyway, if anyone accuses me of having copied the style of Alcott, or even Montgomery, I would humbly accept that there could be quite a lot of truth to the accusation.
Kay Hemlock Brown
