How to break free from Beth's syndrome
The Spinsters' Academy: A lesson from 'Little Women', by L. M. Alcott
“Dear readers of Little Women1,
I have a confession to make. I spent all my life trying to be like my dear sister Beth and failed miserably. I then tried just as hard to make her the heroine of ‘Little Women’, but failed there as well. Turns out, little girls don’t quite care for saints anymore. Who would have thought? Readers all over the world fell in love with Jo instead: my clumsy, selfish and grumbling representative and alter-ego, and that despite all my efforts to paint her as a flawed rascal, with her sharp tongue and restless spirit, her being moody as hell, impatient and satirical.
So you can imagine how surprised I was at the success of the book.
Don’t misunderstand me. I was delighted to read people’s appreciation, and the copyright made me a fortune, and with that money I was finally able to ease my mother’s life. But it was too late to help my sister Beth: by the time ‘Little Women’ was published, my little angel was already in heaven.
Still, I hope that my novel, and this lesson, will spare at least some of you from her sad fate. So let’s start with the first question: are you a Beth or a Jo?
If people often tell you: “You’re too good,” “You’re an angel,” or “How do you put up with it?”, then you too might be a Beth in urgent need of rescue, because let me be very honest: Beth’s syndrome can be deadly. If you’re not a Beth, perhaps you know one: a sister, friend, or daughter— someone shy and quiet, sitting in dark corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees their sacrifices, till one day the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.
My sister Betty was tenderly beloved by all the family, and was indeed as pure, refined, and holy as she is represented in ‘Little Women’. She was our little housekeeper, our angel in a cellar kitchen. She was always the home bird, the cheerful saint, trying to keep the old folks warm and make the lonely house cosy and bright, without ever complaining.
One of my earliest recollections of my sister Beth, or Lizzie as we all called her, starts with me playing with some books in my father's study. I was building houses and bridges out of the big dictionaries and diaries. Me and my sister Anne – the Meg of ‘Little Women’ - were building a high tower of books round baby Lizzie as she sat playing with her toys on the floor, and being attracted by something out-of-doors, we forgot our little prisoner. A search was made, and the patient baby was at last discovered curled up and fast asleep in her dungeon cell, out of which she emerged so rosy and smiling after her nap that we were forgiven for our carelessness.
But what must Beth have been feeling all along, so lonely there in the dark? Unfortunately, Beths of the world are easily overlooked because they rarely speak up. Us Jos, though? We’re vocal—grumbling, writing, raising our voice when necessary.
We don’t let the sun go down on a quarrel. Maybe that’s why you all loved her: after centuries of quiet heroines full of propriety, Victorian girls had had enough.
Lizzie was in the family circle what Beth is in ‘Little Women’. She was unlike me and my other sisters. Retiring in disposition, Beth would gladly have ever lived in the privacy of home, her only desire being for the music that she loved to play on her piano. She kept our home neat and comfortable, never thinking of any reward but to be loved by the few she trusted, as she sat contentedly in her shadowy corner of the room. Or at least she appeared content, but if you had looked closely you would have seen that she often sighed, a little sigh which no one heard but the hearth-brush and kettle-holder as she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all that their loved ones hoped to find her.
Girls like Beths rarely or never complain because they believe that it’s naughty to fret. When they do complain, they aren’t always taken seriously, because these housewifey little creatures seem to have no burden on their shoulder or their burdens sound so funny that everybody may want to laugh, so they learn to keep quiet. And when they do find the courage to speak their mind, with a little quiver in their voice, they may tremble at their own boldness and blush like a rose, or retreat and begin to fear they have offended. And when they do speak, so people usually take no more notice of a woman like Beth than if she had been a fly.
Our Beth had her troubles too, and not being an actual angel but a very human little girl, she sometimes wept a little weep, when she realised she couldn’t have the things she wanted the most, like a nice piano for instance. But even when yearning for something she wanted, she could not pluck up the courage to go get it herself. She just waited and believed that someone with means ought to help good people get what they deserve, but nobody usually does, and nobody sees Beths wipe the tears off their eyes when they are all alone. Since they don’t dare to speak up and don’t like to fret and complain, women like Beth end up hoping that someone else will be a mind-reader, and will quietly notice them and fulfill their needs. They believe in justice, in God and in fairies. They do not accept the self-evident truth that life isn’t fair. Jos do instead, and will fight tooth and nail to get what they want, without waiting for a saviour.
I don’t know if it was due to a weak frame, how she was raised or some childhood trauma, but Beth’s greatest burden was being afraid of people, to the point where even the smallest things were dreadful to her. That’s why she loved staying at home a good deal, because the world outside was too scary and she was too timid to face it. So she stayed quiet and busy and brooded over things by herself at home. No persuasions or enticements could overcome such a fear. She could literally run away from people, when they stared at her too hard from under their heavy eyebrows. She didn’t often share her feelings with us either, because – as she wrote in her own journal – she didn’t believe they were at all interesting to any of us. Only sometimes, with a special someone she fully trusted, she would talk to them as cozily as if she had known them all her life, for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride.
Long, quiet days my sister Beth spent, but not lonely nor idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends, and many raggedy dolls she was a mother to. She even set up a hospital for one of them. She sung it lullabies, and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face. Women like Beths are often the nurses, doctors and healers of the world. They are the comforters, the ones who will try to uplift everyone around them when low or sick. They are the comforters and the kiss and hug givers.
It will not surprise you to hear that Beth was also a patroness of cats. She loved cats and kittens, and was horrified when someone was mean to them and broken-hearted when they disappeared. Or when one of them died, she would sob and say: “It is all my fault. How could I be so cruel? I’ll never have another pet for I am too bad to own one”, even if she had been their best earthly companion.
Beths of the world always appear content with what they have, little be it or much. When asked what was her castle in the air, my sister Beth said contentedly that hers was to stay at home safe with father and mother, and help take care of the family and would only wish everyone would keep well and be together. But the truth is, that desire hid her wish to never grow up and grow old. And so we always treated her like a child and we forgot she was a woman. But was that really her ambition? She seemed content to watch us live. Women like Beths think everybody else is gifted with wonderful genius, whereas they can’t see their own talents or never find the time to develop them properly, so they end up living vicariously. Our Beth felt everyone else’s joys as her own, exulting over her family members’ splendid successes, getting excited, literally skipping and singing with joy, but on the other hand, she would feel just as dejected for our failures. She was always on someone else’s roller-coaster.
Not being able to face conflicts, Beths are also the peace-makers of the world. My sister’s motto was ‘Birds in their little nests agree’ . These girls want the pecking to end and everyone to be just as kind, forgiving and angelic as they are. But at what personal price? What did she hide, what anger, what disappointments or tears did she suppress? But to be fair, we rarely saw Beth cry either, for when she was sad, she would wipe away her tears and work with all her might, losing no time in doing the duty that lay nearest her, since she was by nature a busy bee.
She moved noiselessly as any mouse and thought she was stupid and useless, a dear and nothing else. That’s why she was eager to leave this world. It seemed so long for her to wait here, so hard to do. She wanted to fly away at once, as swallows fly, and go to heaven. Her favourite song was ‘The Land of the Leal’— a sad ballad about a girl longing for heaven and feeling ‘beckoned there by angels’, who then dies young. I, on the other hand, was too rebellious and way too earthly to hear heavenly choirs. I knew I didn’t belong to heaven. That was my salvation, although at the time I saw it as a major flaw, of course.
In order to keep everyone happy, Beth always tried to sound positive. If somebody else wanted something, she would stop what she was doing and give in. Then, when she finally dared to ask for help, and said to one of us “I wish YOU’d do this for once”, we didn’t take her requests seriously.
“I’m too tired”, we complained.
“Can’t you do it?” we would ask.
“Why don’t you go yourself?” we dared say, as if she hadn’t already done enough or wasn’t more tired than all of us.
At first Beth resisted the urge to serve and would rest a little, lay down on the sofa and wait for someone else to do their duty. But Beths of the world cannot stay selfish for too long. If nobody does their duty and someone else risks suffering for that lack of care, they will quietly put on their hood, fill their baskets and went out into the chilly air with a heavy head and a grieved look in their patient eyes to do what’s needed.
Eventually though, that thin thread snapped.
The drop that broke poor Beth’s back was the scarlet fever she caught from some poor immigrant children, who had fallen ill after living in a room where pigs had been kept before them. Our mother, with our help, had nursed and fed the sick children, as I narrated in ‘Little Women’. Yes, my mother was another 'angel of the hearth,' but so absorbed in helping others that she didn’t always manage to protect her own daughters from danger, as in this case. Excessive empathy, one might say.
That’s when we started seriously realizing Beth’s value and felt our guilt and said: “I could never forgive myself if she died!” So we started devoting ourselves to her day and night. Not a hard task, mind you, for Beths are very patient and bear their pain uncomplainingly, as long as they can control themselves. But how dark those days seemed, how sad and lonely the house, without Beth’s warmth, care and loving actions, and how heavy the hearts of the family members as we worked and waited, while the shadow of death hovered over the once happy home. When she grew worse, I stopped writing my books and spent half my days, as well as all my evenings, with Beth. She loved to have me with her. She said she felt "strong" when I was near, and I was so glad to be of use. She felt like a little busy robin, always near the shore, and said I was like a seagull instead, strong and wild, fond of the storms and wind, flying far out to sea and happy all alone. Our dad stopped travelling and read books out loud to her, in his pleasant voice. Our sister Anna took the housekeeping, so that Mother and I could devote ourselves to our angel, and one of our dear neighbours even gave her a beautiful piano. Her brother-in-law often bought her the fruit she loved and our maid never tired of cooking her favourite dishes.
Now, this is the point in a romantic story when somebody who is sensitive enough will learn to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth’s nature, will feel how deep and tender a place she fills in all hearts, and will acknowledge the worth of her unselfish ambition to live for others and make home happy by the exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess and will finally reward her by giving her what she always wanted. In ‘Little Women’, that’s when I could have had Beth recover only to find a handsome, wealthy doctor who would propose to her at her bedside, struck by her celestial nature and suffering, and heal her with his love. Many other novels ended that way in my days, but that’s not how life works. That’s why I didn’t give Beth’s story a happy ending. I couldn’t reward her abnegation, after seeing how mortally weak it had made her. I had already learned my lesson well. I didn’t want to infect anyone with Beth’s syndrome.
Yes, my sister had finally obtained all that she wanted and had never dared to ask or go get by herself. You may think that all this showering of love and care was very welcome to the sick invalid, although coming a bit late, and it certainly was, but let’s look at it from Beth’s point of view. As she laid sick in bed hour after hour, tossing to and fro, what was she thinking and feeling? Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. Imagine that after years of neglect and being underestimated, those you love finally give you all the attention and care you deserve. “How nice, at last!” you may think.
But not everything that glitters is gold. Yes, Beth was finally at the center of all our thoughts and had us all around her, and after years of feeling undervalued and useless, she finally had all the attention, all the care, and the small and great things she had always longed to receive —but at what personal cost? She was dying…
And at what cost for me and for my family?
Back in the day, women were told that sacrificing ourselves and making ourselves small and appearing fragile was a positive value. But encouraging weakness only makes us even weaker or despised in the long run. Of course, it would be inhumane not to be kind to an invalid who is in pain or about to die, but that’s exactly why it’s better to be safe and than sorry and Beth’s syndrome should be prevented. Instead, we had always rewarded my sister’s excess of empathy and spirit of sacrifice ever since she was little—indeed, ever since her baptism…
‘Nomen omen’ the Latins say, your destiny is in your name, and Beth was named after Elizabeth Peabody, a selfless American educator that everyone loved. Beth seemed destined to serve others from birth: “Let me do something for you and not get anything myself!” was her daily battle cry, and we celebrated her for being such an angel, instead of stopping creating a deadly feedback loop from the start, once that was weakening her physically and not only mentally. But we didn’t know that back then. So we all participated in undermining Beth’s self-esteem. We were not on the side of strengthening her. On the contrary, we rewarded her weakness, or the misuse of her energy, and so Beth tried her best to make herself even weaker and the cycle worsened.
After all, we had learnt the lesson of self-denial when we were little children. The female members of my family all valued selflessness. We were always taught to put other people’s needs first. I still remember how my English tutor, when we lived in Fruitland, used to ask me:
“What are the most valuable kinds of self-denial?”
“Appetite and temper” I replied.
“And how is self-denial of temper known?”
“If I control my temper, I am respectful and gentle, and every one sees it.”
“What is the result of this self-denial?”
“Every one loves me, and I am happy.”
“Why use self-denial?”
“For the good of myself and others.”
“How shall we learn this self-denial?”
“By resolving, and then trying hard.”
Well, trust me. Poor little Louisa went to work and tried till fifty, but without any very great success. My sister Beth was much more successful instead, but whereas I thought I was a failure, I was actually winning.
But lessons on the beauty of being angelic were everywhere in my days. Two years before Beth died I read a biography on Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia, a selfless wealthy woman who died young and was remembered for her kindness. Beth likely saw herself in her and they both died in their early 20’s.
Anyhow, thanks to all our love and attention, thanks to our small and great sacrifices, like sunshine after storm eventually the invalid recovered and improved rapidly and felt grateful for all her blessings: “I’m so full of happiness I couldn’t hold one drop more” our Beth said when she first recovered, because people who can deeply feel pain, can also deeply appreciate pleasure. But her syndrome only got worse after that, although her decay was very gradual.
August 1857 was a sad, anxious month though she was very patient and sweet and seldom complained and always spoke hopefully of ‘being better soon’. Our mother took her to the seaside, so that the fresh sea-breeze could blow a little colour into her pale cheeks, but she was failing fast and a great shadow fell over my heart from her increasing illness.
In October we moved back to Concord, in the Orchard House which is now a Museum. We fit up the pleasantest room in the house for her, and in it was gathered everything that she most loved: flowers, books, pictures and her beloved kittens, but fearing she may infect them, she selflessly denied herself the pleasure of their presence, to protect them. Beths are very maternal creatures.
And in this room, cherished like a household saint in its shrine, sat Beth, tranquil and busy as ever, for nothing could change the sweet, unselfish nature, and even as she was dying, her fingers were never idle. She was sewing, reading, singing softly, or preparing little gifts for the neighbour’s children or lying looking at the fire, so sweet and patient and so worn, my heart was broken to see the change. Beth and I were always together, the strong and the feeble sister. Like a confiding child she asked no questions but left everything to God and nature.
My sister was very similar to the Beth of ‘Little Women’, except for a very revealing detail. During her last illness, my dear Beth had a short period of time where she stopped being everyone’s dearest and suddenly started verbally abusing the people around her, calling our sister Anne ‘horrid’, and being nervous and cross. She also just wanted to be left alone by everyone and do her thing. Talking wearied her, faces troubled her, pain claimed her for its own, and her tranquil spirit was sorrowfully perturbed by the ills that vexed her feeble flesh.
Of course we all thought that behaviour very strange, totally unlike Beth.
But perhaps the REAL Beth, the human Beth that she tried hard to suppress all her life, was simply coming to the surface to breathe one last time.
It didn’t last, or rather, we didn’t encourage it.
We just saw it as the sad eclipse of the serene soul, a sharp struggle of the young life with death, but both were mercifully brief, and then the natural rebellion over, the old peace returned more beautiful than ever. After that month, that only and last outburst, she quietly prepared to die and went back to being our perfect ‘angel of the house’.
In January Lizzie got much worse; the Doctor told us there was no hope. She was glad to know she was to “get well”, as she called heaven, and we tried to bear it bravely for her sake. In February I never left her for an hour since Beth had said “I feel stronger when you are here.”
In those months my heart received the teaching that it needed. Lessons in patience were so sweetly taught me that I could not fail to learn them. Seeing her put up with death so bravely did more for me than the wisest sermons, the saintliest hymns, the most fervent prayers that any voice could utter. For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, I recognized the tragedy of my sister’s life— so uneventful, unambitious, humble and self-forgetful, full of those virtues which made her fit for heaven, but not for Earth.
When she was close to dying, Beth one day said: “I have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long. I’m not like the rest of you. I never made any plans about what I’d do when I grew up. I couldn’t seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there.” Why didn’t anyone help her make those plans? I wonder. Why didn’t we help become a strong seagull herself?
But I don't want to blame myself, my parents, and even less dear Beth for her excessive empathy and for having spent all her energy for other people’s life, instead of first developing, strengthening, or protecting herself. The struggle to avoid Beth's syndrome is not just a struggle between a woman and herself, or a woman and her family and a woman and her past. The origin of this syndrome is much broader. In my time, it was continuously reinforced by the religious value system that governed our world and by our ethical and romantic system. I don't know if it is still like this for you today.
My dear little sister Beth died on March 14th after two years of patient pain, saying to my father: “I can best be spared of the four”. What she had suffered was seen in the face; for at twenty-three she looked like a woman of forty. As I wrote in a poem for her:
“Death canonized for us one saint,
Ever less human than divine,
And still we lay, with tender plaint,
Relics in this household shrine.”
The first death in a family changes people’s life. That experience has developed me spiritually. That great grief has taught me more than any minister could. I had never feared death, and from that day I was ready to face it with more faith in Heaven.
I then wrote another poem called “My Beth” in her memory.
“My great loss became my gain,
For the touch of grief will render
My wild nature more serene,
Give to life new aspirations,
A new trust in the unseen.”
Well, I lied. Her death didn’t make my wild nature more serene.
But back then, what’s what I promised myself, that I would be more like Beth.
That’s how syndromes get passed on from saintly woman to another. And I promised to be like her because that’s what Beth had made me promise.
Before dying, she had made one final request for me :
“You must take my place, Louisa”, she said, “and be everything to Father and Mother when I’m gone. They will turn to you, don’t fail them, and if it’s hard to work alone, remember that I don’t forget you, and that you’ll be happier in doing that than writing splendid books or seeing all the world, for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”
“I’ll try, Beth.” I said, and then and there I renounced my old ambition of writing a masterpiece and becoming financially independent, pledged myself to a new and better goal and acknowledged the poverty of other desires. Her syndrome had completely infected me.
At first it was easy to promise self-abnegation when I was wrapped up in her, and heart and soul were purified by her sweet example. But when the helpful voice was silent, the daily lesson over, the beloved presence gone, and nothing remained but loneliness and grief, then I found her promise very hard to keep. Beth’s housewifely spirit did not linger long around the little mop and the old brush. I tried hard to imitate Beth’s orderly ways and sing her songs, but it would not do...
Now, if I had been the heroine of a moral storybook, I ought at this period of my life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world and all my dreams, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet. But I wasn’t a heroine, or at least I didn’t think I was. Just like Jo I was just a struggling human girl who acted out our human nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic, as the mood suggested, a girl who still wanted to fight for her dreams with all her strength, dress comfortably, behave like a tomboy if she wanted to, and one who didn’t carry too much guilt for being full of spirit and ambitious. I hadn’t yet figured out how revolutionary a Jo was at the time...
I swear I tried in a blind, hopeless way to do my duty at home, secretly rebelling against it all the while, for it seemed unjust to me that my few joys should be lessened, my burdens made heavier, and life get harder and harder as I toiled along. Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and I all shadow. It was not fair. I had often said I wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard, and there I was instead: devoting all my life to that of someone else’s, and trying to make home happy for them, at my expense, just like Beth. Her syndrome was killing me. At first I thought: “Well? What could be harder for a restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and desires, and cheerfully live for others?” - It’s highly virtuous to say we’ll be good, and I could do my duty for a while, but not cheerfully!
These were dark days, for something like despair came over me when I thought of spending all my life like Beth, in our quiet house, devoted to humdrum cares like a Cinderella, a few small pleasures, and the duty that never seemed to grow any easier. Brooms and dishcloths were still quite as distasteful as they once had been to me.
“I can’t do it. I wasn’t meant for a life like this, and I know I shall break away and do something desperate if somebody doesn’t come and help me!” I exclaimed one day!
See how I was already starting to think like Beth and wait for a saviour?
Feeling powerless is one of the symptoms of this syndrome, after all. I felt resentful, discouraged. I lacked Beths’ faith and selflessness and started despairing. I could never be an angel, and while trying to be that, I was actually losing the will to be a human…
After a while I became more discouraged than I had ever been, and since I was still the only bread-winner at home, as usual, I went to Boston on a hunt for employment.
Beth’s sickness had added to the pecuniary burdens of our family, and we had a lot of Doctor’s bills to pay.
During those sad days spent at Beth’s side, I had written in my journal:
“I shall be better all my life for these sad hours with her.”
Well, I did not become as saintly as Beth. In turn, I lost my will to live and fight… Once in Boston, I had my fits of despair, and I hate to admit it but one day I felt tempted to leave this world. As I described in one of my novels, I was walking over the mill dam, and the running stream brought the thought of the ‘River of Death’ mentioned in Beth’s favourite book, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’, the last river to cross before getting to Paradise, the river which would have ended all my troubles. It was but a momentary impulse, and my brave young heart rallied to the thought: "There is something positive waiting for me, and I'll have it!".
Suddenly it seemed so cowardly to run away before the battle was over. I couldn't do it. So I went home resolved to take Fate by the throat and shake a living out of her.
That decision was my best medicine, and it started working very fast.
After my fit of despair I became braver and more cheerful, and grubbed away with a good heart. So far from all the negative influences and people that did nothing but celebrate powerlessness, suffering, and self-sacrifice, I had broken that vicious cycle that my sister had never managed to. I learnt that work of head and hand is a salvation, when disappointment or weariness burden and darken the soul. I always felt as if I could write better - more truly of things I have felt and therefore know.
My dear father, who had taught Beth to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach me to accept life without despondency or distrust. But it was my mother who knew what I needed to heal:
“Why don’t you write? That always used to make you happy,” she said to me once, when the desponding fit over-shadowed me.
“I’ve no heart to write, and if I had, nobody cares for my things.”
“We do. Write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world. Try it, dear. I’m sure it would do you good, and please us very much.”
“I don’t believe I can” I replied, but I had not given up the hope that I would one day write my great book, and I was sure it could now be all the better for such experiences as this. There 's ambition for you! And so I got out my desk and began to overhaul my half-finished manuscript and started writing ‘Little Women’.
I will never know how it happened, but something got into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it. Letters from several persons, whose praise was honor, followed the appearance of the little story, newspapers kindly reviewed it, and strangers as well as friends admired it. For a small thing it was a great success.
“I don’t understand it. What can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?” I said to my family and friends, quite bewildered.
“There is truth in it, Louisa, that’s the secret. Humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last. You put your heart into it. You have had the bitter, now comes the sweet. Do your best, and grow as happy as we are in your success.”
Well, if she’s right and there is anything good or true in what I wrote, it isn’t mine. I owe it all to my two angels: my mother and Beth. But this may be just another symptom of Beth’s syndrome, and I forget to give myself the value I deserve!
Perhaps I haven’t recovered fully yet… After all, even if I’m 55 now and I’m filthy rich, I’m still writing a book one after another, in order to make sure that my sister Anna, her children, and dear May’s daughter are all well provided for, but I will confess I am quite exhausted.
But I have gladly accepted my fate, because it’s a fate I created for myself and fought for, without waiting for someone to give me what I wanted. I am glad not to be an angel but a writer, that’s what I was meant to be and chose to be: a literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and a morsel of fame and some money when I can still enjoy it and share it. Well, I needn’t be a sour saint nor a selfish sinner, and, I dare say, old maids are very comfortable when they get used to it. It’s not as bad as it looks, and one can get on quite happily if one has something in one’s self to fall back upon.
When Beth died, I had written in my journal:
“Now I know what death means — a liberator for her, a teacher for us.”
At the time I thought my lesson was how to become a Saint like her.
Now I know that the true lesson was warning others of her fate and teach you all how to break free from her syndrome. And now you know how to do it: the antidote is hidden in plain sight in ‘Little Women’… And her name is ‘JO’.
Unfortunately I couldn’t save my sister Elizabeth, but by giving to the world my creation - Jo - with her honesty, her flaws, her strength and her hardworking nature - and her refusal to wait for a savior, a rich Mr. Laurence, or a husband to give her what she wanted - now I know I have helped millions of readers.
Too many women like Beth learn early on to attract love and what they want by shrinking into powerlessness and darkness, but nature does not reward weakness (or waste of energy). Even if we humans sometimes reward it, the price we all pay is very high in the long term. My readers loved Jo because they learnt another way to get what they want: humans are attracted to brightness, energy, and boldness. We must learn - and teach children - that we can attract love and what we want also with light, strengthening ourselves and shining, instead of making ourselves increasingly weaker, smaller, and powerless, and this is what Jo does in my novel, just as I have tried to do throughout my life, albeit with great effort, shaking the tree of life until I made lemonade with all its lemons.
Now you too know why young readers, to my initial surprise, crowned Jo as the heroine of the book and not Beth. Because characters like Beth were everywhere in literature in my days, but there was no Jo to be seen, and she was sorely needed.
One last thing… My sister Beth’s number one regret was that she had done so little… So perhaps, if you feel that she’s been teaching you a lesson today, you too may thank her by recommending ‘Little Women’ to some girl (or woman) or by sharing this lesson, and assure her that her life has not been useless, although I know that if she was here now she would say: “I’m not so good as you make me, but I have tried to do right, and it’s such a comfort to know that someone feels as if I’d helped them.”
Yes, you did help a generation of women, dear Betty.
Thank you for your sacrifice.
Thank you Jo, for being born out of the ashes of my broken heart.
And thank you all for reading.
Louisa May Alcott / E.V.A.”
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10 QUESTIONS FOR YOUR PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:
QUESTION 1: Do you feel more like a Beth or a Jo? Or have you changed from one to the other over the years? Have you tried to get what you wanted (love, money, etc.) by making yourself small and weak or by strengthening yourself and shining?
QUESTION 2: Nomen omen: where did your name come from? Is there in it a clue to your destiny, or to what your parents wanted for you?
QUESTION 3: How would psychologists label Beth's syndrome today?
C-PTSD? / Depression? / Social anxiety? / Low self-esteem?
QUESTION 4: Are people like Beth born so weak and empathetic or do they become like that later in life, through imitation? Nature or nurture?
QUESTION 5: How did you treat your dolls, stuffed animals, kittens, or puppies as a child? What did they represent for you? Did you perhaps treat them the way you needed to be treated?
QUESTION 6: Beth lived for others and fed on the emotions of others. How do we live 'by proxy' today? Here are just a few examples: adoring a famous celebrity and following their life on social media? Or following a character in a long TV series and experiencing their feelings and growing with them over the years? What other examples come to mind?
QUESTION 7: How could you attract love or the things you want by shining, with your energy and your efforts, instead of with negativity or weakness from today? How can you make yourself a bit stronger, in words or actions? How could you shake your lemon tree like JO and make lemonade from today?
QUESTION 8: Have you ever benefited from being weak or sick in your life, especially as a child? Has your weakness or self-sacrifice ever been rewarded by your family, your loved ones, or the State (grants, unemployment benefits, etc.) or by your religion, if religious?
QUESTION 9: Can you cite news examples of so-called “excessive empathy” like that of mother Alcott, where women put the needs of others before their own, sometimes even at the risk of their own lives or those of their own children?
QUESTION 10: Even though girls today are no longer made to read "The Stories of the Saint Martyrs" in elementary school, (although I was made to read them back in 1980!!) what other negative, weak, or excessively empathetic female roles are offered to girls today on TV, Hollywood or on social media?
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PS These questions are for your personal reflections only. For privacy reasons, I advise not posting the answers in the comments below, especially if they contain sensitive information. However, if you are interested in joining the ‘Spinsters Academy’ and our next LITERARY CONVERSATION, we will meet online on Friday 28th March, to explore the questions and lessons arising from next month's book: ‘Mansfield Park’ by Jane Austen (in Italian). The next lessons will no longer be posted on the website and will only be available to those who will sign up.
Qui sotto la LEZIONE IN ITALIANO CON NINNA NANNA AUDIO:
Although a good portion of the sentences in this lesson have been carefully selected, assembled ad rearranged starting from Louisa May Alcott’s own words (from her letters, diary entries or her novel ‘Little Women’), and from the first biography written about her, this lesson is a work of fiction based on my imaginary reconstruction of how Louisa M. Alcott may have reflected on the power of the character of Jo, compared with Beth, in the form of a lecture. When Beth is mentioned, she is a blended mixture of the character in ‘Little Women’ and the real Elizabeth Alcott.
MAIN SOURCES:
1. ‘Little Women’ by Louisa May Alcott
2. ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ by John Bunyan
3. ‘Louisa May Alcott: her life, letters, journals’ by Ednah Dow Cheney; Louisa May Alcott
4. ‘The Land of the Leal’ song
5. Elizabeth Sewall Alcott - Wikipedia page
