Novel Travels: Little Women

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: the book, the house (Orchard House), the trip that began my obsession with visiting landmarks related to literature. Technically, I've still not been there. I was 12, my mother took me to New York City, Boston, and Concord. Unfortunately, when we went to visit Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, we discovered it was closed. Back then, we didn't have the Internet to check these things out. I guess we didn't look it up in a guidebook either--this seems odd for my mother, but she was a busy working mother.

Since we didn't get to go in, I still feel the need to visit Orchard House. Reading Little Women was a journey itself. For me, it was an introduction to literature of a different time and place. Where women ran the home, were sweet, and lived God's word. They grew up and, true to life, didn't always marry who they or you think they should. It also fascinated me that it was written during the Civil War, by a Northerner. They suffered too! It was a shocking lesson for a naive Texas girl. Up until then, I had been led to believe the South had been a genteel place, all white houses and hoop skirts. Slavery and its horrors was ignored for the most part while the bravery of Reconstruction was always played up. So to read a different account of the Civil War, even though it was a subplot seen through the eyes of teenage girls, opened me up to a new way of seeing history. It made me realize there are two sides (or more) to each story.

Orchard House
Louisa May Alcott Society