Louisa May Alcott · 1868 · Coming-of-age · Domestic novel
Little Women
Four sisters, one shabby house and a Civil War winter: Louisa May Alcott's warm, clear-eyed novel about growing up and finding your own road.
16 guided chapters · ~18 hours of reading
What it’s really about
On its surface, Little Women is a family story: four sisters, their mother, a loyal servant and the boy next door, getting through poverty, quarrels, plays, picnics and the small disasters of ordinary life while their father is away at war. Underneath, it is about the work of becoming yourself. Each sister has a fault to master and a dream to chase, and Alcott takes both seriously, along with the hard limits her century placed on what women could do. It is funny, tender and honest about the cost of growing up, and it has never stopped finding new readers.
- Sisterhood & family
- Work & independence
- Ambition & art
- Money & class
- Growing up
From the Foreword
Before Christmas Eve in the March parlor, a short orientation: the world you are entering, the woman who wrote it, and how to read a novel that grows up alongside its heroines. Cross the threshold when you are ready.
- The world you're entering
- The author's moment
- Themes to carry
- How to read this one
Who it’s for
For readers who love family stories and character-driven fiction, and for anyone who has ever wanted to write, paint or make music. If you enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, Pride and Prejudice, or Greta Gerwig's 2019 film, start here. It rewards adult readers too: the second half in particular reads very differently at thirty than at twelve.