Thumbs up for An Old-Fashioned Girl
So very earnest. That’s what I remember about Little Women, too; actually, that’s one of the things I liked most about Little Women. Sometimes I feel that there isn’t enough unabashed earnestness in books these days. The heroine is proper and warm-hearted and cheery and industrious and charitable etc. etc. etc. In spite of that, she and the other characters manage to maintain a reality you wouldn’t expect. Maybe it’s because of the occasional flash of Alcott’s surprisingly frisky wit coming through:
“‘Come, Philander, let us be a-marching,
Everyone his true love a-searching,’
Would be the most appropriate motto for this chapter, because, intimidated by threats, denunciations, and complaints showered upon me in consequence of taking the liberty to end a certain story as I liked, I now yield to the amiable desire of giving satisfaction, and, at the risk of outraging all the unities, intend to pair off everyone I can get my hands on.”
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