13 authors explain what Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’ means to them

Over a century and a half ago, four sisters named Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy came into our world and left an indelible mark on the imaginations of writers. 

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women is first and foremost a book about sisterhood. But one sister in particular, Jo March, has had a lasting impact on generations of women writers who look upon her as a role model. 

Our bookish, writerly, imperfect Jo with her ink-stained “scribbling suit” is beloved for her all-consuming love for writing and reading. 

Little Women is still inspiring authors today. Mashable asked 13 writers about what the book meant to them when they were growing up, and its significance to them as authors. 

Jenny Han

“Little Women was a big source of inspiration for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I wanted to imbue its pages with that same warmth and coziness and love of home. And of course, more than anything else, its love of sisters.”

Jenny Han is the author of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before series.

Laura Jane Williams

“Little Women taught me so much growing up, mainly that you can be a heroine, and flawed — the two aren’t mutually exclusive. I think the ending, too — the fact that Jo doesn’t end up fulfilling her dream — somehow made me all the more determined to fulfill mine.”

Laura Jane Williams is the author of Our Stop. 

Daisy Buchanan

“I have many sisters (five) and I loved the March girls because they were the first women I had encountered in literature who were not always good, even though goodness kept being forced upon them through the Pilgrim’s Progress. As the eldest I had to be Meg, which I sometimes still resent, but I still think constantly about Meg’s makeover. The moral was clearly pretty slut-shamey but I longed for a load of unsuitable friends to take me to a ball and persuade me into a low cut dress. My family were very strict and I was never allowed make up or revealing clothes, so every time there was a school disco I would channel Meg and beg my cooler friends to invite me over beforehand and tart me up. I don’t think Meg gets enough credit for her vulnerability, her generosity or her urge to make her way in the world.

Image: Joseph Lederer/Di Novi/Columbia/Kobal/Shutterstock

Honestly, I think Jo was a proto Cool Girl and she really winds me up. At the time of writing she was a thrillingly radical character. However, there is nothing feminist about dismissing the feminine, and if memory serves Jo does this all the time. But my book The Sisterhood is very much a loving tribute to Little Women, because I think it is still radical to explore the relationships women have with each other, to treat those relationships with curiosity and respect and to acknowledge that those relationships are a space where pain and love can exist together at the same time.”

Daisy Buchanan is the author of The Sisterhood and How to Be a Grown Up. 

Haleh Agar

“In my family, we’re three sisters and so Little Women has always felt alive and close. I’m inspired by the relationships between the sisters—their love for each other but also their betrayals. What can be forgiven? This question from the book has stayed with me, and even inspired my own writing about estranged siblings Michael and Ava.”

Haleh Agar is the author of Out Of Touch, out on April 2, 2020  

Sophie Mackintosh

“Highly unoriginal, but as someone who had wanted to be a writer forever (and a massive tomboy to boot), I was always a Jo fangirl. I even cut off all my hair and had a pretty tragic mullet around the age of nine that I’m not sure I ever got over, if that counts as a legacy? 

“But in all seriousness I remember Little Women so fondly alongside other literature of my childhood that featured creative and plucky heroines (such as Emily of New Moon), books that showed girls creating things and wanting more, which still feels important now.”

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of The Water Cure. 

Sara Collins

“Little Women was one of the books that kick-started my reading life and left me so hungry for stories that centered the experiences of women and girls that I couldn’t be satisfied until I started writing my own. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt the kind of kinship with Jo March that comes when one encounters a character who confirms your own hopes and fears, as well as your own ambitions, making them seem much less outlandish. 

Perhaps no other character from my beloved childhood texts, apart from Jane Eyre, demonstrated the power of books to encourage radical self-acceptance as well as a refusal to limit myself according to the world’s low expectations for girls like me. I have even, over time, forgiven her for refusing Laurie.”

Sara Collins is the author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton. 

Alice Vincent

“As a girl, I thought of Little Women not so much as a book as a red woollen coat, worn by my best friend Suzie. It was double-breasted and smart, and seemed exactly like the kind of thing that Amy March would wear, which is probably why my best friend would take the role of Amy, in our playground games, and I would Jo, who cared less about coats than books. In truth, we were a hodgepodge of both — determined, and adventurous, and stubborn and loud. But I was an eternal tomboy, while Suzie was girlish, and had the good fortune to be the youngest of three girls in her family. 

“The March sisters were up there with the Spice Girls.”

Usually, we dreamed up our own fantastical alter-egos, such were the scarcity of fun and inspiring female role models for little girls in the nineties. But the March sisters were up there with the Spice Girls: They had the same spirit and sisterhood that we did. 

I rewatched the 1994 film version recently — with some girlfriends, of course — and felt a new resonance watching Jo pursue a publishing career, and the judgement that she encounters. As an author, I’m fortunate that writers such as Alcott paved the way for women like me to survive on our words, but watching her fight for her characters’ independence still seemed to me such a revolutionary scene. No wonder my generation is so excited to see this re-imagining of it.”

Alice Vincent is author of Rootbound, out on Jan. 30, 2020. 

Temi Oh

“There is a period of my life that was defined by Little Women. The penultimate year of primary school, just before my parents divorced. I used to read while walking, so when I think of Little Women I think of the moss-furred alleys between the houses, the shortcut I would take to school. Greens scattered with daffodils. My brother and sisters trudging behind me, picking up sticks and tripping over their shoe laces. The kind of uncomplicated happy I could only ever be at age nine. 

Fragments of the novel come back to me even now. Whenever my friends cut their hair I hear the March sisters’ dismayed cry in my head: “Your hair! … Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.” 

I am the eldest of four children and, like everyone, I wanted to be Jo. I thought I was her when, at age eleven, I took my father’s old laptop and announced to my family that I was going to write a novel. It was a pre-historic machine that made a sound like a steam train. It had a dead battery, a plug gummed up with bluetac. Every time my brother or sister knocked the charging cable out, the computer would have a heart attack and I’d lose three weeks’ worth of solitary labour. Every time, I would cry as Jo cried when Amy threw her manuscript in the fire. (Thank god, now, for auto-save.)

Little Women was so important to me that I’m frightened to watch this new adaptation. And, though it looks like the perfect antidote to my post-election gloomy-ness, I probably won’t. It was bad enough with young floppy-haired Christian Bale but I don’t think I have the heart to watch Saoirse Ronan say ‘no’ to Timothée Chalamet.”

Temi Oh is the author of Do You Dream of Terra-Two? 

Image: Rko/Kobal/Shutterstock

Naoise Dolan

“I grew up in Ireland, and Little Women was one of the first American novels I read—I think I was eight or nine. It’s set during the U.S. Civil War, but features no black characters; there are seven references to white characters being metaphorically enslaved, and none to actual slavery; the remarks about Father fighting for a just cause could refer to the Alcott family’s explicit abolitionism, but they could equally serve as jingoist dogwhistles, depending on the reader. As a child, I knew little about the history of slavery, but even less about why anyone might regard the U.S. as a good country (George Bush was in power at the time). 

I’ve come to read more widely as a writer, including actual anti-slavery texts; I still love nineteenth-century novels (and Little Women was one of my first!), but I pay attention to who the author was, whom they wrote about, and whom they omitted. But if we judge Little Women as a book about middle-class white womanhood in that particular place, at that particular time—then what a book. 

Personally, I saw Amy as more of a role model than Jo. I’ve never felt gifted at anything, it’s always moderate talent plus slog, and I loved that Amy thought it was still worth creating art on her own terms. That’s the attitude I aim for.”

Naoise Dolan is the author of Exciting Times, out on April 4, 2020.

Lydia Edwards

“As a fashion historian, I’ve always been fascinated by the clothing in Little Women. One scene, where the Moffatt girls transform Meg March into a ‘regular little beauty’ by ‘crimping, curling and polishing’ until she looks ‘not a bit like herself,’ is particularly telling.

When Laurie finds her, his disapproval is immediately apparent, and the reader shares in Meg’s sudden painful realisation that she is betraying the deeply-held values of her beloved family. ‘Don’t tell them at home about my dress tonight’, she begs. To us Meg’s conflict is hard to fully appreciate. Mid-19th century women were expected to adorn themselves and take pride in their appearance, yet were governed by strict decorum and modesty. To ‘respectable’ 1860s eyes her makeover would have been categorised as vulgar, her crime lying mainly in the lavish trimming of her dress and number of accessories.”

Lydia Edwards is the author of How to Read a Dress and How to Read a Suit, which publishes Feb. 6, 2020. 

Image: Filmstore/Shutterstock

Isabel Allende

“Like almost every other girl in the world, I fell in love with Little Women (“Mujercitas”) as soon as I could read a chapter book. In Alcott’s pages I escaped from my rather dysfunctional family and my grandfather’s sombre house, where I spent most of my childhood, and lived with the loving March family. Of course, Jo was my favorite character. This happened in Chile, in the late forties, in an upper-class, narrow-minded, conservative, Catholic, and patriarchal environment, where girls like me were trained from early on for their role as future wives, mothers and proper ladies. I tried to be like Jo: rebellious, capable, independent, brave and caring. I am still trying…”

Isabel Allende is the author of A Long Petal of the Sea, which publishes January 2020. 

Elise Hooper

“I grew up a few miles away from Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House and have a very clear memory of standing next to the small desk where she wrote Little Women. I was probably about nine or 10 years old and remember realizing that books don’t just magically appear on bookshelves — people write them. That’s when I decided that someday I would try to write one too.”

Elise Hooper is the author of The Other Alcott and Learning to See. 

Hannah Rothschild

“One of the few books about adolescent girls coping with the journey from a nursery to real life, Little Women was a defining novel. The four daughters, each with strong and distinctive characters served as potential role models. The non-feminist side of my personality longed to be a beauty like Meg. Another part had a hankering for Beth’s sweetness. I suspect there was always an element of spoilt Amy in me. However, I had one overwhelming favourite, Jo. She achieved my early dream of becoming a writer and forging a life independent of my family. She gave me hope. I could never imagine marrying a professor or running a boys school; no-one is perfect!”

Hannah Rothschild is the author of House of Trelawney, which publishes in February 2020. 

Greta Gerwig’s Little Women will be released in UK cinemas on Dec. 26, 2019, and U.S. cinemas on Dec. 25, 2019.