An Old Fashioned Girl Chapter 1 Summary

Louisa May Alcott'southward most famous novel, Little Women, and its three sequels make her nonetheless a highly popular author, but until fairly recently these were her just novels that almost people could name. Many of her Gothic thrillers and sensational potboilers have been resurrected by scholars, the most well-known of which is a rather depressing adult novel of moral rectitude called Piece of work (1873). The novel that I reread most often – certainly more oft than I go back to Trivial Women – is An Old-Fashioned Girl from 1870. Apparently information technology was fabricated into a flick in 1949, starring nobody that I've e'er heard of.

It'southward a morality tale, it's the town mouse and the state mouse, it'south a romantic love story with a happy ending and with some satisfactory twists to keep it fresh, and it'due south a novel of women'due south emancipation in the Gilded Historic period of America in the late 19th century. Information technology is also a novel that wants its readers – who were originally Victorian teenage girls – to learn about piece of work and the American Victorian way. When I first read it (1 of my mother's Sunday Schoolhouse prizes) I was transfixed past its century-old American slang. For years I was worried what 'coasting' meant, because this is not a word for sledging that ever came near my vocabulary. Equally well equally enlarging my vocabulary, the story kept opening out for me as I got older. From existence just the story of a family, information technology became a story of Boston, and so of business and making a living, and so of men'southward worlds and women'south worlds. At present I read it as a novel of life in a small college town, packed with the names of things I tin't recognise, and with the routines and rhythms of life seen from the domestic perspective.

We don't run into very much of the world of men in this novel. Tom Shaw and Will Milton go to college, and Mr Shaw and Mr Sidney get to their offices. Frank Moore and other nameless young men almost town don't seem to do much of annihilation, and when Tom isn't in class, which is most of the fourth dimension because he'southward an easily distracted student, he's at the lodge, at balls and parties and at the opera. Sometimes he's on a horse; he's unremarkably with a friend or a girl. But all this is on the fringes of the story: the primal characters of An Old-Fashioned Girl are his sister Fanny Shaw, and her country friend Polly Milton, who is the old-fashioned daughter of the title. The story is of their friendship, their friends and their lives, but in a higher place all the novel is most how women work.

The story is full of how piece of work is desirable for a balanced life, and how too much work is bad for a normal life. Working leads to desirable independence, but besides does not mix with moving in high social club, which does recall work at all desirable for ladies. Working and existence independent are first-class goals, only achieving them will mean sacrifices. Those who can't or won't or don't work lead useless and fruitless lives (this message seems a bit harsh). To piece of work hard repays the trust of others. Above all other characters in the novel, Polly is a paragon in working for others.

The novel is in ii parts: it begins when the girls are anile effectually 14, and Polly comes from her country dwelling to pay Fanny a month-long visit in Boston. She is unused to city life and fashionable ways, and then we the readers explore the routines of life for rich Bostonians along with Polly. Like Polly we find much to puzzle us, and there is much that is downright inexplicable to 21st-century readers. The episodes in the story are often but bald lilliputian morality tales, but they present an unfolding narrative – how Fanny follows her fashionable friends merely isn't every bit bad as some of them; how Tom is neglected by his father and laughed at by the residue of the family, and so is turning into a lazy dilettante; and how their little sister Maud is constantly demanding and cross considering no-i pays her any attending or even plays with her, except Katy the maid.

Where are the rich parents in this obviously dysfunctional family unit? Mrs Shaw is not, equally we might take expected from other Victorian morality tales, always out dancing and neglecting her maternal duties. She's a hypochondriac, so illness and weakness is her profession, and she stays in bed, or on sofas, demanding attending. She's a burden, and different that other great American sickbed sufferer, Katy Carr in Susan Coolidge'south What Katy Did, she does non make her sickroom the eye of the home for her family. She just sucks attention from others and is needy and weak where Alcott thinks she should be selfless, caring and giving. Mr Shaw works too difficult to enjoy and nurture his family unit, so he is a shadowy authorisation effigy whom Polly has to fuss over when she sees that he'due south tired, since his ain children are too scared of his autocratic temper. Polly works to bring everyone together throughout the beginning department of the novel, with upsets and hurt feelings along the mode. She isn't perfect, but she's very lovable, and her anxiety to learn how to behave properly frames the second half of the novel.

This begins six years later, when Fanny, Tom and Polly are all immature adults, and romances are the focus of their lives. Well, non Polly's life – she is firmly fixed on earning a living equally a music instructor, since her family unit are not rich like the Shaws. Her brother Will can go to higher if Polly tin can earn her own living, and so he attends grade alongside Tom, or would practise if Tom were not and so often absent from class. Will refuses to play every bit difficult equally Tom, but Polly mothers him. There isn't much sophisticated fun for these ii state mice, but they are perfectly satisfied with cheap concerts and country walks, until Polly starts to break out to take fun and flirtation. Her good intentions and difficult work are frustrated when she sees Fanny, and Tom, constantly out on the razzle. Trouble begins when Polly's innocence, wisdom and beauty concenter Fanny's young human being away from Fanny, and abroad from Tom's own girlfriends. Fanny is a lovely and kind girl, but society manners dictate that she must be sharp and snappy, and she can exist both when Polly starts attracting the attending of the homo Fanny loves. Through Polly's frivolity Alcott seems adamant to show her daughter readers that a woman earning her own living is making a virtuous sacrifice, but never has fun compared with the lives of the social butterflies. To appreciate the real beauty and value of women working we demand to wait at a different corner of Boston society.

The antitoxin to these episodes of lavish dresses and misunderstandings comes when Polly takes Fanny to meet her own friends. She lodges in the firm of Miss Mills, who opens her business firm to the needy and unwanted, and sews for the poor. Polly and Fanny visit a studio shared by Bess the engraver and Becky the sculptor, where they are shown that women's work is about the representation of truth and beauty. They meet Kate Rex the authoress – a rather squeamish cocky-portrait of Alcott herself – who is worn out past piece of work, and buffeted past the stresses of fame that the unexpected success of 1 of her novels has brought her.

The novel comes to its climax when Mr Shaw's concern fails, the family unit moves into a smaller firm without servants, and Maud and Fanny have to do all the work of keeping house themselves. Tom goes out West to earn his living with Polly'south older blood brother, and Polly guides the family unit through the mysteries of how poor gentlefolk must live. My absolute favourite part of the novel is when Polly shows Fanny how to renovate and brand over her worn-out clothes to keep her nicely dressed for the kickoff year of comparative poverty. It's very rare in Victorian fiction to get such fascinating practical details of how dresses were made and remade, and how their construction allowed the reuse of fabric by turning and retrimming. In due course the pretty dresses and virtuous hard work practise their work, marriages take place, and all ends happily.

whoops, a different old-fashioned girl

An Former-Fashioned Girl is a very satisfying novel, with thoroughly enjoyable characters and plot. The moralising is not as intrusive as you might expect, because information technology is so obviously from the writer's center and not from a box of standard Victorian precepts shaken out over the story equally perfunctory seasoning to gustatory modality. Alcott really believed in her message, that working was skillful and necessary for a healthy and happy life. Nothing to quarrel with at that place, I think.

This was part of a mini-series in my podcast Why I Really Similar This Volume, on novels by American women writers most piece of work. Adjacent fourth dimension, I'grand dragged in the wake of a classic American social climber, in Edith Wharton's magnificent and chilling novel The Custom of the State, from 1913. Undine Spragg but exists to enjoy herself, which means that she lives off the piece of work of her male parent, and any human being she marries.

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