Little Women: Bad Takes On Beth’s Character
I’ve been skimming through my mom’s copy of John Matteson’s Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father. Maybe someday I’ll read the whole thing. It’s obviously a good historical account of the lives of the Alcott family and of Louisa and Bronson’s complex relationship in particular.
But surprise, surprise: in the little I read of the book’s specific commentary on Little Women, I came across yet another bad take on Beth’s character.
When writing about the book’s ambivalence toward the domestic ideal of 19th-century womanhood, Matteson interprets Beth’s speech about never having made plans for her adulthood to mean that Beth leads a domestic life not because she finds it fulfilling, but because of “a failure of talent and imagination.”
Thanks to @littlewomenchannel ‘s comments on another post I made some time ago, I know to take Matteson’s commentary with a grain of salt, even though he’s clearly an expert on the historical facts. But still, will the bad takes on Beth ever end?
can´t say I am a huge fan of Matteson. I can sometimes come out very straightforward, so I guess I fragile his ego, I just thought it was weird how some of his views on the professor sounded kinda racist, and I know he has done some research on the Germans who inspired him, so what he had against fritz? he also called him “sexless” and couldn't understand why Jo rejected the “hot guy”. his views on Beth don´t surprise me at all.
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