 |
- General fiction - |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Quiet Little Woman |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 The Quiet Little Woman byLouisa May Alcott Honor Books 122 pages, 1999 ISBN 1562926160 Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart After reading Louisa May Alcott’s best-selling book Little Women set in the 1870s, five young girls (Carrie, Maggie, Nellie, Emma, and Helen Lukens) from an improvised Massachusetts family decided to follow in the footsteps of their heroines, the March sisters. The siblings started their own home-produced magazine, Little Things. The Lukens’ found a printer and built a circulation, first to family and friends, then to many famous people, including Alcott herself. Alcott corresponded regularly with the sisters, eventually writing three short pieces for their magazine. The three stories she wrote for the girls’ magazine have been complied in a small anthology, The Quiet Little Woman, all Christmas stories - each revolving around one of the three main themes of the season: charity, generosity, and thoughtfulness. The first story, The Quiet Little Woman, is Patty’s tale. Patty is an orphan who is adopted by the Murphy family not to love, but as their servant. Only the elderly and eccentric Aunt Jane knows of Patty’s desire for love and for a real family. When the family leaves Patty at home alone on Christmas day, they all learn a valuable lesson in how charity is given and received from the forlorn little girl. Tilly’s Christmas takes place on Christmas Eve. Though Tilly knows she isn’t going to get any presents, she is excited and happy that the next day is Christmas. Her two friends, Kate and Bessy, can’t understand her cheerfulness. As the three little girls trudge through the snow, they discover a robin, hurt and barely alive. Against Kate and Bessy’s advice, Tilly takes the injured bird home and cares for it. Her thoughtful act reaps a huge reward for Tilly and her mother. The final story Rosa’s Tale is as heartwarming as the previous two. On a bitterly cold Christmas Eve, Belinda takes some food out to the horse, Rosa. According to legend, at the stroke of midnight, animals are given the gift of speech for one hour as a reward for their silence while the baby Jesus slept. Rosa teaches Belinda an important lesson as the horse speaks about the abuse she has suffered at the hands of human beings. When the subscription to Little Things reached over one thousand, the little girls couldn’t keep up and were forced to abandon their project. Editor Stephen W. Hines rediscovered these long-forgotten stories several years ago. Thanks to Hines, these wonderfully charming tales are available once again in The Quiet Little Woman. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||