Little Women – The Secret to Being Timeless

By Rachel Leitch

This is the story of how one Rachel Leitch joined the ranks of girls and boys across the generations who had fallen in love with a particular novel: Little Women by Lousia May Alcott.

It all began with an illustrated children’s version of the story. You know the type? The one with the vaguely creepy ink illustrations, large print, and ornate headers that make you feel like you’re reading a much more grown-up book. (Looking back, it was pretty cringey.)

I don’t know where we got it or who gave it to me. But my sisters and I read it until the binding broke and then relegated it to a shelf of honor in our basement.

Then my parents got us the Focus on the Family Radio Theatre version. (Which, luckily, is almost literally word for word the original novel.) I can’t even begin to guess how many hours were spent listening to it in the CD player with the broken lid, or through a cheap set of headphones, or reenacting it with my sisters.

At the beginning of 2022, I sat down with a long list of the classics that I’d embarrassingly never read but wanted to. The first one I checked out was Little Women.

I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be everything I remembered from my childhood memories. I fell in love with a children’s version after all. I expected to have to slog through a lot of nineteenth century language and customs, something totally disjointed from my world, and to finally put down the book with a sense of satisfaction that I’d read a “classic.”

But I didn’t.

Sure, it had its old-fashioned bits. But a couple pages in, something grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I immersed myself in the book,. And then talked about it. A lot. And then my momma gave me a copy of the 2019 movie and I watched that and fell in love with it too.

I fell back in love with Little Women. Because underneath all the frocks and whatever in the world blancmange was, I could relate. Something connected.

That’s what makes a classic, isn’t it? And that’s what we want our books to be. Something so relatable that it grabs our reader by the heart and doesn’t let go even after they turn the last page. We want to write something timeless.

But it’s a bit of a mystery. After all, we’re rooted in the here and now, with all our modern gadgetry and ideas. How are we to know if somewhere in the future anyone will pick up our book or even remember our name?

We can’t know, of course. But we can know some of what made Little Women timeless. And in so doing, we might just craft a timeless experience for our readers as well.

So. Where do we begin? What has made Little Women endure so long? Was it a slam-bang plot? No. It’s definitely not one of the fastest paced books that ever lived. Was it characters with unique abilities or super powers? No, in fact, they were just ordinary girls. Was it lush worldbuilding and great author PR? No. They lived in the same world every girl did back then. And what was marketing?

I’ve boiled it down to three things for me. But please, go ahead and add your reasons in the comments below!

Those three things all revolve around a key—a key to being timeless.

Relatability.

1.  Little Women sets up shop in the everyday sometimes mundane struggles of existing.

Little Women doesn’t snatch its allure from lots of car chases and epic battles. It’s about all the little things that make up life.

At first glance, those things may seem unique to the world itself. None of us are going to debutante balls or worrying about wearing only one glove anymore.

But peel back that first layer, and what do we find?

Struggles that anyone of any age or stage can relate to.

Knowing money’s tight and struggling to do without. Saying things we regret and trying to make them right. The agonizing process of making life decisions. Happy summer days with friends. Fighting with siblings. Missing a parent.

And a million other things! While they’re wrapped in a true-to-the-nineteenth-century ribbon, the struggles are the same for anyone, no matter their gender, age, or culture. We just tie our own ribbons on them. (Why do you think every movie edition that’s been made of this book has been just a little bit different from the ones before?)

You may not be writing a contemporary novel where everything can be very down-to-earth. You might be writing a historical where you’re trying to immerse yourself entirely in another culture. You might be writing a fantasy or science fiction where people have fantastic powers and use gadgets we’ve never even thought of. These are all the furthest things from now, right?

Peel back that layer. What do your characters struggle with that you still struggle with now? What do they feel? What do they love? What do they hate?

While every person is different and every culture is different, in many ways, we’re all the same. We all feel joy and sadness and anger. We all have hurts we’d rather forget. We all have struggles.

So take the things that are real to you and use them as a thread that will tie us all together in your story.

2.  Little Women paints a vast array of personalities equally.

Anyone can find themselves in Little Women.

While statistics show that Jo March is the favorite of the sisters, Meg, Beth, and Amy each have their devoted followers too. (Laurie, anyone?) All five of these characters are vastly different from each other.

They react to each other differently. They are attracted to different people. Meg and Amy gravitate towards each other, while Jo and Beth do the same. Beth connects with Old Mr. Lawrence, while Jo connects with Laurie and Meg with John.

They reason differently. They process their emotions differently. Jo’s anger haunts her, while Meg finds her jealousy popping up often. Beth feels frightened. And Amy apparently feels every emotion in a very high intensity all the time.

They all have different struggles. Meg struggles with not having the money they used to and feeling less than her friends. Jo struggles with her unruly temper and her sense of not being like other girls. Beth struggles with being shy and being the odd one out. Amy struggles with her own selfishness. Laurie struggles with his own loneliness and handling his hurt.

If Little Women as a whole tugs on the string that ties us all together, then the characters tug on the strings that are uniquely ours.

The entire gamut of personalities and emotions are represented in the March sisters and their friends and families. Everyone who reads Little Women can see themselves hiding in some corner of it.

Little Women acknowledges our unity. And it acknowledges our diversity. It gives us someone on the street of life that we can hold hands with and say “They’re just like me.”

It’s how we first start to make friends, isn’t it? “Wow, you like How to Train Your Dragon? Me too!”

And when you have someone to hold your hand, it makes you feel stronger in who you are. Because we’re stronger together. And when you feel alone, it gives you someone to turn to—even if it’s the pages of a book for a couple hours. Because it’s never just the pages of a book.

So take a look at your characters. Do they all seem the same? It’s easy to slip into. For me, I’ll catch myself making too many characters just like me. Even if I put one of my struggles or observations into them, I have to work hard to make sure another facet of them is very different.

For instance, one of my characters deals with the struggle we all have of wondering who we are and if we’re important. However, she’s a very outgoing showwoman, the opposite of me.

Or it may be more simple. Maybe you’ve created a character who struggles with social anxiety just like you do, but you change something simple, like he hates the cold and you love it. Something like that.

And then make sure that the next character you create is just a little different from the first one. It’s really fascinating to explore all the different traits and facets, and how they affect people. (A great resource for this is sixteenpersonalities.com, which breaks apart the MBTI types. Websites on the Enneagram are also very helpful as well.)

So. Common struggles. Diverse differences. What’s the third thing?

3.  Little Women doesn’t have all the answers.

Guys. WHY DID JO TURN DOWN LAURIE?

I never understood it as a kid and I still don’t. I read the book rubbing my head and going, “How in the world did you turn him down, Jo?” (And no, the 2019 movie didn’t help my situation at all.)

But Jo does turn down Laurie. Amy, of all people, marries him instead. (Sorry if you’re an Amy fan, we can discuss it in the comments.) Beth dies.

Some of it doesn’t make sense. Some of it makes me want to chuck the book across the room and yell, “After all we’ve been through!” Some of it hurts.

Kind of like life, right?

Stuff happens that we don’t understand. We lose people we love. People we trusted hurt us. Health fails. We make decisions only to find out it was the wrong one. We all have regrets. We all have hurts.

And they don’t make sense.

Little Women doesn’t have all the answers. It doesn’t pretend to. It doesn’t take the easy way out where Jo marries Laurie and Beth gets better. It sits there in the hard and the hurt awhile.

It sits with us.

Sometimes we don’t need the answers. We don’t need a perfectly worded theological sermon that somehow is supposed to chase away the clouds. Sometimes we just need someone to walk through it with us.

It shows us people we care about walking through hurt. And it shows them coming out better for it.

Jo finds a new sort of love in Professor Baher. Amy and Laurie find happiness together. And Beth herself is the best Beth she can be right up until she dies.

That’s one of the best things about books, isn’t it? They bring us hope when we most desperately need it.

When you sit down to work on your book today, it’s okay if you don’t have the answers. It’s okay if your main character doesn’t have all the answers. Take the hard way out. Sit in the hard and the hurt awhile.

And then stand that character up and help them march out.

Well, those are my three things. Three ways Little Women has walked alongside countless people in countless generations. But the best thing about it is, that’s not all. This novel has so many more facets, so many more memories, so many more lessons to explore.

I’d love if you’d explore them with me in the comments!