Jo's Boys

1886, 1957 Doubleday edition
Louisa May Alcott
Illustrated by Ruth Ives
Jo's Boys, and How They Turned Out
Bought used for $3.95
Hardcover with a bit of mold and the spine starting to break
B


If Little Women is about submission, then this "positively last appearance" of the March girls and their friends and family is about rebellion.  Other than "Mrs. Jo" herself, this is seen in the most vivid characters:  Teddy (Jo's son), Josie (her niece), and Jo's favorite boy, Dan.  Yes, they all have to learn to control their tempers and/or high spirits, but it's nothing like the breaking of Jo in the first book.

Alcott herself, two years away from death, seems to be growing restless.  She mocks her fans and herself in the chapter "Jo's Last Scrape," the one with the "moral pap" quote, as Mrs. Jo finds that fame is a great annoyance.  In the final chapter, she writes, "It is a strong temptation to the weary historian to close the present tale with an earthquake which should engulf Plumfield and its environs so deeply in the bowels of the earth that no youthful Schliemann could ever find a vestige of it."  This is five years before Arthur Conan Doyle unsuccessfully tosses Holmes into the Reichenbach Falls, but Alcott decides not to be that apocalyptic.  She wraps up everyone's lives in one long paragraph and then has "the curtain fall forever on the March family."

This final book of the trilogy opens ten years later than the middle book, but Alcott's math is bad as ever.  "Baby Josie" of Little Men is now 15, until a few months later, when she turns 14.  There's a reference to the set of Jo's Boys in this novel being her original dozen, and yet there's a "merry little quadroon" in the last chapter of Little Women who never appears in either sequel.

There are as many Dickensian references as ever.  (Imagine reading "Dick Swiveller" out of context, as I originally did.)  And this time we learn that Jo prefers "little Charlotte Brontë" to George Eliot, because the former was a Christian.  I wonder if Alcott had read Daniel Deronda, because the scene where Josie asks a famous actress if she has any talent herself is like a much kinder version of Herr Klesmer dismissing Gwendolen's hopes.  He tells Gwendolen that being a lady would probably be a drawback, while the class of Miss Cameron and Josie is seen as a way to uplift drama.  Josie and her artistic cousin Bess are successful in their careers, quite a contrast to Jo and particularly Amy realizing they're not going to be great creative successes.  And Nan is a happy spinster doctor.  The spirit of "Woman's Rights" is stronger than in the earlier books, although Alcott still emphasizes "womanly arts" like sewing, even for Latin & Greek scholars.

At an early point in the story, "firebrand" Dan says the word "damn."  That's pretty out there for Alcott.  And then later in the novel, he kills a man!  It's in self defense, but it's another sign of how Alcott was torn between sensation and moralizing.  She achieves a balance between them in this novel, even if it means that there's one courtship caused by a donkey and a bicycle, and another by a shipwreck.  It's definitely a flawed book, but I think it's her second best.

It certainly has the best illustrations of any Alcott books that I own.  (Even the ones that don't have illustrations throughout tend to have covers that look wrong, like Rose Campbell's hair being more 1975 than 1875.)  Ives captures the humor and pathos of every scene, and the clothing and furnishings look authentically late Victorian.  It's a shame I can't keep this edition, due to its condition.