In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Playing Pilgrims
  • María Carla Sánchez

I've always been fascinated by the opening of Little Women and the deft, selfassured way in which Alcott introduces the Civil War background. Introducing the March sisters by name, our narrator informs us that each is "thinking of father far away, where the fighting was" (11). We see them debate whether "the army [would] be much helped" by the meager sum each can donate (11); gather round Marmee to read a letter from Father, offstage and "longing for the little girls at home"; and dedicate themselves to the challenge offered by both parents, "that while [they] wait [they] may all work," thus imbuing a painful separation with a sense of meaning, purpose—duty (17).

Duty helps guide Little Women. Inherited from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and cast into deep relief by the war, duty is not a simple word for Alcott; it is an ethos. It creates the novel's best-known moments, such as the sisters giving away their breakfast, or Jo cutting her hair. With every chapter, Alcott's characters prove the truthfulness of Marmee's words: that once we are no longer children, none of us is really "playing pilgrims" (11). "Our burdens are here," says Marmee, "our road is before us" (18). But what Bunyan makes allegorical and individual, Alcott transforms into realism writ large: above all, duty is what allows us to make it to the Celestial City, as sisters, friends, families, communities, and nations, in peacetime or war.

This fascinates me, because for almost as long as I've been teaching this country has been at war. This same country, Alcott's and ours, so un-celestial. In Afghanistan, then Iraq, with more dead elsewhere—Yemen, Niger—far away, unreal to our populace as a whole. Thus our common parlance that members of the military "serve," the implication being that the rest of us don't serve. And we don't. Just as no one—no president, governor, minister, certainly no admiral or general—has ever asked me to keep track, follow what's being done, find a way to contribute, even "little sacrifices" like a dollar (11). Reading Little Women now brings home the coldest news of our wars: we are not all making this pilgrimage together, and duty once again has become an individual burden. Of course, making duty individual also encourages us not to ask the hardest question: whether what is done in our names is right.

When I have veterans in my classes, they search each other out. My university [End Page 89] hosts get-togethers for them, with active-duty service members also welcome. The rest of us stay away. I once saw two students, vets, stand up from their desks and greet each other: instant fellowship. Their service helps purchase something dear, my peaceful life since 9/11. But Little Women reminds me that this way of conducting national business is neither given nor traditional. It makes me wish that just once, someone—a Marmee, a Jo, an Alcott, a president—would ask me for more. [End Page 90]

María Carla Sánchez
University of North Carolina, Greensboro
...

pdf

Share