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

  • My Meg's Queer Turn
  • Jean M. Lutes

Little Women brims with queer episodes, as most everyone who reads this forum likely already knows. In one, Meg goes to stay at a friend's house and allows her wealthy, fashionable peers to make her over. They crimp her hair, redden her lips, and lace her into "a sky-blue dress, which was so tight she could hardly breathe" (76). Although a look in the mirror tells Meg "her 'fun' had really begun at last," she's also afraid (77). "I feel so queer and stiff, and half-dressed," she says, and the "queer feeling" persists even after she joins the party (77). She quickly earns Laurie's disapproval; "I don't like fuss and feathers," he tells her (79). Then she overhears a distinguished male guest disparaging her to his mother: "They are making a fool of that little girl; I wanted you to see her, but they have spoilt her entirely; she's nothing but a doll, tonight" (79). Later, when Laurie advises Meg not to drink too much champagne because her mother wouldn't like it, she rebuffs him: "I'm not Meg, to-night; I'm 'a doll,' who does all sorts of crazy things. To-morrow I shall put away my 'fuss and feathers,' and be desperately good again" (82). Meg's next-day repentance, along with her full confession to her mother, puts a moral bow on the incident. The chapter is called "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair," after all (71). Yet, despite Alcott's ethical frame, Meg's "queer" turn remains deliciously fun. Taking up dollhood with determination, she evades Laurie's control and enacts her own fluid subjectivity.

For me, Little Women has always been about dolls, which are the weirdest of toys, so real and not-real at the same time. They do so little, yet they can mean so much. One Christmas, my twin sister and I got Madame Alexander dolls modeled on Little Women characters. Mine was Meg, and I loved her immoderately, in a way that my adult self finds unaccountable and embarrassing. Eight inches tall, with pursed red lips, glossy golden-brown hair piled on top of her head, and a purple-and-white gingham dress, Meg was breathtaking, even if it was nearly impossible to make her stand up on her tiny, black-slippered feet. I made room for her on the bookshelf in the bedroom I shared with my sister. She stood there wobbily (too much champagne?) next to her companion, my sister's doll. Probably because my sister's name is Beth, her doll was her namesake. I felt sorry for her, although I hid my pity. Her pink-clad Beth, who wore [End Page 101] her black hair down around her ears, looked so dowdy, so immature, compared to my Meg. Sure, Alcott's Beth was noble, but she scarcely left the house. Meg invented her own evil twin and enjoyed herself, at least until her own set of twins arrived.

My Beth (the real one) tells me that a new friend recently exclaimed, "You have the twenty-first-century version of Little Women in your house!" Perhaps she does. My sister is married to a woman and has a blended family of five teenagers: four girls and a boy. Her domestic situation is joyful and complicated, not unlike that of Little Women. Although I turned out to be the straight twin, I like to think that books like Little Women may have made me a better sister. Alcott schooled me in the pleasures of queerness. [End Page 102]

Jean M. Lutes
Villanova University
...

pdf

Share