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Little Women. Louisa May Alcott. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2007. 7. 691pp

"Four young girls’ poetic yet realistic growing story", this was what occurred to my mind when I finished my reading of Little Women. This masterpiece by American writer Louisa May Alcott has influenced readers from generation to generation, especially those girls who are in their growing up process, during which they have suffered a lot from confusion and doubts. From my point of view, Little Women has the power to go beyond the boundary of nations and languages to arouse echoes of readers throughout the world.

The novel is no doubt wealth of the world. It has been translated into more than 100 languages and has literally gone to every corner of the world. Wherever it goes, it makes people reflect on the growing years of their own and makes them try to feel the meaning of true love.

Alcott created four girls of the March family with different characters, who found their own happiness through their kindness and diligence. The whole story is organized by the growth story of the four girls. Little Women has nearly no ups and downs of the plot and nearly no fascinating suspense. The author preferred to use simple language to describe the love of the family. Although she only described the very ordinary details of life, yet every word reveals the longing for love and a better life.

Meg is gentle and beautiful, noble and elegant, and dares to be poor for love; Jo is honest, courageous, and unswerving for her ideal; Beth is quiet and introverted, kind and sincere, and she is also open to death; Amy is elegant, smart, strong and optimistic, and takes helping the poor as her own responsibility. The four sisters with different personalities have different life situations and ideals. But the same thing is that through their own efforts, with the help of kinship, friendship and love, they finally find their own settlement and obtain happiness.

In the face of the past, years fade, in the days after growing up, the best has gone, but the bottom of my heart is as good as never changed. The story is like those stupid yet unforgettable things that once happened to us.

Everyone was once part of the story of four sisters in the journey of growing up, and they also have the same distress, sadness and confusion. Therefore, Little Women brings tens of millions of readers resonance.

We are moved when the sisters are facing a difficult Christmas, they choose to share their only bread with the poor family next door who has no food to eat. We are touched when the two sisters put their past grievances aside and hug each other affectionately after Jo saved Amy. We are happy when the sincere young Laurie next door became the four sisters’ best friend to spend time together. We are cheered when Meg refuses the temptation of fame and wealth, and resolutely choose the tutor to build their love nest. We are gratified when Jo’s writing career finally succeed after repeated failures. We are sad when the gentle and kind Beth pass away after long time of unswerving struggle…

The growth course of the four sisters is a poetic yet realistic story. In the four girls’ view, home is a place full of love where they grow up and return to. When they are young, they talked of dreams to be realized. When they grow up, the girls discover themselves as they gradually discover the meaning of love to each one of them. And each of them manages to find peace with her own after struggle, even Beth. In my point of view, Little Women showed us how great the power of love can be. Its theme, along with its peaceful language, reminds us readers of finding harmony with ourselves no matter what hardships we may go through. And finding harmony is actually a ever-lasting topic in nearly every culture. It is that makes Little Women a remarkable book to read.

2020-07-03

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