And suddenly I'm 8 again
Sep. 21st, 2004 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamadebI'm rereading Little Women, for the first time in years.
And I just read *that* chapter. You know the one. The one most of us read again and again when we were eight or twelve, the one that always made us cry, which was why we read it.
And I'm crying. And it's not the maudlin "beautiful death" or the loss of the character.
It's Jo. I can feel every bit of her pain.
I know LMA didn't like writing "girl's books", and she got heartily tired of the March family, but there are *things* in that make it timeless in ways that, say, Under the Lilacs , never could be. Like not going with the obvious, "right" romance.
And it can still make me cry and be eight again.
And I just read *that* chapter. You know the one. The one most of us read again and again when we were eight or twelve, the one that always made us cry, which was why we read it.
And I'm crying. And it's not the maudlin "beautiful death" or the loss of the character.
It's Jo. I can feel every bit of her pain.
I know LMA didn't like writing "girl's books", and she got heartily tired of the March family, but there are *things* in that make it timeless in ways that, say, Under the Lilacs , never could be. Like not going with the obvious, "right" romance.
And it can still make me cry and be eight again.
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Date: 2004-09-23 07:45 am (UTC)It's a good thing I have more of Uncle Dick's personality than Uncle Jonny's - if I had his name and his personality, it would have really freaked everyone out. My brother has more of Jonny's personality.
It's why nobody in the family ever calls me Jonny, always JJ or Jay, or after I went to school and others called me that, Jon. Because Jonny was *him*, the one who died. Even though now, that Uncle Dick is gone, nobody in the immediate family survives who knew Jonny (some older cousins remember him).