Recently, And Partly For Personal Reasons, I've Been Thinking Of Jo's Grieving Process After Beth's Death

Recently, and partly for personal reasons, I've been thinking of Jo's grieving process after Beth's death in Little Women.

Namely the fact that just before Beth dies, Jo seems to have beautifully come to terms with the pending loss, but afterwards, she regresses into despair.

In Jo's poem My Beth, and in her conversation with Beth after the latter reads it, she says she realizes that she's not really losing Beth, because Beth's memory and influence will always be with her, making her a better person, and because she has faith that Beth will be watching over her in heaven. The last paragraphs of "The Valley of the Shadow" seem to set up Beth's death as sad, but not a soul-crushing tragedy, because the family has already done so much preliminary mourning, because they're relieved that her suffering is over, and because they have their precious memories of her and their religious faith to comfort them.

But then after Beth actually dies, Jo does fall into deep, soul-crushing grief and depression, which includes struggling with her religious faith, and it takes her a lot of work – through talks her parents, through her writing, and eventually by finding love with Friedrich – to finally emerge from the abyss.

I guess it shows that you're never really prepared for a loved one's death, even if you think you are.

But I suppose it's not just about Beth. It's that with Beth's death, all of the same-age companions Jo grew up with are gone. That's why the chapter of her depression is called "All Alone." Meg is married, Amy and Laurie are in Europe, and Jo may have lost Laurie's friendship (she hasn't, but she doesn't know that yet) since she rejected his marriage proposal. If they were still with her, then Beth's death might not have been so shattering. I suppose that's the book's essential, bittersweet message about growing up: siblings and friends drift apart as they all build their own separate lives (and as some die young, which was more common in the 1800s), but new relationships, i.e. spouses and children, fill the void.

(A slightly depressing message for those of us who genuinely don't want to get married or have children. As much as I like Friedrich, I almost would have liked to see an ending where Jo stays a "literary spinster," not because I think it would have been more feminist, but just because it would have shown her finding happiness with her surviving family and friends. It would emphasize that she doesn't "lose" them after all, and show that you don't need to "replace" those relationships with romance or else be lonely forever.)

But I don't think it's just about that either. Beth's death also leaves Jo without a fulfilling purpose in life. Since her writing career failed in New York after she gave up sensation stories, she made caring for Beth her life's purpose, so with Beth gone, she's aimless. She thinks she has no choice left but to "take Beth's place," as Beth urged her to do, and live a quiet, domestic life of keeping house for her parents. But while Jo does those household duties well for a while, and learns their value, she isn't content with them. It was a lovely life for Beth, but it isn't who Jo is. So beyond Jo's grief and loneliness, another cause of her depression is that she's unfulfilled. This explains why writing again, and finding literary success, is such an important part of her healing process, and why she finds her ultimate joy in the very active, un-quiet life of running a boarding school for boys.

For personal reasons, I've been feeling uneasy lately about Jo's backward swing from acceptance to depression between "The Valley of the Shadow" and "All Alone." It does feel slightly as if Alcott was saying "You may think you're ready to accept a loved one's passing, but when it actually happens it will break you." But it does help to remember that the situation is more complex than that.

@littlewomenpodcast, @thatscarletflycatcher, @fandomsarefamily1966

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“Finish that sentence wrong and we’ll end you.”

“Duly noted. It’s nice to meet you, miss.”

- Mod Kat @hacked_prompts on Instagram


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masterpost for writers creating their own worlds, or even just characters

names that have specific meanings

meanings of any names

popular baby names

upper class names

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aristocratic/royal names

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feel free to add in any links!

1 month ago

Cooked up smth on my other blog teehee

This has all my art and writing! Also where I go insane over Caleb (more to come soon I SWEAR ONCE I AM FREEEEE)

Finally Decided To Draw My OC Avalie In The LaDS AU My Best Friend And I Are Cooking Up Haha- I'd Long

Finally decided to draw my OC Avalie in the LaDS AU my best friend and I are cooking up haha- I'd long promised my friends I'd be redesigning her outfit to match the game but kept putting it off and had had enough yesterday!!!

Chat, you are warned- deciding to do a 'simple' sketch while you are being crushed by five million other MORE important things to do is a folly. Your brain will try to tell you this, too. Listen to it at your own risk.

Anyways, I had so so SO much fun with this! Planning to render this differently from my other artworks, so let's see how that goes! For now, have this cutie!

Her name's Avalie Sattari (the last name means star, totally NOT related to how she wanted to belong to the same skies that called Caleb away from her nosiree) and she's a pun-making menace with a heart of gold! Said heart of gold also makes her beat people up but hey atleast she looks cute while doing it (even if she comes back injured to the annoyance of her gege)

ALSO PEEK THE LITTLE STICKERS HEHE TOTALLY NOT INFLUENCED BY MY BIASES HERE NOPE (hell the sweatshirt she's wearing is a dead giveaway if the apples around her weren't enough lmao)

There's also little duckies!!! I love my drama queen bbg Rafayel :D he and I are menaces and that is how it should be!!!!

1 month ago
“THE COLONEL AND THE NURSE”
“THE COLONEL AND THE NURSE”

“THE COLONEL AND THE NURSE”

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My fave flavour of loverboy y'all is just Caleb the amt of giggling I do over this man is not normal

So Caleb just casually says the cutest fucking shit at any given opportunity ???

So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???
So Caleb Just Casually Says The Cutest Fucking Shit At Any Given Opportunity ???

Like ??? How am I supposed to just continue on with the conversation after these ??? I'm literally a giggling and blushing mess rn ??? God forbid he smiles at me too like I'm done I'm not functioning anymore send help


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1 month ago

Caleb 100% does the silliest things to cheer up MC and has absolutely no shame about any of them

Even as a teenager, when other boys were too proud and insecure, he danced about the kitchen singing a song out of tune at the top of his lungs because his pipsqueak had a bad day at school

When MC was teased because she couldn't do makeup as a young teen, he practiced with her until she was good at it, letting himself be the guinea pig

He writes her notes and leave them around the house to cheer her up, usually with really bad little doodles that she doesn't have the heart to tell him are terrible (he knows, it's deliberate)

She fell in a puddle at the park just before her hs graduation and she was mortified because she put in such an effort to look good and now had to walk home covered in mud. Caleb doesn't hesitate and deliberately falls in afterwards so they're equally muddy together

He has a running joke, where he'd make more and more weird faces at her until she laughed - now, he only has to make one before she bursts out laughing no matter how down she is

Caleb's priority is always MC's wellbeing - he loves her so much, too much to bother about things like what people think of him when her opinion is all that matters 😭


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unstablemiss - UnstableMiss
UnstableMiss

Just an ace gal who wanted to see some rep in fiction, so she decided to write her own. I also draw and write (find me over at @ippilulu), and sing like a cat who does not want your hugs. Total Asra stan. And Caleb. And Julian. And... you get the gist. She/Her

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