A few months back I decided to re-read Little Women because I found the copy that my great-grandmother had given to Gran Anne (my grandmother) when she was nine, in 1930. It was comforting to read from the same pages that my grandmother once read from. I often found myself wondering if my great-grandmother had read aloud to Gran Anne, and what her love for the classic story had entailed.
This past week I read March by Geraldine Brooks. The women in Louisa May Alcott's famous novel are based loosely off of her own sisters' lives. We get to know Marmee in bits and pieces, but there's very little light shed on the person of Mr. March. Geraldine Brooks capitalized on this gap in the family tree. Based loosely on the life of Louisa May Alcott's father, Mr. March is an Army Chaplain who got his start as a peddler on the East Coast and was intermittently a school teacher. He was incredibly dedicated to the abolitionist movement, which ended up occupying most of his life's ventures.
I can't help but wonder how often I have overlooked the underdeveloped characters and failed to see the full picture. The letters that Mr. March sends home from war are the closest the reader ever comes to getting to know the women's father. I had always "read" those letters as lovely and endearing - a father pouring his heart and soul out to his daughters and wife. But what if his letters were almost entirely an evasion of his travels and accounts? Mr. March and Marmee experience a heartbreaking rift when the truth is revealed. Mr. March pleads that he was doing his best to protect his women. Marmee feels betrayed and heartbroken. I, personally always relating closest with Meg and wishing I might be one of the girls, feel a mix of privilege in glimpsing the truth and desire to remain in the dark.
We'll never know how close to "true" Brooks' vision for Mr. March's life was, or if Alcott would have approved, but I couldn't help but relish the opportunity to let my imagination run wild. At it's best, this is what fiction allows us to do - entirely escape into another world and momentarily feel as though we can walk in another's shoes. After all, is there any little woman out there who hasn't envisioned herself dancing around the maypole with the sisters at one time or another?
