Beth

Beth March is probably the most understated of all the March sisters. Quiet and reserved, she doesn’t seem to have much in common with her outgoing and adventurous sisters. But when you look beneath the surface of the little women featured in the story, you see several threads that are common to all four of them – threads that are arguably most plainly visible in Beth. She is one of the forces, standing side by side with Marmee, that hold the little women together, especially in the case of Jo. Beth is a subtly powerful voice of gentle reason, and it’s amazing the impact that she has on the world – her world – around her; that is, her family.

Of course, there are traits that make Beth her own person. Unlike most of her sisters, she was a homebody through and through, and she didn’t care who knew it. While Jo was dreaming of Europe and Amy was thinking of anywhere but there, Beth knew that she had everything that she wanted right at home; why go anywhere else? This is one of the things that I think is so endearing about Beth. She always knew that the family she had was the most important thing to her. Little Women is a story that is largely about young ladies finding out first who they are and how to be that person to the best of their ability. Beth is, in most ways, an exception to that generalization. She knew full well who she was: her mother and father’s daughter, and her best friends’ sister.

On top of this, Beth had a fascination and a love of music, unique among her sisters. True, the March family loved singing together, displayed explicitly in the many carols sung during different Christmastimes, but Beth was always the one sitting at the piano providing the music to sing to. Her delicate, tender fingers always seemed to find a home among the black and white keys of the keyboard. Her love of music alludes to her very nature of understanding and being understood. Music is often referred to as the universal language of the human soul, and I don’t disagree. The fact that Beth was the one chosen to have musical ability among the four sisters highlights to the audience that she is connected to those around her, and even connects them herself; a picture that I find rather beautiful.

These connecting facets of Beth’s personality are easy to see when you look at her. She was an excellent listener (something that Jo appreciated and made use of frequently), was incredibly generous with what she had on numerous occasions throughout the story, and, no matter what Beth was going through herself, she always supported anyone who needed it with everything she had to give. From her sisters who faced crisis after crisis that Beth often felt were bigger and more important than what she was going through, to the Hummel family that lived nearby and needed far more than Beth could have ever given them, Beth was never focused on herself. Even when Beth was incredibly sick with scarlet fever, she thought of her Marmee, and refused to let her sisters call Marmee back from Washington D.C. until she thought she was ill enough because Beth didn’t want to bother Marmee. Beth is the epitome of selflessness, and her heart overflowed with kindness and gratefulness because of it.

Even the gentle, caring Beth had a downfall, however. When we look at Little Women next, we will examine just that. For though she was filled with wonderful things and thoughts of other people, she thought very lowly of herself, and that caused extreme meekness and shyness in the second-to-youngest March sister. Join us as we look at how that affected her life, and how she eventually overcame it!

Envy

Google defines envy as a noun as follows: “a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.” This description is true to life and true to what Meg March went through on the road to becoming a woman. While Meg was kind and understanding and strove to be the best daughter she could be, she also was painfully aware, at times, of the financial situation the March family was in compared to the families around them.

One such instance was when one of Meg’s high-society ‘friends’ was having a coming out ball to celebrate her coming of age. Meg was invited, but when she went to this friend’s house to get ready with the other young women, they begin making snide remarks about her clothing and how she looks, eventually culminating in the hostess taking Meg and making Meg her ‘pet’. They dress her up in their fine gowns and corsets and makeup and do her hair beautifully – and Meg rather enjoys it.

The next time we see her is at the ball itself, where she is being flirtatious and reveling in the attention of four or five well-off suitors. This is where we see Laurie at the ball for the first time. It only takes seconds for him to notice Meg’s situation. Laurie demonstrates his knowledge and caring for the March sisters here for the first time. He can see right through Meg’s games and knows that the woman he sees is not the Meg he knows. Laurie also proves his own character by confronting Meg about it. He’s not afraid to point out her inconsistencies and remind her of the woman that her Marmee raised her to be. Meg breaks down at the reminder, and we even see her trying viciously to wipe off her lipstick with a cloth while hiding in a room off the main ballroom. Laurie doesn’t abandon her to her shame, however. He comes alongside her and comforts her, and promises to let her tell her family on her own terms. This speaks volumes about both Laurie and Meg: Laurie cares for Meg like a sister and wants to see her in healthy situations and being the best that she can, and while Meg may have been pulled away from what she knew was right, when she is reminded of the things she ought to do she quickly realizes her faults and owns up to her mistakes. All these things are admirable qualities in both of these characters.

Meg does return home and tell Marmee and Jo about how foolish she’d been. She confesses to her family that she liked being pampered, expecting to be admonished for it. But Marmee, as always, has unexpected words to impart wisdom to her girls. She tells them that everyone likes the attention and pampering, but that it’s when a person becomes obsessed with it that it can lead to them believing that their looks and outward beauty is where their worth lies. Marmee reminds her daughters that this the last thing she wants for them, and Meg is happy to agree, having tasted the other side of the coin.

When Meg experienced the lavish life that she might have if she marries ‘well’, she began to think that it was what she wanted in a husband. On Friday we’re going to look at the man that Meg ended up marrying, and we will see how he compared to this vision and why Meg married him at all. Come back then for a look at Mr. John Brooke!

Meg

Welcome back to Built of Stories this lovely March, story addicts! This month I’m excited to pull apart and talk with you about one of my favorite stories of all time: the classic, ever-loved Little Women! We will be mainly focusing on the 1994 film directed by Gillian Armstrong. If you haven’t seen this rendition of Louisa May Alcott’s novel, I highly recommend it. Like any movie adaptation of a book, it isn’t perfect in terms of the story the novel presents, but it’s far closer than some other adaptations get. The characters are portrayed vibrantly, and the situations they find themselves in are not largely changed.

This month, I hope to make up for my absence and find a new rhythm by making use of Wednesdays to post as well as my usual Mondays and Fridays. Mondays this month, we will focus on a March sister, Wednesday we will explore their greatest flaw, and on Friday we will look at their love interest or person of similar influence in their life. I apologize that this post comes a day late, but I think that the content will help you overlook that fact. Without further ado, let’s dive into the eldest sister of the four: Meg March!

Meg has a lot of virtues to her character. The eldest Ms. March was probably the most proper in terms of society’s rules when we first meet the sisters at the beginning of the story. She is conscious of how young ladies are supposed to behave in the eyes of the mid and post-Civil War world she lives in. We often see Meg pouring over needle work or helping Marmee, and she leads the wary questioning of Jo and Laurie when Jo first introduces Laurie to the group of sisters. She worries that it isn’t right to so casually associate with a boy. None of this is said to suggest that Meg couldn’t let up and have fun with her sisters; as often as we see her concerned with the eyes of the people around her, we see her engrossed in the productions Jo has written for them to perform or in her persona at their meetings for The Pickwick Papers, the fictional newspaper the sisters ‘publish’ to highlight each of their talents. And of course, she comes to love Laurie as a brother, just like all of them do.

When Marmee is notified by telegraph that Mr. March has been wounded as a result of his service to the Union in the Civil War, she decides to go straight to Washington D.C. where he is in the hospital and care for him because they were so short on nurses and other staff. In Marmee’s absence, someone must manage the house, and Meg steps up to the challenge. Jo tries to help, she really does, but she gets frustrated easily and doesn’t like affairs with money, the former trait we will talk about in detail later this month. Meg, however, is the home’s constant in this area. She keeps careful watch over the bookkeeping that must be done, their tabs at the grocer and bills that must be paid, and what the house needs to be stocked with using the little income that they had. We can see from miles away in these instances that Meg has a strong matronly streak to her personality.

Underneath all these things, though, we can see that some things always remain true of Meg: she is sweet, caring, and kind. She leads the family in giving away their delicious looking Christmas breakfast to a family more in need at the very beginning of the film. When she is gifted the ‘rag money’ for the month by Marmee, she gives it to Amy to spend on frivolous luxuries for school. She is mild and level-headed, calming fights and tempers of her sisters frequently. Her big heart is always on display and, as we will see this Friday, it doesn’t go unnoticed.

Meg is a fantastic example of a well-rounded character; in reality, all the March sisters are. It may not feel like Meg is well-rounded just yet, because I spent this post talking only of her virtues. However, tomorrow, we will be looking at Meg’s biggest struggle throughout the story: envy. This, along with the struggles of the other March sisters that we will explore later this month, is a very relatable thing to battle. Check in tomorrow and find out how it manifested itself in Meg, as well as how she overcame it!