Quotation of the Day

“Reading Little Women again, now, I can see how profoundly the book influenced me--as a woman, but even more than that as a writer. Without intending to, Louisa May Alcott invented a new way to write about the ordinary lives of women, and to tell stories that are usually heard in kitchens or bedrooms. She made literature out of the kind of conversations women have while doing the dishes together or taking care of their children. It was in Little Women that I learned that domestic details can be the subject of art, that small things in a woman’s life--cooking the trimming or a dress or hat, quiet talk--can be just as important a subject as a great whale or a scarlet letter. Little Women gave my generation of women permission to write about our daily lives; in many ways, even though it’s a novel, in tone and voice it is the precursor of the modern memoir--the book that gives voice to people who have traditionally kept quiet. . . . Alcott’s greatest work was so powerful because it was about ordinary things--I think that’s why it felt ordinary even as she wrote it. She transformed the lives of women into something worthy of literature. Without even meaning to, Alcott exalted the everyday in women’s lives and gave it greatness.” (pp. 191-192)

--Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury