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classic lit ship war
Aug. 28th, 2023 08:55 pmRecently reskimmed the LMM Pat books, of which I could remember very little. (*Wow* are they dominated by the housekeeper, Judy "hope you like dialect" Plum. Some fascinating tidbits about how rural life/period life was changing, though - a shift from home cheesemaking to all milk going to the factory, dresses becoming lower cut in back and exposing spines and shoulderblades, someone has apparently done a leg of their travel by air?)
One of the things I had forgotten was that Pat has an Engagement To The Wrong Man very much like Emily's - David Kirk is older and well-read and well-traveled like Dean, although he doesn't have nearly as much personality. (We're always hearing how much Pat likes to talk to him but we never actually see any of those conversations, and their eventual breakup is more of a fizzle with none of the bitterness and passion of Dean and Emily's.) Once might be coincidence, but I suspect that twice is a ship war. Of course it could be some other agenda - personal wish fulfillment, or possibly just plot recycling - but I think the most fun read is that LMM was a Jo/Laurie shipper and really wanted to trash the Jo/Bhaer ship a couple of times. Teddy and Jingle both feel very Laurie - affection-starved, artistic, childhood neighbors - and Jingle especially is straightforwardly in love with Pat his whole life, with none of the hot-and-cold drama between Emily and Teddy. Pat even has friends and sisters in all the other Little Women roles - big sister Winnie, who gets married first and starts having babies, best friend Bets, who dies of the flu, and little sister Rae, who is a total Amy type except nicer, but conveniently gets whirlwind-engaged to a guy who's moving to China.
Anyways, the arrow of time being what it is, Alcott never got to know about any of this, but it's fun to imagine the literary feud they might have had if they had lived at the same time. Escalating back and forth with increasingly caricatured takes on each other's preferred ships, salvos of brokenhearted young and older men.
Or the meta take - Dean and David, desperate to get out of LMM stories and into an Alcott world where they can end up with their girls, Laurie equally desperate to get out of Alcott and over to the LMMiverse. The shock and confusion when all the barriers are shattered and Pollyanna gets free to terrorize everyone. Etc.
One of the things I had forgotten was that Pat has an Engagement To The Wrong Man very much like Emily's - David Kirk is older and well-read and well-traveled like Dean, although he doesn't have nearly as much personality. (We're always hearing how much Pat likes to talk to him but we never actually see any of those conversations, and their eventual breakup is more of a fizzle with none of the bitterness and passion of Dean and Emily's.) Once might be coincidence, but I suspect that twice is a ship war. Of course it could be some other agenda - personal wish fulfillment, or possibly just plot recycling - but I think the most fun read is that LMM was a Jo/Laurie shipper and really wanted to trash the Jo/Bhaer ship a couple of times. Teddy and Jingle both feel very Laurie - affection-starved, artistic, childhood neighbors - and Jingle especially is straightforwardly in love with Pat his whole life, with none of the hot-and-cold drama between Emily and Teddy. Pat even has friends and sisters in all the other Little Women roles - big sister Winnie, who gets married first and starts having babies, best friend Bets, who dies of the flu, and little sister Rae, who is a total Amy type except nicer, but conveniently gets whirlwind-engaged to a guy who's moving to China.
Anyways, the arrow of time being what it is, Alcott never got to know about any of this, but it's fun to imagine the literary feud they might have had if they had lived at the same time. Escalating back and forth with increasingly caricatured takes on each other's preferred ships, salvos of brokenhearted young and older men.
Or the meta take - Dean and David, desperate to get out of LMM stories and into an Alcott world where they can end up with their girls, Laurie equally desperate to get out of Alcott and over to the LMMiverse. The shock and confusion when all the barriers are shattered and Pollyanna gets free to terrorize everyone. Etc.
