“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott (post 4): Narrative multiple personality, out-of-character behavior, imaginary friends at age thirteen, the first sixty pages.

After my last post—questioning the reliability of the narrator and suspecting that Beth has multiple personality—I looked back at what I had noticed about the narrator and Beth in the first sixty pages.

I had noticed that the narrator is usually third person, but occasionally switches to first person: “And I think Jo was quite right” (1, p. 34). “They would have been still more amazed, if they had seen what Beth did afterward. If you will believe me, she went and knocked on the study door” (1, p. 56).

The narrator switch is all the more remarkable since conventional wisdom is that Jo, an aspiring writer, is the author’s alter ego. So this novel has at least three narrative perspectives—third person, first person, and Jo—making it another novel with narrative multiple personality.

Regarding Beth, the above quote notes behavior that is so out of character for her that the narrator feels the rest of her family will be amazed when they hear about it (about this, the narrator is reliable). Moreover, Beth’s “little world was peopled with imaginary friends” (1, p. 38) at age thirteen.

There seems to be a pattern, and it is not subtle.

1. Louisa May Alcott. Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy [1868-69]. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.