Ebook408 pages7 hours
Work: A Story of Experience
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this ebook
It is one of several nineteenth-century novels which uncovers the changes in women's work in the new industrial era, as well as the dilemmas, tensions, and the meaning of that work. The story depicts the struggles of a young woman trying to support herself. The main character, Christie Devon, works outside the home in a variety of different jobs, but the end of her story marks "the beginning of a new career as a voice and activist for other working women".
Author
Louisa May Alcott
Louisa May Alcott was a 19th-century American novelist best known for her novel, Little Women, as well as its well-loved sequels, Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women is renowned as one of the very first classics of children’s literature, and remains a popular masterpiece today.
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Reviews for Work
Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
4/5
4 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Louisa May Alcott came from a family of professional busybodies (in a good way); they were temperance advocates, abolitionists and feminists. In most of Alcott's books for young people, she endeavors to show female characters that are hard-working, educated and striving to better themselves. She had as much contempt for a society that kept well-to-do young women empty-headed, vain and idle as she did compassion for women whose poverty forced them to endless toil.Work is the story of Christie Devon, a New England orphan brought up by her kind aunt and hard-hearted uncle. Rather than be dependent on (and beholden to) her relatives all her life, she strikes out on her own, determined to work and make an independent life for herself. Christie moves through a series of careers, is proposed to by a rich man (who she refuses) and gets herself into trouble standing up for a friend who has been a "fallen woman." This loses Christie her job; she steadily declines into melancholy until she is helped by kind people. She falls in love and marries, only to lose her husband in the Civil War. Her short marriage brings her a child, which inspires her to work once more, so that she cannot not only give her daughter a better life but help other women.Alcott's prose is hearty and somewhat syrupy. I liked the book for its realistic understanding of the lot of women in the 19th century. Christie Devon isn't a Horatio Alger-type hero; she can't be, because no matter how much of a will most 19th century women brought to work, the decks were stacked against them. They had too little practical training, too few opportunities and the margin for error was far too thin. (Illness or a moral slip brought almost certain disaster.) I found the story pleasant and interesting. Alcott even gets to indulge her taste for melodrama in one chapter in which Christie works for a family with hereditary madness in their genes.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A great, sorta rambling story about one woman's life, with asides about slavery, women's rights, the Civil War, religion (with Rev. Power, Alcott's impression of the real-life Theodore Parker) and life in general. Worth reading...makes me want to check out Susan Cheever's new biography of Alcott.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A curious paradox of a book -- politically radical in places, irritatingly conventional in others. In one sentence, Alcott advocates movingly for equality between the races; in the next, she portrays the Irish as being lower than animals. In one passage, traditional gender roles are questioned and subverted; in another, we hear all about the strengths and weaknesses supposedly unique to females. Here it ridicules romances for putting silly, impractical ideas in girls' heads; there it resorts to the goopiest of sentimental tropes. Almost like reading two books in one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an adult book, and compared to her children's books it is a little more realistic. The topic is a young woman trying to make her way in the world. She wants to earn her living, but there are many obstacles. Deals with predjudice and Women's liberation issues.
Book preview
Work - Louisa May Alcott
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