Little Women and All-of-a-Kind Family: A Guest Post by Emily Schneider
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| Guest poster: Emily Schneider |
This February,
and Adar in the Jewish calendar, marks the 40th yahrtzeit of Sydney Taylor, author of that timeless chronicle of
the Jewish immigrant experience, All-of-a-KindFamily, and its sequels. Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie became
mirrors for Jewish girls, who grew up recognizing themselves in her nostalgic portrait
of Jewish life. Whether you were raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in
suburban Long Island, the outskirts of Philadelphia, or any other American shtetl, you knew you could identify with
one of the sisters, all richly drawn personalities, and yet so generic and
lasting that the family did not have a last name.
The four sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women have also imprinted
themselves on the consciousness of American girls since they first appeared in
1868. This novel, with its idealized
representation of New England family life during the Civil War, became a model for
girls beginning to think about appropriate roles for women in a changing America. Jo has literary ambitions and she can never
quite conform to society’s expectations.
Eventually, she marries the highly educated if awkward German immigrant,
Professor Bhaer, and establishes a progressive school for boys with her
husband. Little Women teaches its
female readers how to adapt to the challenges of their time: disease, death,
the Civil War, an absent father, and genteel poverty. Almost a century, later Sydney Taylor’s All-of-a-Kind Family series became a
kind of response to Alcott’s novel. While it is unlikely that Taylor
purposively designed her stories as a Jewish alternative to Little Women, Alcott’s novel was
standard reading for girls growing up in Taylor’s era and the parallels between
the books are obvious. All-of-a-Kind features
five girls, not four, but the journeys of both sets of characters have points
in common. Just as the March sisters in Little Women are guided as Christians through
identification with Bunyan’s Pilgrim
Progress, the five sisters of Sydney Taylor’s books also must “march”
forward, yet they are outsiders. Many of
their family members speak a mixture of Yiddish and imperfect English, they do
not share the experience of Christmas, and they live initially in a highly
ghettoized Lower East Side of New York City.
Their food is Jewish, their religious ceremonies and celebrations are
Jewish, and their future will clearly be Jewish as well. Yet they are
Americans, and each ethnically inflected episode also reflects their family’s
commitment to that promising new identity. As a child reading Taylor, I knew
that these girls were somehow closer to my own experience than were Meg, Jo,
Beth, and Amy, but the ties between the two sets of girls affirmed that I, too,
could be both. Do girls today still see themselves reflected in Taylor’s
characters, or are Ella and Sarah as remote and distant from them as Jo and
Beth March?
The All-of-a-Kind
books were published between 1951 and 1978, a span of years during which
American Jewish life changed radically. The
first book corresponded to the postwar years of new prosperity and limited assimilation. Jews still lived in
relatively segregated communities, rarely intermarried, and generally conformed
to some standard level of at least minimal religious observance. By the last book in the series, Ella of All-of-a Kind Family, the civil
rights and feminist movements had successfully challenged many barriers in
American life. Taylor’s first readers mainly lived in stable circumstances,
more affluent and less threatened than the Lower East Side Jews of the
pre-World War I era which is the setting for the first books. If Little
Women still held relevance to girls of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s,
particularly as a book where girls assert their individuality and seek a place
in a changing world, Jewish readers could find a complementary reality in
Taylor’s work.
We all
remember the famous first lines of Alcott’s book: “Christmas won’t be Christmas
without any presents.” What if your family did not celebrate Christmas? These New England girls somehow seemed
privileged to me even as they kvetched about
their poverty. Their first collective action in the book is to deprive
themselves and pool their money to buy Marmee a modest gift, one stamped with
each sister’s individual personality. Meg’s pretty hands lead her to decide on
warm gloves, while Jo, determined to reject traditional femininity, chooses
army shoes. Vain Amy envisions “a little
bottle of Cologne,” with the emphasis on the bottle’s small size, which will
leave her enough money to purchase a gift for herself. Beth is practical in her choice of a
handkerchief. Sydney Taylor adapts this
episode for second-generation Jewish immigrants. In the first book of the series, the sisters
resolve to buy Papa a birthday gift. Unlike Mr. March, away fighting in the
Civil War, he is an everyday presence in the girls’ lives. They love him, but
fear is also part of their relationship with a parent who will punish them if
they cross the line.
The girls enter
“Mr. Pincus’s bargain store,” where the owner tries to communicate with them in
broken English. In all likelihood, these
girls would have understood Yiddish, but would be strongly encouraged at home
and in public school to speak the language of America. Taylor’s readers may still have heard Yiddish
from their grandparents, but were far less likely to understand it. Having rejected Mr. Pincus’s suggestion of “a
nize ledder pocketbook” or a handy knife, in addition to the beautiful shirt
that would be far too expensive, they are ready to give up their search, when
Mr. Pincus offers them an elaborately decorated china cup and saucer. The cup
includes a ledge for Father’s mustache, and is labeled with his most important
role, “Father.” When he receives this item he is disturbed that they have spent money on a gift for him. In fact,
this American custom of children presenting their parent with a gift has to be
“translated” for him. He accepts it with ambivalence, but expresses joy. The girls choose one gift together, because
their individual traits are less important than pleasing their father. This
made perfect sense to me as a child in a Jewish family, where father did
certainly still know best. (My own
father won an almost identical cup playing Skee-Ball at the Far Rockaway
boardwalk. He did not have a mustache,
because by the 1960s most American Jewish men were clean-shaven).
Like
the March girls, especially Jo, the All-of-a-Kind
sisters are bookish. The public library
plays an ongoing role in their lives, as the purchase of books would be an almost
unthinkable expense. Like most turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants, they
attend public school and supplement that education in the public library, an
unbelievable gift for upwardly mobile refugees from eastern Europe. When Sarah is panicked at having misplaced a
book, the understanding gentile librarian allows her to pay for it in
installments. Jo March, on the other
hand, is granted access to the immense private book collections of friend
Laurie, and her wealthy Aunt March. Both
books emphasize literacy as a path to self-improvement, but Taylor’s readers
could recognize themselves in Sarah’s dilemma of an overdue library book much
more easily. In one chapter of their
saga, Taylor’s characters receive a “rainy day surprise,” when a group of
peddlers who collect metal, rags, and paper for Papa’s warehouse come across a
pile of used books. The girls inherit a complete set of Dickens, the author who
gave a name to the March sisters’ Pickwick Club. So much of this episode is now absent from
Jewish American children’s lives, for whom access to reading material in any
form they choose is no longer a privilege. Yet to many American immigrants, the
public library is still a resource and a haven.
Then
there is religious observance, another sector of Jewish American life which has
dramatically changed. The March sisters
are Protestant, as far from the emotive and physical religious life of Taylor’s
characters as could be. Their faith is centered around the values of the New
Testament; we see very little ritual and few life-cycle events in their story. (Amy
is attracted by their Catholic maid’s rosary beads, but reluctantly concedes
that they are inappropriate for Protestant prayer.) In contrast, the girls of All-of-a-Kind-Family constantly incorporate physical objects into their
spiritual lives: menorahs, Sabbath
candles, Chanukah dreidels, and booths for the Festival of Sukkot. This celebratory
part of Jewish life in America has actually changed less than other elements of
Taylor’s books. Each holiday observance
is carefully explained and incorporated into the family saga. An interesting
choice is Aunt Lena and Uncle Hyman’s participation in the P’Idyon Ha-Ben ceremony for their first-born son. This observance had already become less
common by the 1950s among non-Orthodox Jews, while brit milah, ritual circumcision, remained the norm. Taylor must have assumed that describing the
latter would have presented difficulties in a children’s book. Today, when redemption of the first born is
not commonly practiced outside of Orthodox communities, the charming
description of the ceremony might seem as foreign as the March girls’ devotion
to Pilgrim’s Progress.
One dramatic
contrast between Alcott’s and Taylor’s stories is the attitude towards disease
and mortality. This largely reflects the
development of vaccines and antibiotics, which greatly reduced the incidence of
childhood death and the terror it induced in parents. However, there is also a Jewish element in
Taylor’s representation of sickness and disability. Her characters are survivors, equipped and
determined to succeed in the here and now. Most of us remember Beth’s early death as a
traumatic part of reading Little Women. It
was foreshadowed by her exposure to a sick infant, but also made to seem
inevitable because Beth was somehow too good a Christian for this world. In All-of-Kind
Family the children contract scarlet fever without long-term consequences,
while in More All-of-a-Kind Family Aunt
Lena falls victim to polio. Lena at
first suffers from what today we would recognize as clinical depression as a
result of her disability, but Mother jars her into recognition of how “selfish”
this response really is. While Beth’s frailty, along with her moral perfection,
make her death seem sad but acceptable, the girls’ Aunt Lena is impacted, but not
destroyed, by her illness. Mother asserts that Lena’s disability only makes her
more suited to be Hyman’s wife: “Don’t you know Hyman would rather have you
with a bad leg than anyone else in the whole world?” She becomes a symbol of
resilience, an immigrant polio survivor who proudly walks up the aisle to the chuppah with her leg dragging in a
brace, and no parents to accompany her.
Forty years after
Taylor’s death, American children, fortunately, have a much wider range of books
about the immigrant experience. There are fewer Jewish immigrants and most come
from parts of the world other than Eastern Europe. Taylor’s Bronx and Lower
East Side of settlement houses and penny candy stores are now scenes from a sentimentalized past. Yet For American Jews,
Taylor’s works preserve an era when we could both fit in and stand out. The
apparent security we now enjoy in America should make the All-of-a-Kind books more relevant, not less so. Just as their original readers benefited from
Taylor’s creative engagement with Little
Women, Jewish children and educators today can connect with her characters
and reinvent her legacy for the future.
LITTLE WOMEN
Probably today many more people have heard of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women than have ever read
it. Yet when it was published in 1868,
it become a phenomenal success, famously gaining Alcott some of the financial
independence which she and her family needed.
It remained a best seller well into the twentieth century. This book spoke to generations of readers about what it meant to be an American
girl (before there were historical dolls and books to fill that niche!) Initially, there were historical, social, and
religious themes that resonated with readers: the incomprehensible tragedy of
the recent Civil War, the devout Protestantism of many Americans of the time.
But there was also the utterly fascinating construction of a female-centered
universe headed by a strong matriarch, Marmee, and centered on the trials and
the distinctive personalities of four very different “little women.” Jo, in particular, became a kind of symbol of
girls who don’t fit the mold, who have ambitions that society might not
consider legitimate. She is dramatic and
literary, and she even chooses to marry Professor Bhaer, an older immigrant
professor who shares her values. Then, by the 20th century, things
gradually began to change. Beverly Lyon
Clark does a terrific analysis of this change in her book, The Afterlife of Little Women, in which she explains how the book
transitioned from being one which everyone read, to one which was much less
popular, yet continued to have a long-lasting cultural impact. There
have been movies, plays, illustrated books, an opera, TV series, and dolls
based on Little Women. In fact, until
only a few years ago the Madame Alexander doll company, founded by Jewish
entrepreneur Beatrice Alexander Behrman, produced a different collection of Little Women dolls each year, so someone
was continuing to buy them.
ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY
The All-of-a-Kind Family
series could never have achieved that level of popularity or influence, but to
me, and to my sisters, my friends, and later, my daughters, Ella, Henny, Sarah,
Charlotte, and Gertie were as relevant as the March sisters, maybe more
so. They were Jewish. They came from an
immigrant family. They celebrated Jewish holidays and Jewish life-cycle events.
Their home was imbued with Jewish values. Yet they were also sometimes
conflicted, mildly rebellious, and briefly disappointing to their parents, even
though all problems were ultimately resolved.
They were also, like the March girls, bookish. Reading, visiting the
public library, almost earning a history prize in school, were key themes and
episodes in the books. The pictures,
interestingly by four different illustrators, were an integral part of the
nostalgic world of the books, nostalgic because even the original readers had
probably not grown up on the Lower East Side, but often in more assimilated and
possibly affluent surroundings. The
girls of All-of-a-Kind Family had
been their parents or grandparents. Now,
this past is much more remote. I love the reader’s guide to the series produced
by the Association of Jewish Libraries. I hope we can continue to think about
ways to ensure that these stories continue to have a life, as well as an
afterlife.
CONNECTIONS
CONNECTIONS
I actually can’t remember when I started thinking about the parallels between the two books. I’m sure that I noticed them as soon as I read Little Women, which would have been at an older age than when I first read All-of-a-Kind Family. I certainly identified with both the adventures and the inner lives of the characters in both books, particularly those concerning family relationships and a love of reading. I was also always acutely aware of the differences. I may have been as obsessed with reading and becoming a writer as Jo, but her New England yichus set her at a remove. While I had not grown up in the same setting as Taylor’s characters, my parents and grandparents had. Many experiences in Jewish American life had changed, but the holidays, rituals, and obsession with education had not. Even the addition of a male child to the family in All-of-a-Kind made it more recognizable. Papa, who had given up on having a boy to continue his name and pray with him, cries at this fulfillment of an undeniable part of Judaism at that time: patriarchy. There was also still a real sense of difference between Jews and gentiles when I was a child, one which, at least for most American Jews, has now dissipated. At some point I began to connect and compare specific aspects of the two authors’ work through this lens. I hope that other readers who love both authors’ work as much as I do might also, not only reread but relive these books, and discuss what parents and professionals can do to continue to keep classics relevant. These books have value in their own right, but, just as Alcott influenced Taylor, it’s exciting to think about how contemporary books for kids can continue this “conversation” with the past. Certainly, for Jewish parents and educators, the obligation to make the past come to life is a creative challenge as well as a mitzvah.
ABOUT EMILY SCHNEIDER
I have contributed to several different Jewish publications and I enjoy writing for them. My blog fills a somewhat different role. First, on Imaginary Elevators, I don’t write exclusively about Jewish books, but I have the freedom to include them as often as I like. There is a limited intersection between Jewish and general interest publications which cover kid lit. (Marjorie Ingall’s articles on Tablet are among my favorites.) Understandably, publications devoted exclusively to children’s books, including The Horn Book and School Library Journal have hundreds of great new books to evaluate each year. While they do review many with Jewish themes, and have long form articles about both new and classic works, there is inevitably a complementary role for people who love books to share their perspectives on blogs. My kids, who have supported my obsession with children’s books for a long time, kept nudging me to start a blog and I finally listened to them. While I have a doctorate in literature, my real entry into children’s literature was as a bookish kid, a mother, and now a grandmother. I try on my blog to feature the kinds of connections between past and present which I have done with Alcott and Taylor. I like to rave about authors and illustrators whose work appeals to me. I also have the opportunity to bring up issues in children’s literature that are not exclusive to particular books. When I choose any topic for a blog entry I hope that it gets people thinking and going off on their own tangents. Here I am going to sound like Kathleen Kelly in the late Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail, but if you are reading a blog about children’s books, then you understand that they had a formative role in who you have become.
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