Jo’s Elastic Heart (Little Women, Part 2)

In Part 2 of our discussion on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, editor Sarah Blackwood returns to discuss the inspiration behind the cover of the Norton Library edition, the book's intended audience, and key elements of gender theory—as well as personal feelings—that Alcott incorporates into the characters and story.

Sarah Blackwood is Professor of English at Pace University, where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century US literature, visual culture, and representations of selfhood. She is the author of The Portrait’s Subject: Inventing Inner Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States (2019), as well as the introductions to the Penguin Classics editions of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920). Her criticism has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Little Women, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393876734.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social.