Little Women/Headscratchers
Just what does Laurie do to offend Amy so badly in this passage in "New Impressions"?
"With the first burst of the band, Amy's color rose, her eyes began to sparkle, and her feet to tap the floor impatiently, for she danced well and wanted Laurie to know it. Therefore the shock she received can better be imagined than described, when he said in a perfectly tranquil tone, 'Do you care to dance?'
'One usually does at a ball.'
Her amazed look and quick answer caused Laurie to repair his error as fast as possible.
'I meant the first dance. May I have the honor?' "
She wants her escort to see her dance, but when he flatteringly asks her to dance, she becomes so offended that they spend the rest of the evening playing silent mind games with each other. What terrible nineteenth-century breach of etiquette did Laurie just commit there? Implying that Amy wasn't good enough to get another partner or already have the Count lined up, as she next informs him? Not using the self-effacing phrase "May I have the honor?" Maybe it's due to Time Dissonance or Values Dissonance, but I really don't understand why Laurie asking her to dance shocked her and offended her.
- I think Amy is being sarcastic because he asks if she wants to dance at a ball. The way he asks implies he didn't think of it as "hey, let's dance" but more as "huh, I wonder if you want to dance." I'm not sure if I'm saying it right, but that's what I got out of the exchange. Also, I think the mind games were meant for Laurie because he didn't really pay any attention to Amy when they first arrived, despite being her escort and thus lackey. From what I know, being an escort in that day and age meant you were at the beck and call of your lady, and Laurie doesn't seem to even notice Amy is there at first.
- I know she was being sarcastic; I'm just wondering why she was "shocked" that he asked her to dance. This exchange is what initially sets her off, not his inattentiveness later in the evening, which corresponds with Amy dancing with the Count and others as if to show him what he's missing. This apparently shocking offense occurs as they walk into the ballroom, before their arms have a chance to unloop. Asking your lady to dance with you would be the opposite of inattentive, right?
- The problem seems to be that he didn't ask her in (she felt) the proper manner, but instead asked, as the above troper says, nonchalantly and in a way that suggests he isn't really all that interested in dancing with her personally. She's doing her best to indicate that she wants to dance, and he asks as though he doesn't notice - or, worse, has noticed but doesn't care all that much. So it's partly finicky nineteenth-century etiquette, but it's mostly the combination of Laurie being kind of insensitive and Amy being immature and oversensitive about it.
- Both characters are behaving badly here. Amy, whose vanity is a running problem in the novel, wants to show off. But because Laurie brought Amy to the ball, he must request the first dance. From a nineteenth-century POV, Amy's shock makes complete sense: Laurie is blithely disregarding a basic rule of nineteenth-century ballroom etiquette. (See the Library of Congress for a huge selection of digitized dance and ballroom etiquette manuals.)
- The problem seems to be that he didn't ask her in (she felt) the proper manner, but instead asked, as the above troper says, nonchalantly and in a way that suggests he isn't really all that interested in dancing with her personally. She's doing her best to indicate that she wants to dance, and he asks as though he doesn't notice - or, worse, has noticed but doesn't care all that much. So it's partly finicky nineteenth-century etiquette, but it's mostly the combination of Laurie being kind of insensitive and Amy being immature and oversensitive about it.
- Amy's shock could also be because Laurie is acting out of character - the 'old' Laurie she knew would not put on languid fine-gentlemen airs, and would probably be as eager to dance as Amy was.
- Indeed this seems to be as above. Amy knows Laurie and he's acting like she's not interesting and that it's not good to see her.
== Just what does Beth die of? == She had Scarlet Fever, but she got over that. It's said that Beth is "weakened" and frail after her illness, but people don't just die for no reason. Did she have cancer? Did she have a bad heart? Did the fever cause her immune system to fail? What exactly did her in?
- In those days, it didn't really matter what finally did it. So they felt no need to be specific.
- Yeah, classic literature is full to bursting of people (usually women/girls) dying slowly of nonspecific sicknesses whose only identified symptoms are a fever and the Incurable Cough of Death.
- We still don't know what really killed real people in the 19th century (Alcott, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe...). Less medical knowledge back then means less certainty (and for the people in that time, less expectance of certainty).
- The scarlet fever weakened her entire body forever after; she lost the will to live when everyone else started moving on with their lives and left her alone.
- You know that book Jo was writing?
- Scarlet Fever has many horrible side effects if not treated with modern medicine. For one it could weaken the heart and even open her up to secondary infections. This isn't even mentioning the harm maintaining a very high fever for several days can do to the brain. It could even be a culmination of all the childhood diseases that one went through back then. To get to the age of 20 she would have had to have had the measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox, several colds all in the time that colds could kill, and the small pox vaccine when it made one have a minor bout of small pox. Plus, it was stated in the beginning that she was never very strong to begin with.
- So it seems the most accurate answer to the question is "From a little bit of everything -- literally."
- The "real" Beth died a bit more quickly, but like Beth in the book, it was a lingering illness (though she was substanially less a Purity Sue in the process--like with the rest of her family Alcott did a lot of whitewashing there) as a result of never quite recovering from Scarlet Fever. The most likely culprit would be secondary infections of weakened systems (cardiac or pulmonary would be especially nasty.) But another possibility is the medicine itself. LMA herself is now considered to have probably died as a result of long-term complications of mercury poisoning. The mercury was part of the medicine she was given when she contracted typhoid as a Civil War nurse. Medicines commonly contained calomel (mercury), lead, and other poisons that we now know could kill you quickly or kill you lingeringly just as easily as the original disease.