Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
Extract Sourced from Chapter 2: A Merry Christmas
In spite of her small vanities,
Margaret had a sweet and pious nature, which unconsciously influences her sisters,
especially Jo, who loved her very tenderly, and obeyed her because her advice
was so gently given.
“Girls,” said Meg seriously, looking
from the tumbled head beside her to the two little night-capped ones in the
room beyond, “Mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we
must begin at once. We used to be faithful about it, but since Father went away
and all this war trouble unsettled us we have neglected many things. You can do
as you please, but I shall keep my book on the table here and read a little
every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good and help me
through the day.”
Then she opened her new book and began
to read. Jo put her arm round her and, leaning cheek to cheek, read also, with
the quiet expression so seldom seen on her restless face.
“How good Meg is! Come, Amy, let’s do
as they do. I’ll help you with the hard words and they’ll explain things if we
don’t understand,” whispered Beth, very much impressed by the pretty books and
her sisters’ example.
“I’m glad mine is blue,” said Amy, and
then the rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned, and the
winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a
Christmas greeting.
“Where is Mother?” asked Med, as she
and Jo ran down to thank her for their gifts, half an hour later.
This extract
from ‘Little Women,’ written in 1868, does have many features that suggest significant
language change, in comparison to later literature. Of course, as this extract
is an example of formally written, represented speech, it may not accurately
indicate natural language use. However, in reference to written language use,
it does give us an interesting insight into how much language use has changed
over 150 years.
Perhaps most
obviously, it appears that the structuring of sentences may differ from later
texts. Although these long sentences, some with 6 clauses or more, may be the
author’s individual writing style, it could also be assumed that this elongated
sentencing structure may be typical of texts written over a century ago. By
looking at the first sentence of the extract, for example, we can see this formal
and elongated structure. However, when conveying natural speech Alcott uses a
more colloquial tone and this does seem to bring the character voice to life. With
the sentence, ‘Mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we
must begin at once.’ it seems that the author is able to convey a sense of
excitement with the repetition of the conjunction ‘and,’ and this seems to be a
feature that we may expect in texts from the 2000s.
Although the
lexis within this extract is largely high frequency and, in terms of meaning,
concurrent, ‘pious’ is one example of obsolete lexis that has had experienced
semantic change. ‘Pious’ is most commonly known to mean religious, however, its
archaic meaning is someone who is loyal and dutiful, particularly to their
parents. Here, by taking contextual cues, it does appear that the more
antiquated semantic for ‘pious’ is more fitting, as it aids in the portrayal of
an idyllic family scenario. Furthermore, it seems that other lexis is able to
show significant language change, as the word ‘seldom’ is not as frequently
used in modern texts, as it had been at the time ‘Little Women’ was written.
The graph below, sourced from Google Ngram, is able to illustrate the declining
use of a word that had once been prominent in the English language, both spoken
and within written texts. By looking at the adverb within the sentence, ‘quiet
expression so seldom seen on her restless face,’ we can see that this word is
able to use positive language, rather than modern alternatives that may use
negatives, for example ‘not often seen.’
