March

I just finished rereading Geraldine Brooks's novel, March, which I'm teaching to seniors this fall. I struggled at first on this rereading, wondering if my students would find it interesting. The jury will be out on this one until about October; nonetheless, I am excited about some of the teaching possibilities that the novel presents. Brooks focuses on the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and imagines his journey south to serve as a chaplain to Union troops during the Civil War. March, who is an idealist and a man of "moral certainties," struggles to reconcile his beliefs with the complex world that is presented to him in war-torn Virginia. One thing I love about the book is that March has casual encounters and experiences with several historical figures, many of them writers. He lives alongside Emerson and Thoreau in Concord, Mass., aids John Brown well before the Harper's Ferry raid, and goes to a luncheon in honor of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He teaches Phyllis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass to former slaves during his time in the South. I think/hope I can weave all of these folks in while we're reading the novel as a way of introducing my students to more 19th century lit. Plus, I noticed that Brooks borrowed Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches for her own depictions and modeled one of her characters off of Harriet Jacobs. Lots to work with here; I could conceivably spend the whole semester playing off this one novel. Above all, I most excited about the fact that Marmee and March are utterly human and therefore completely frustrating characters. Their decisions, omissions, and reactions with regard to each other should spark some serious Harkness discussions:)