Little Women (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (81 page)

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Authors: Louisa May Alcott

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Medicine derived from the dried pods of the senna plant, used to induce vomiting and loosen the bowels.

Submit.

Closed, horse-drawn carriage.

Victorian name for a conventional, prudish person.

Never despair (Latin).

Unaware.

Mr. March is probably beginning a discussion of John Evelyn (1620-1706), English diarist and author of works on varied topics, including one on salads titled
Aceteria, a Discourse of Sallets
(1699).

Dishes that are a mixture of ingredients eaten together.

Inspiration.

Delicate handmade lace.

Parody of the prolific best-selling American sensational novelist E. D. E. N. Southworth ( 1819-1899).

capital of Portugal, largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1755.

Brave and self-disciplined; the Spartans of ancient Greece were renowned for their courage and austerity.

Movement espousing communication between the living and the spirits of the dead.

English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) was mockingly said to have been killed at a young age by his bad reviews.

In the Bible (Luke 10:38-42) Martha opens her home to Jesus and serves him; her sister Mary sits at Jesus’s feet, leaving Martha to do all the work.

Thin white linen fabric.

Reference to a popular mid-nineteenth-century cookbook,
The Young Housekeeper’s Friend,
by Mrs. Mary Hooker Cornelius.

Ruddy- or sturdy-looking.

Germanic.

Tragic mother of Greek myth who mourns her slain children until she dies and is turned into a weeping stone.

Putter; move about aimlessly.

Trimming stitched along a clothing seam or edge.

Woman’s short, close-fitting sleeveless jacket.

In Dickens’s novel
Nicholas Nickleby
(1838-1839), a selfish, foppish character who bankrupts his wife’s dressmaking business.

Flounces.

Heavy overcoat.

Quakers were said to be somber.

Large, heavy breed of dog.

Pump handle.

Half (French).

A bond is a binding agreement; in Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice,
Shylock is a greedy Jewish moneylender who demands a pound of a debtor’s flesh for failure to repay a loan.

That is, a dressmaker; a mantua is an old-fashioned, loose-fitting gown.

Fine, transparent muslin fabric.

Cloak.

Jo is referencing the opening lines of Keats’s lengthy 1818 poetic romance
Endymion:
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: / Its loveliness increases; it will never / Pass into nothingness.”

Quotation from English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s long 1855 poem
Maud,
describing the tragic heroine’s face, which is “dead perfection, no more.”

Possible reference to the protagonist of English writer Thomas Hughes’s moral novel
Tom Brown’s School Days
( 1857), set in an English public school; a brick is a kind person.

Possible reference to Albert Edward (1841-1910), prince of Wales and heir to the throne in 1860, when he became the first member of the British royal family to visit the United States and Canada.

Insults.

Freed slaves.

Grouchy person.

That is, the part of a wealthy great lady in a neighborhood; from a character in Irish Restoration dramatist George Farquhar’s comedy
The Beaux’ Stratagem
(1707).

Port city and capital of the southeastern Canadian province Nova Scotia.

Now Cobh, a port town in southwestern Ireland.

From a popular ballad by Irish writer Lady (Sydney Owenson) Morgan (1776-1859); the scenic Lakes of Killarney are in southwestem Ireland.

Popular broad, full style of sideburn.

Hens.

Town in central England, the site of revels held for Elizabeth I in Sir Walter Scott’s 1821 novel of the same name.

Coalmine.

Weekly London comic newspaper founded in 1841.

Footmen.

Soft goatskin gloves.

Charles Fechter (1824-1879), Anglo-French actor known for his Shakespearean and romantic roles.

Hampton Court Palace, once inhabited by Henry VIII, and Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum, are popular destinations in Greater London.

French-speaking.

Jewelry (French).

Very splendid (French); the park west of Paris called the Bois de Boulogne, the Palais-Royale, and the Champs Elysées, famous for its shops, are fashionable areas in and around Paris.

Good-bye ... your friend (French);
Amie
is a visual pun on Amy’s name.

Capital city of Switzerland.

River of western Europe running through the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland; Coblenz and Bonn are German cities on the Rhine.

City in southwestern Germany known for its thermal baths.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), revered German poet, dramatist, and novelist.

A beautiful little blonde (German).

Part of the post office where letters are held for pickup by the addressee.

Large cask for wine; the ruined Heidelberg Castle houses what is said to be the world’s largest.

River of southwestern Germany rolling through the Black Forest and into the Rhine.

Stereotypically characteristic of the English Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788-1824) or his heroes—that is, lonely, romantic, and brooding.

Said by Robin Redbreast in the Mother Goose rhyme “Little Jenny Wren,” when Jenny rejects him after he nurses her back to health; with this insult, he calls her an impudent prankster.

Match (French).

Fop.

Line from the song “Bonnie Dundee,” from Sir Walter Scott’s play
The Doom of Devergoil
(1830).

Attic.

Reference to nineteenth-century English poet Mary Howitt’s ballad “Mabel on Midsummer Day.”

Do you know the country (German); from a sentimental song sung by the child Mignon in Goethe’s novel
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship
(1796); sung again in
Little Women
on page 437.

Jabber.

Come in (German).

Also called the Great Bear; a conspicuous northern constellation.

Literally, terrifying child (French); shocking young person known for being outrageous.

Biscuits containing seeds, such as sesame or caraway.

Mischievous fairies or gnomes in German folklore.

She means “Herculean”—that is, with the strength of Hercules. Herculaneum is an ancient southern Italian city destroyed, along with Pompeii, by Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Clay pipe.

Fairy tales (German).

Also called “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”; a Hans Christian Andersen tale about the adventures of a one-legged tin soldier who loves a toy paper dancer.

Underclothes made of flannel.

Greek poet of the ninth or eighth century B.C., presumed author of the epic poems the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey.
‡Inkstand.

Handkerchiefs (French).

Objet d‘art; curious ornament.

The fairy queen in Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream,
bewitched to fall in love with the comic weaver Nick Bottom, who has a donkey’s head.

Literally, castle in Spain (French)—that is, a castle in the air.

Family name in English novelist Jane Austen’s
Sense and Sensibility
(1811); like
Little Women,
Austen’s novel is about a family of sisters living in straitened financial circumstances.

The Tailor Retailored;
Latin title of a philosophical satire (1833-1834) by English author Thomas Carlyle, which purports to be a review of a German work on the “philosophy of clothing.”

Manuscript.

Fanciful adventures.

Pen name (French).

Quotation from English poet Robert Browning’s “Evelyn Hope” (1855); Evelyn’s soul is “pure and true.”

Female poetic genius; Corinne is the title character of an 1807 novel by French writer Madame de Staël.

English author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was said to have drunk tremendous quantities of tea.

Poet and musician of Greek myth.

Disillusioned (French).

Theoretical philosophy.

Tragedy (1800) by German writer Friedrich von Schiller; part of a trilogy based on the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), a European war fought mainly in Germany, against the power of the Holy Roman Empire and in particular the royal Hapsburg family.

Making small slits in gathered fabric.

Mary Martha Sherwood (1775-1851), English children’s writer.

English religious writer and dramatist (1745-1833).

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884): Boston reformer and abolitionist known for his simple, direct speaking style; Demosthenes (384-322 B.C.): Athenian statesman and the most renowned orator of ancient Greece.

Stately processional section from German-born English Baroque composer George Frideric Handel’s oratorio
Judas Maccabeus
(1747).

Literally, head to head (French); a private conversation between two people.

Steps for climbing a wall or fence.

German composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s famous 1798 piano sonata.

Retired, obsolete.

Person who meddles and ruins others’ plans.

Sad, moving.

Drab gray.

Port city on the Mediterranean in southeastern France.

Public Garden (French).

The bridge traverses the Paillon (Paglione) stream.

What are you thinking? (French).

Tarlatan and tulle are sheer, stiff fabrics.

Delicate, transparent silk tulle.

Having a stately beauty like Juno, queen of the Roman gods.

In this case, a large, elegant drawing room or hall.

Diana is the Roman moon goddess; her twin brother, Phoebus Apollo, is the god of sunlight and truth.

Dining room (French).

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, wears mourning clothes for her dead husband, the king.

The same as above—in this case, girls.

Young ladies (French).

Cotillion: elaborate dance at formal balls, led by one main couple; tarantella: fast southern Italian folk dance.

Waiters (French).

The French words mean “woman painted by herself”; the reference to Honoré‘ de Balzac (1799-1850)—a prolific and influential French writer, widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists—is unclear.

Long live freedom (French).

That is, after she had gone quietly to sleep; byelow, meaning “hush,” is a term often heard in lullabies.

Germanic element of the English language; the Saxons invaded England in the fifth century.

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