Jack and Jill: A Village Story (1880)

I received this book as part of the Doubleday Junior Deluxe Editions book club when I was a child. It's the story of two friends who are injured in a sledding accident and how their families and friends help them make it through the long recovery period. I remember that I loved this book and read it over again many times. ( )

I just read an article about this novel ("Missionary Positions: Taming the Savage Girl in Louisa May Alcott's Jack and Jill" by M. Hines), so I wanted to reread the book.

It was definitely more full of those glurgey Victorianisms (wholesome and pure!) than I remember, but when I was younger I just read these books pretty much at face value and didn't really think about the imperialist subtext and what have you.

I still can't quite tell if she's being serious with some of the moralizing. I want to think she wrote books like this to pay the rent and actually preferred the "sensational" stories that were supposedly shameful. However, I can't really be bothered to read a bunch of scholarship on the subject. ( )

My rating here is in memory of what I thought of this book as a child. I loved it and read it through about two or three times. Looking back now, I'm not sure I would give it a four-star rating...I might. It was a slow moving book, detailing the life of a little girl called Jill. It's very much along the lines of Little Women, but a lot more domesticated. ( )

When Jack and Jill are injured in a sliding accident, their friends rally round to keep them company. A charming story and as a bonus, you also learn a lot about the treatment of injuries in the 19th century! ( )

I read this long ago and remembering it still annoys me. Tomboy Jill hurts her back in a sledding accident and is unable to walk. This experience eventually turns her into a perfect, penitent, unendingly patient angel. After which she regains some use of her legs.I suppose I'm projecting modern expectations on the book, but... Little Women didn't affect me that way. Jo was allowed to both have a personality and be essentially virtuous. ( )