Louisa May Alcott and An Old-Fashioned Girl - Five American Women and Work

Remember when Meg in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women visits Vanity Fair, and has a sinfully happy time flirting at parties? An Old-Fashioned Girl inhabits that world, where Fanny Shaw shows her country mouse friend Polly Milton how to live the high life, with dances and ices and lots of boys. These girls are only 14 in 1870s Boston: things get so much more complicated when they grow up and learn what life is about. For Polly life is about work: earning her own living as a happy independent music teacher, while Fanny mopes at home, bored and depressed because Polly's busy example is drawing the attention of the man she loves. This is a novel about how work will cure all ills and make you a better person. For procrastinators everywhere.