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#aside from the laurie thing and the general family atmosphere and the moralizing mother figure there's quite a lot different
fictionadventurer · 6 months
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The Heir of Redclyffe is teaching me that what Little Women really needed was for the March sisters to have a clever, witty, sharp-tongued, disabled brother who was BFFs with Laurie.
#charles edmonstone my beloved#he's so much fun#and his friendship with guy is one of the best parts of the book#i'm shocked to see a victorian book where the disabled person is neither a monster nor a saint#the disability affects his life and the household but it's far from the only thing about him#he's a great character in his own right#he even has a plot-relevant illness#but the plot relevance isn't 'oh no he's near death let's have drama'#but 'he's having a flareup and can't write letters so someone loses a vital correspondant at an unfortunate moment'#(charles does later lampshade the lost opportunity for a dramatic deathbed reconciliation scene)#but anyway despite my continued comparisons of this book and little women#they are different books#aside from the laurie thing and the general family atmosphere and the moralizing mother figure there's quite a lot different#for one thing the male characters are much more interesting than most of the female ones#the girls are fine but certainly not the main draw of the story#i do like the religious aspect of this one more though#at first it was giving me anxiety cuz they agonize over teeny little sins#but once we moved from childish concerns to more adult ones the faith aspect became much deeper#still clunky and eye-rolling at times but also surprisingly natural in some places#and i'm still holding my breath for whatever made jo cry over this book#66% through the book; it's gotta be coming relatively soon#books#the heir of redclyffe#little women#charlotte mary yonge#louisa may alcott
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