Now I go back to reading Little Women, which I am teaching tomorrow. I thought it would be soothing, because I loved this book as a child, but my god, I had forgotten that basically every damn chapter is a moral lecture of one sort or another (sometimes four of them at once), all aimed at turning interesting girls into good 'little women.' I am all for an occasional moral lesson, taken in moderation, but this -- this is ridiculous. I had thought I would loan it to Kavi when she's older, but right now, I almost feel like this book is poison, and the sort of thing that should perhaps wait until she's an adult, able to engage critically with the pernicious attitudes it works so hard to inculcate.