Why Does It Have to be So Sad?

I took my granddaughter last Sunday afternoon to the Arts Center in Little Rock to see a production of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Of course, as the play was performed, one could hear many sniffles throughout the audience (primarily from the adults who were familiar with the novel upon which the play is based). These emotions flowed when Beth, one of the younger sisters, gives slippers to Theodore's Grandpa who had lost his granddaughter when she was young. Another scene occurs when the family fears their father, who is in the Civil War and very ill will die, and another when Beth contracts scarlet fever. At the conclusion of the play in the question and answer session, one of the young audience members asked this question, "Why does it have to be so sad?" I think it is a question many readers ask of literature no matter what their age, and it brings up the traditional question we ask about writing, "Should it simply entertain or teach?" I have always fallen into the category of believing writing should be realistic. As such we can learn the lesson once again, "We read to know we are not alone."

Yes, confronting difficult life experiences in literature is hard, but at the same time it teaches us to deal emotionally with our own issues. For example, our granddaughter is now eleven years old, a tween as she often tells us. Her parents divorced a year ago, and she has now dealt with her mother's new boyfriend and his daughters as part of the new family scenario. She and her brother spend six days a month with her dad. She is in that transition stage from childhood to adulthood; one days she plays with her Barbie dolls and the next day she watches the Twilight movies. I believe that reading literature and watching plays of children dealing with difficult situations in their lives is healthy. After all, it is one way that "little women" might become "compassionate good-hearted women."