#tommy bangs

[morningdawnbreaks]

Illustrations of Little Men

by Louisa May Alcott

[besotted-with-austen]

Tom Bangs: I am engaged to Dora!

Daisy Brooke: oh my! Congratulations-

Nan Harding: did she hit her head?

Daisy Brooke: Nan!

Nan Harding: what? It is a legitimate question-

Tom Bangs: yes, but she is fine!

Daisy Brooke:

Nan Harding:

Nan Harding: I did not expect to be right.

[besotted-with-austen]

Louisa May Alcott wrote a self-made woman disinterested in relationships, family and marriage, and that’s Annie “Nan” Harding.

Annie, more commonly known as Nan, is introduced to the reader as a young girl who has lost her mom and whose father is both not able to connect with her nor present enough to attempt to do so.

Because of this, Nan grows headstrong, reckless and fiercely spiteful towards anything feminine as she associates it with critiques and attempts to her freedom.

Her father sends her to Plumfield and Jo, seeing the similarities between her younger self and Nan, immediately takes her under her wing. She gives Nan Daisy Brooke as a companion, hoping that establishing a friendship between the two would help soften the former and strengthen the latter.

Thanks to her stay at Plumfield, Jo’s watchful eye and the other younger residents’ friendship, Nan eventually becomes a strong-willed (if maybe a bit sharp-tongued and strict) young woman who is able to channel her stubbornness into determination to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor.

Pretty much like Jo with Laurie, Nan has a childhood friend fixated on her that hopes to “wear her down” until she sees that they are meant to be: this is Thomas “Tommy” Bangs, with whom Nan had a very sweet puppy-love kind of relationship when they were pre-teens. Fortunately, there is never a big confrontation between the two due to the whole affair being portrayed as little more than a childish foolishness on Tom’s part that Nan never takes too seriously.

Rather pointedly, the way Tom clings to this childhood crush prevents him to fully commit to be an adult-he pursues medicine to be by Nan’s side even if he hates it and he ignores the pleas of his father to get into the family business.

Accidentally finding love with Dora*, a girl who thinks he is all the things that he boasts, finally gives him the push he needs to become a better man and he starts working hard, allowing his friendship with Nan to evolve in a genuine life-long bond.

(That said, Nan doesn’t lose the occasion to give a scating, if still loving, jab at Tom.)

In the end, Nan becomes a doctor highly respected in her field and remains happily celibate her whole life-the text specifically says that she is fulfilled and happy with her choices.

*Yes, it is a direct reference to David Copperfield’s Dora, and this is one of the reasons she and Tom get along so well-they are both larger than life and a tad ridiculous individuals with big hearts. Clearly Louisa May Alcott had opinions on Dickens’ treatment of her.