Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for everyone. It keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion.
What it means
Work is good for us, and there is always some to do. It keeps boredom and trouble away, helps body and mood, and gives a sense of strength and independence that money and fashion can’t.
Marmee isn’t praising work for what it earns. She is praising what it does for the person doing it.
The context
In this chapter the four March sisters want to spend their summer vacation doing nothing. Their mother lets them “try your experiment for a week,” predicting that “all play and no work is as bad as all work and no play.” On the last day she gives Hannah, who helps run the house, a holiday and leaves the girls to manage alone. Jo’s attempt at a dinner party “became a standing joke.”
That evening Marmee explains that she wanted them to see “how the comfort of all depends on each doing her share faithfully,” and asks: “Don’t you feel that it is pleasanter to help one another, to have daily duties which make leisure sweet when it comes?” She advises them to “take up your little burdens again, for though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us,” and then says this. Jo answers, “We’ll work like bees, and love it too, see if we don’t.”
Why it matters
Work is often treated as the price of free time. Marmee’s point is that free time with no work in it tends to sour, and that daily duties are what “make leisure sweet when it comes.”
It’s a useful thing to remember on a slow, aimless day, and a gentle way to explain to children why chores aren’t only about the house.
About Louisa May Alcott
American novelist, short story writer and poet, 1832–1888
Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832 and raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, growing up among writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Her family struggled financially, and she took on various jobs from an early age while also writing for money.
Her first critical success, Hospital Sketches, drew on her service as a nurse in the American Civil War. She is best known for Little Women (1868), loosely based on her own life with her three sisters, and its sequels. She died on 6 March 1888.
The source, and how we checked it
It comes from Little Women, chapter 11, "Experiments", 1868.
We matched the words against the Project Gutenberg text of Little Women, chapter 11, "Experiments". They are spoken by Mrs. March, the girls' mother, known as Marmee, a character in the novel. We last checked this on 11 November 2026.