If someone asked you if Beth dies in Little Women, what
would your response be? To me, it’s obvious: of course she did. Her
demise is up there in the pantheon of literary deaths alongside Ophelia,
Jacob Marley, and Matthew Cuthbert. But, as it turns out, this is not a
simple yes or no question. And thus, an investigation.
This question came to me from a bookseller friend of mine, who was asked this very question by a customer: does Beth die in Little Women? Clearly
realizing it sounded like a trick question, the customer then explained
that she had warned her daughter that the ending of Little Women was
going to be sad, but upon finishing, her daughter didn’t know what
she’d meant. Because, in the version the girl read, Beth didn’t die. Was
some publisher going around removing a vital final chapter? Are we soon
to find published versions of Murder on the Orient Express in which the full train manifest arrives unharmed to their location? A production of Romeo and Juliet where
the young lovers sort out their miscommunication to live happily ever
after? But after a bit of sleuthing, it turns out that Little Women‘s complicated publication history means that Beth both does and doesn’t die in that book.
