{"id":139166,"date":"2019-08-29T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T13:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=139166"},"modified":"2019-08-29T11:03:29","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T15:03:29","slug":"the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Tragedy of Beth March"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Illustration from Little Women<\/em>, 1869. Courtesy of Houghton Library at Harvard University. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the first chapter of Little Women<\/em>, when Louisa May Alcott is doling out archetypes to the siblings, Beth asks, \u201cIf Jo is a tomboy and Amy a goose, what am I, please?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a dear,\u201d Meg answers, \u201cand nothing else.\u201d<\/p>\n

People who have studied anything about Little Women<\/em> know that the novel is based, roughly, on Louisa\u2019s family, a clan of thinkers, artists, and transcendentalists who rubbed elbows with some of the premier minds of their time: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller.<\/p>\n

Beth is no exception; she is based on Alcott\u2019s second-youngest sister, Lizzie. Lizzie, like Beth, was stricken with scarlet fever. (During this initial illness, her family\u2014vegans and believers in alternative medicine\u2014did not send for a doctor.) Like Beth, she recovered from the illness but, her heart weakened, never regained full health. Like Beth, she died tragically young, though not quite as young as her literary counterpart.<\/p>\n

But while Beth bore her suffering gladly, with unconscionable cheer and resolution, Lizzie was enraged at the fact of her own mortality. \u201cIn Little Women<\/em>,\u201d writes Alcott biographer Susan Cheever, \u201cBeth has a quiet, dignified death, a fictional death. Although young Lizzie Alcott was a graceful, quiet woman, she was not so lucky. A twenty-two-year-old whose disease had wasted her body so that she looked like a middle-aged woman, she lashed out at her family and her fate with an anger that she had never before expressed.\u201d Louisa and the others caring for Lizzie plied her with morphine, ether, and opium, though eventually the drugs lost any effect they once had on her. \u201c[The] pain,\u201d writes Cheever in American Bloomsbury<\/em>, \u201cseemed to drive her mad \u2026 even on large doses of opium, Lizzie attacked her sisters and asked to be left in peace.\u201d <\/p>\n

By the end, the fight had gone out of her body. The final words her family could understand were, \u201cWell now, mother, I go, I go. How beautiful everything is tonight,\u201d though she \u201ckept up a little inaudible monologue\u201d for a short while after that. When she passed, both Louisa and Abba, their mother, reported seeing a \u201clight mist rise from the body and float up and vanish in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lizzie was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, on a patch of land she\u2019d chosen before her death. Thoreau and Emerson served as pallbearers. \u201cEmerson told the officiating minister, who did not know the family well, that Lizzie was a good, unselfish, patient child, who made friends even in death,\u201d John Matteson wrote in Eden\u2019s Outcasts<\/em>. \u201cEveryone seemed to forget that they were not burying a child but a woman of twenty-two.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Little Women<\/em> is positively lousy with premonitions of Beth\u2019s death. Beth is, in turn, forced to stare down her beloved dead canary, Pip\u2014\u201cwho lay dead in the cage with his little claws pathetically extended, as if imploring the food for want of which he had died\u201d\u2014and bury him in a domino box, and to cradle a baby dead from the same scarlet fever that would, years later, kill her.<\/p>\n

Little cruelties and ironies abound throughout the entire book\u2014everything from strawberries in winter to castles in the sky to animal metaphors seem like odd jokes or else Alcott\u2019s subconscious planting her grief on every page. But the grief is, otherwise, a strange and flattening thing; beneath its weight, Beth becomes faultless, angelic, positively uncomplicated. Her ambitions are not squashed by her infirmity, because she has none. Her only imperfection\u2014shyness\u2014seems like a humble-brag, like a job candidate telling an interviewer that her primary flaw is \u201cworking too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is also the extended sequence in which we learn that Beth cares for a group of invalid dolls abandoned by her more discerning siblings. She cares for them the way she will be cared for one day.<\/p>\n

Not one whole or handsome one among them, all were outcasts till Beth took them in \u2026 [she] cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals, no harsh words or blows were ever given them, no neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive, but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed with an affection which never failed \u2026 If anyone had known the care lavished on [her dolls], I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/p>\n

Within minutes of Lizzie\u2019s birth, Bronson Alcott, her father, began writing what would eventually be a five-hundred-page unpublished manuscript: Psyche, or the Breath of Childhood<\/em>. (Bronson gave the manuscript to his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson for feedback; Emerson reluctantly informed him that the majority of the project was unpublishable, and Bronson eventually abandoned it.) The book was a combination of Bronson\u2019s meditations on the growth of the spirit and his observations about childhood development. As Lizzie was an infant, she became the focus of the project, so much so the family called her \u201cPsyche\u201d for a time.<\/p>\n

In its pages, Bronson Alcott sought to understand the mysterious alchemy occurring in his youngest daughter\u2019s mind. \u201cI took [her] in my arms today that I might perchance tempt forth the indwelling vision and fix it for a moment on my own face,\u201d he wrote. \u201cShe fixed her eye on me with a deep intensity of vision. Yet a moment of endeavor, and the free will was disenthralled from the instinctive, and the vision was given her of living, individual being. Then came the smile\u2014the sense\u2014the upfilling joy\u2014from the Spirit\u2019s life, from the fount whence cometh all love, all bliss, all peace, and repose that bloweth into the ample heart of man.\u201d He was also quite relieved at Lizzie\u2019s relative agreeableness, a trait that had apparently not manifested in his other children. She \u201ccries but seldom; often smiles,\u201d he wrote, and \u201cthe prevailing temper of her spirit seems that of repose\u2014deep, still, sustained peace. She is quiet, self-satisfied, self-subsistent. On the ocean of the Infinite doth her spirit calmly lie as a simple wavelet, unagitated by distant storms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bronson did not write this way about his other children. He recorded Anna calling for him after a terrifying and vivid dream; he noted his desire to take Louisa into the country so that he might access the \u201ctrue history of [her spirit] \u2026 [her] range of thought, [her] vocabulary, [her] prevailing tendencies, whether good or evil.\u201d (May\u2014the daughter after whom Amy would be modeled in Little Women\u2014had yet to be born when Psyche<\/em> was written.)<\/p>\n

But as for Lizzie, her position was far more elemental. Bronson wrote:<\/p>\n

This morning I saw Elizabeth while her mother was preparing her for the day. The forms and motions of an infant\u2014how beautiful! \u2026 How open were her arms! How confidingly did she stretch them forth toward that nature on whom she now relies for that sustaining influence which shall supply the waste and exhaustion of the animal functions of the flesh, into which she hath just entered! \u2026 Her position is, in itself, a prayer of aspiration; her breath life, an ascription. She hath faith; she hath love; she is bent heavenward. She turnest toward the source of the Spirit by the sense that worketh deep within her, even as the sunflower towards the radiant light on which it feeds!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, we can see Bronson\u2019s projections onto Lizzie, the way he views her as having plantlike passivity, her actions something akin to a Venus flytrap closing over its prey. Pure instinct.<\/p>\n

I am being unfair to Bronson. Of course he thought of Elizabeth as a creature on whom he could project his own mind; we adore imbuing newborns, like dogs, with emotions and reactions that make sense to us: he feels guilty; she\u2019s having an existential crisis.<\/em> Plus, the other girls were older, already exhibiting their own personalities. Lizzie was an exquisite tabula rasa<\/em>, an object with no obvious subjectivity. \u201cPsyche,\u201d Bronson wrote, \u201cprefers summertime.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The scarlet fever chapter of Little Women<\/em> is, I think, as close as Alcott gets to true, palpable horror. Beth talks in \u201ca hoarse, broken voice,\u201d tries to sing through a swollen throat, runs her thin fingers over her blanket as if trying to play the piano, calls her sisters by the wrong names. She is in a \u201cheavy stupor,\u201d her face \u201cchanged and vacant,\u201d her hands \u201cweak and wasted,\u201d her \u201conce-smiling lips quite dumb.\u201d Her illness is, for lack of a better word, creepy. It is \u201cuncanny valley,\u201d dehumanizing. It is, like real illness and real death, terrifying and gross.<\/p>\n

But after this nightmarish period, the rest of Beth\u2019s death is positively Victorian: beautiful, holy, austere. In part two of Little Women<\/em>, Jo observes that there is a \u201cstrange, transparent look about [Beth\u2019s face], as if the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty.\u201d As it does in every film of the Final Destination<\/em> franchise, the death that has been chasing her for so long draws near. Like the moment during her initial illness when she sat up and played the bedclothes on her lap like a piano, she hovers in the doorway between this world and another. There are many references to Beth as a \u201cshadow,\u201d and this language appears also in describing Lizzie, in Louisa\u2019s journal, Abba\u2019s, and Bronson\u2019s. It is easy to see why casting directors chose baby-faced, wide-eyed, peach-cheeked Claire Danes for Beth in the 1994 film adaptation\u2014she was eerily adept at that ethereal plane.<\/p>\n

Late in the novel, Jo comes to believe that Beth has a big secret. After some deduction\u2014including finding Beth weeping in the night\u2014Jo concludes that her sister is in love with Laurie. \u201cJo mistakes Beth\u2019s pallor for the conventional signs of unrequited love,\u201d writes Athena Vrettos in her book Somatic Fictions<\/em>, \u201c[and her] first response is to try to write a new ending to Beth\u2019s story as she might for her own heroines, thereby transforming the deathbed drama into a narrative of miraculous recovery.\u201d Only later, during a trip to the seaside, does she find out that\u2014far from a crush\u2014Beth has accepted that she is going to die, and soon. There, on the shore of her own metaphor, Beth says, \u201cEvery day I lose a little, and feel more sure that I shall never gain it back. It\u2019s like the tide, Jo, when it turns; it goes slowly, but it can\u2019t be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is unfair to Louisa to be angry that she did not use Little Women<\/em> to save her dear, dead sister. And yet it feels as if\u2014as her father sealed Lizzie in the amber of his literary failure\u2014Louisa did the same within her literary success. Infant or sweet or dying or dead, Lizzie never got the chance to belong to herself.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

It\u2019s weirdly hard to dislike Beth; she\u2019s unflaggingly kind and selfless. A bit Pollyanna-ish, sure, but ultimately a force for good within the family. Alcott gives the tiniest bit of lip service to Beth\u2019s human qualities\u2014that is to say, the normal difficulties that mark everyone\u2014but they do not emerge on the page. Beth does not rage against the unfairness of her situation; but even worse than that, she wants nothing. It is impossible to imagine her adulthood. Not even just the reader; Beth can\u2019t imagine it, either. \u201cI only mean to say that I have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long,\u201d she tells Jo shortly before the end of her life. \u201cI\u2019m not like the rest of you. I never made any plans about what I\u2019d do when I grew up. I never thought of being married, as you all did. I couldn\u2019t seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lizzie\u2019s doctor\u2019s final diagnosis for her was \u201catrophy or consumption of the nervous system, with great development of hysteria.\u201d It is hard, when thinking about Lizzie, not to also think of Alice James\u2014younger sister of the psychiatrist William James and the author Henry James. Lizzie\u2019s father, Bronson, and Alice\u2019s, Henry James Sr., were contemporaries and acquaintances who moved in the same New England circles. Like Lizzie, Alice was an invalid, diagnosed with a litany of ailments common to women at the time, including neurasthenia and hysteria. Like Lizzie, she would die young and recede into her famous family\u2019s long shadow.<\/p>\n

Unlike Lizzie, Alice kept extensive letters and diaries that showcase her brilliance and wit, even though it would take half a century for people to begin to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, there are not many surviving letters or diaries belonging to Lizzie Alcott, though whether that\u2019s because they were lost, or because she did not write or keep them with any regularity, is unclear. But the writing of Lizzie\u2019s that survives is wry and dark and creates a sketch of a fierce and funny woman managing her situation as best she can. In one letter, sent to her family from Boston where she was convalescing at the home of a family friend, she tells of her journey there:<\/p>\n

A woman put her head in very saucily to inquire if I was an invalid and [if] I had been sick long. She stared her fill and not discomposing myself at all I stared at her. She soon retired, [and] I reposed quite nicely at my ease and though my head ached did not feel as much as I thought. Ate my chicken with a relish and troubled myself about nobody.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later, she writes of a \u201cMiss Hinkley\u201d\u2014presumably a nurse\u2014who \u201cwas horridly shocked at my devouring meat \u2026 and stared her big eyes at me. [She] will probably come to deliver another lecture soon. I don\u2019t care for the old cactus a bit.\u201d At the letter\u2019s closing, Lizzie implored them all to \u201cwrite often to [their] little skeleton.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reading these letters, and imagining Lizzie\u2019s dead-eyed stare at nosy women on public transit and overbearing, fussing nurses\u2014imagining her eating with relish and troubling herself about no one at all\u2014I feel a kind of mourning setting in. More than thinking about beautiful, kind, faultless Beth, who chatted endlessly about goodness and piety and nothing at all, I imagine instead this wasted young woman\u2014barely ninety pounds, her hair falling out, so goth she married death itself\u2014calling herself a \u201clittle skeleton,\u201d and chuckling at her own dark joke.<\/p>\n

Lizzie\u2019s family had a narrative about her, and it killed her. Not just once, but over and over again. A woman who lived and had thoughts and made art and was snarky and strange and funny and kind and suffered tremendously and died angry at the world becomes sweet, soft Beth. A dear, and nothing else.<\/p>\n

When she was a baby and sat playing on the floor of the family home, Lizzie\u2019s older sisters built a tower of books around her. She was so agreeable about it, they kept going until she was entirely concealed. Then\u2014losing interest in the game\u2014they wandered away and forgot about her. When the Alcott family discovered that baby Lizzie was missing, they searched and searched. Eventually they found her \u201ccurled up and fast asleep in her dungeon cell,\u201d Louisa wrote in her journal. \u201c[She] emerged so rosy and smiling after her nap that we were forgiven for our carelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are so many ways to read this story. Lizzie as inherently passive. Lizzie as a good-natured child. Lizzie as a character in a novel engaging in some good, old-fashioned foreshadowing. That last one is the one I cannot shake: Lizzie sitting obediently as her family built a sepulcher of words around her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the story collection <\/em>Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the forthcoming memoir <\/em>In the Dream House.<\/em><\/p>\n

From \u201cA Dear and Nothing Else,\u201d by Carmen Maria Machado, from <\/em>March Sisters: On Life, Death, and \u201cLittle Women,\u201d<\/a> by Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley. Publication date, August 27, 2019, in hardcover and eBook by Library of America. Copyright \u00a9 2019 by Carmen Maria Machado. Used by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Real Tragedy of Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Real Tragedy of Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"August 29, 2019 \u2013 Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-29T13:00:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-08-29T15:03:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Carmen Maria Machado\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Carmen Maria Machado\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"14 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Carmen Maria Machado\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0bb4f3d33a9e3efb066d873b40b48438\"},\"headline\":\"The Real Tragedy of Beth March\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-08-29T13:00:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-08-29T15:03:29+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\"},\"wordCount\":2782,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\",\"name\":\"The Real Tragedy of Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-08-29T13:00:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-08-29T15:03:29+00:00\",\"description\":\"Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Real Tragedy of Beth March\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0bb4f3d33a9e3efb066d873b40b48438\",\"name\":\"Carmen Maria Machado\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ce74cf766ce749973ff4cc88dcdf7a46a8e7ae69f29e05eaf536236ec39c21e7?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ce74cf766ce749973ff4cc88dcdf7a46a8e7ae69f29e05eaf536236ec39c21e7?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Carmen Maria Machado\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/cmachado\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Real Tragedy of Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado","description":"Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Real Tragedy of Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado","og_description":"August 29, 2019 \u2013 Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-08-29T13:00:38+00:00","article_modified_time":"2019-08-29T15:03:29+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":750,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Carmen Maria Machado","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Carmen Maria Machado","Est. reading time":"14 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/"},"author":{"name":"Carmen Maria Machado","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0bb4f3d33a9e3efb066d873b40b48438"},"headline":"The Real Tragedy of Beth March","datePublished":"2019-08-29T13:00:38+00:00","dateModified":"2019-08-29T15:03:29+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/"},"wordCount":2782,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg","articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/","name":"The Real Tragedy of Beth March by Carmen Maria Machado","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg","datePublished":"2019-08-29T13:00:38+00:00","dateModified":"2019-08-29T15:03:29+00:00","description":"Carmen Maria Machado on the alchemy by which a strange, bright, angry young woman becomes an ambitionless, anodyne, doomed character.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/bethandjo.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/29\/the-real-tragedy-of-beth-march\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Real Tragedy of Beth March"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/0bb4f3d33a9e3efb066d873b40b48438","name":"Carmen Maria Machado","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ce74cf766ce749973ff4cc88dcdf7a46a8e7ae69f29e05eaf536236ec39c21e7?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ce74cf766ce749973ff4cc88dcdf7a46a8e7ae69f29e05eaf536236ec39c21e7?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Carmen Maria Machado"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/cmachado\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/362"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139166"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139176,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139166\/revisions\/139176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}