Polly the country girl is off on a visit to her city friend Fanny—and Fanny’s rich, somewhat dissipated lifestyle throws several perplexing challenges in Polly’s way. How will Polly do walking the tightrope between sticking stubbornly out like a sore thumb and letting worldly wisdom spoil her?
An Old-Fashioned Girl isn’t a long book—shorter than Anne of Green Gables, around the length of The Railway Children or The Scarlet Pimpernel.
The book is written for a young girl audience—it’s probably aimed at 10+ but a younger audience might enjoy hearing it read too. It’s thoughtful enough that older readers may also find it interesting.
As usual, jump to the end if you just want a brief conclusion, or go straight through for all the details!
The Plot [spoiler alert!]
An Old-Fashioned Girl was written in two parts, so the first third covers country-bred Polly Milton’s first visit to her city friend, Fanny Shaw, while the next two-thirds take place six years later, when Polly returns to the city to be a music teacher. The two flow pretty seamlessly and overall the plot is decidedly a romance; but of course the first section does nothing but almost unintentionally set the stage.
The plot of the first section revolves mostly around Polly winning the esteem and liking of the Shaw family and influencing them for good by her wholesome, simple kindness and glad-heartedness. That sounds rather dull but it’s not, for Polly is no impossible angel and her adventures are both realistic and full of humor. This section also sets the stage for the romance to follow, as Polly meets not only the Shaws—Fanny, her younger brother Tom, and her youngest sister Maud—but also friends of the family, including Arthur Sydney and Fanny’s friends Isabelle “Belle” and Beatrix “Trix.”
I could describe some of the thoroughly enjoyable scrapes and adventures Polly and the Shaws have during this first part of the book, but they aren’t deeply influential to the main plot, other than setting the scene by introducing the cast, so I won’t spoil them. Instead, we’ll jump right into Polly’s career as a music teacher. Tom, now grown up and in college, is engaged to Trix—an engagement that none of his family take very seriously, for Trix is a notorious jilter. But just before Tom, Trix got jilted herself, and played that card for all it was worth—“did the forsaken very prettily,” to use Fanny’s words—and Tom, out of pity, lost his head and proposed to her. Meanwhile Fanny has grown into a fashionable, bored young woman, discontented with her life but not energetic enough to try any tough cures. Maud has significantly improved from her old spoiled brat self, however.
As for Arthur Sydney, he’s the same gentleman he’s always been—and he begins to find that Polly has grown from an agreeable girl to an attractive woman. Polly is inevitably flattered by his preference, but, upon reflection, finds that for whatever inexplicable reason proper, sensible, gentlemanly Arthur Sydney stands no chance when compared to Tom the scapegrace. And when Fanny unintentionally reveals that at least half her growing discontent in life is due to disappointment over Sydney, Polly’s half-formed resolve crystalizes, and she decides to make it clear to Sydney that she’ll never marry him. This she does more effectively than may have been expected, unwittingly revealing that Tom is the reason Sydney stands no chance.
But of course, Tom is still engaged to Trix. Polly can’t take this seriously, since no one else does, but it still causes her some uneasiness. And when Mr. Shaw’s business fails, and Tom comes home from college expelled (due to his numerous scrapes) and in debt, and Trix still doesn’t dump him, Polly begins to despair. But her friends’ misfortune gives her other things to think of—and even more importantly, it gives Fanny other things to think of, as she is now forced to take charge of a move into a smaller house and oversee a much reduced complement of servants. These tasks fall on Fanny because her mother, always a bit of an invalid, is incapable of making the effort.
But Mrs. Shaw serves one useful purpose—she gives Tom something to do. That young man having nothing but debts and disgrace to his name so far, is pretty miserable, but he finds occupation in attending to his mother, a service which keeps him out of mischief. Once he overcomes his initial despair and guilt, Tom decides that he must face the world for himself. He resolves to join one of Polly’s brothers out west and try to make his fortune.
Shortly before leaving, Tom receives two letters—one from Trix, and one from Arthur Sydney. Trix has finally dumped him—but more surprisingly, Arthur has paid all his college debts and is ready to give Tom all the time Tom needs to repay him. Tom rather suspects Polly to be the bottom reason for this—and maybe she is, but not the way Tom thinks. Still, Tom is humble enough to decide that Polly would be much better off marrying Sydney than marrying him—and so he leaves.
It takes a year or so in time for the story to wind down, but in events there’s not much to tell. Fanny has been improving at a great rate—doing something was just what she needed—and Sydney, always a firm friend of the Shaw family, begins to admire and finally love her. And although Tom scares Polly dreadfully about a certain Maria Bailey out west, it turns out that it’s Polly’s brother who’s interested in Maria—so when Tom comes back and hears of his sister’s engagement to Sydney, he loses no time in proposing to Polly.
There’s nothing particularly unpredictable about this plot, but the twist with Sydney in love with Polly and then her going out of her way to tell him he’s wasting his time is kind of unique. But the part that impresses me most is the brilliant way Alcott manages to make the hero, Tom, engaged to the wrong girl without ruining him as a character—in fact, making him all the more lovable. It’s Tom’s good nature that made him propose to Trix—a bit of hilarious stupidity that’s perfectly in character—and that same good nature keeps him engaged to her despite her obviously shallow character. As a rule I’m not a fan of triangles, but the Tom-Trix-Polly triangle is one I actually like.
On the other hand, the attempt to make a triangle out of Tom, Maria, and Polly felt a little forced. Sydney was also a pretty flat character—personally I don’t wonder that Polly preferred Tom, he had much more spice to him—and especially in the second half of the book, I felt that Alcott didn’t do as good a job as she could have with some of her secondary characters, who often seemed to be introduced purely for the sake of some moral, without advancing the plot at all.
Still, with a heroine as likeable as Polly and a hero as fun as Tom, I can’t be too hard on An Old-Fashioned Girl and will give it a score of:
7/10
The Point
An Old-Fashioned Girl’s principal moral has two sides—one is a critique of fashionable life and its rules, “which drill the character out of girls till they are as much alike as pins in a paper, and have about as much true sense and sentiment in their little heads.” On its flip side, this means an appreciation for old fashioned virtues of courtesy, hard work, and humility. Fanny Shaw grows out of modeling the former (some of her friends take it to farther extremes), Polly successfully models the latter.
This moral is more specific and complete in the first part of the book—the second section, six years later, takes the story and spins it out farther but only incidentally continues the moral. To compensate for that, the second half features several side morals—not to say side rants—of its own. A lot of these side morals felt tacked on to me; Alcott introduces, just for their moral value, otherwise irrelevant characters who did virtually nothing to advance the plot. This is okay, and Alcott does it more tastefully than many authors, but a moral is always more memorable, more impactful, and less likely to be resented, if it’s smoothly intertwined with the plot.
For the most part I thought the moral reflections throughout the book were good. Alcott’s ideal woman is perhaps the part I have most trouble with, not so much for the concept as for the somewhat mystical thought that women who live lives as close to the ideal as they can somehow help bring the ideal to life at some future time—a thought that smacks of the blind 19th century faith in progress.
7/10
The Style
Alcott’s style is always pleasant to read—it’s friendly, occasionally breaks the fourth wall, and moves smoothly between scenes and characters. There’s nothing especially distinctive about it to set it apart, but it’s livened throughout by touches of humor and Alcott does a good job too (at least in An Old-Fashioned Girl) of not sounding very preachy even when she is essentially preaching.
7/10
Conclusion
7/10
My favorite thing about An Old-Fashioned Girl is hands down its characters—Polly, Tom, and Maud in particular are super fun and realistic. The book emphasizes the “old-fashioned” virtues of humility, hard work, and courtesy in a pleasant way; it’s an enjoyable read and well worth a few hours of reading time!
You can find an ebook version of An Old-Fashioned Girl on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2787
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Geneva D 
What do you think?