This book is the story of Polly Milton, a country girl, who comes to stay with her friend Fanny Shaw in the city. Like the country mouse in the folktale of the country mouse and the city mouse, she is much impressed by the grandeur about her. Fanny always wears the latest fashions (she entices Polly into buying a pair of elegant bronze boots for nine dollars, an outrageous sum) and is fond of flirting with young men.

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Louisa May Alcott The Author

Polly meets many young men, attends the theatre, and returns home convinced that while city life is pleasant, it is not everything.

She returns six years later to board with another friend, Ms. Mills, and give music lessons. By this time, Fannyâ??s brother is engaged to a coquette who â??paintsâ?? and wears blue gloves, and eventually the Shaw family falls into debt through the young manâ??s high spirits. Fanny and Polly find that the man Fanny loves is in love with Polly, and the one Polly loves is about to marry someone else. Everything seems to be going wrong, but Pollyâ??s natural sweetness makes everything easier for those about her to swallow. And in the end, every trouble is straightened out.

Though Alcott sets it as her goal to teach a lesson and the resulting book is a bit preachy, it is an admirable goal and a goodly lesson -oneâ??s fashions do not indicate oneâ??s character- and Alcott has polished it off nicely. Anyone can relate to the characters, and though the protagonist is nearly perfect, she is also human.