Jo's Elastic Heart (Little Women, Part 2)

In Part 2 of our discussion on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, editor Sarah Blackwood returns to discuss the inspiration behind the cover of the Norton Library edition, the book's intended audience, and key elements of gender theory—as well as personal feelings—that Alcott incorporates into the characters and story.

Sarah Blackwood is Professor of English at Pace University, where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century US literature, visual culture, and representations of selfhood. She is the author of The Portrait’s Subject: Inventing Inner Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States (2019), as well as the introductions to the Penguin Classics editions of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country (1913) and The Age of Innocence (1920). Her criticism has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of Little Women, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393876734.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social. 

Transcript

[Music]

[Mark:] You are listening to the Norton Library Podcast, where we explore classic works of literature and philosophy with the leading scholars of the Norton Library, a new series from W. W. Norton that introduces influential texts to a new generation of readers. I'm your host, Mark Cirino, with Michael Von Cannon producing. Today, we present the second of our two episodes devoted to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women as we interview its editor, Sarah Blackwood. In Part One, we discussed Alcott's background and career, and how Little Women exists as a patchwork, stitching together many traditions and genres. In this second episode, we learn more about Sarah Blackwood's relationship with Alcott's work, how she teaches Little Women, her favorite line in the novel, the adaptations of this book, her hot take, and much more. Sarah Blackwood is Professor of English at Pace University. She is the author of The Portrait Subject: Inventing Inner Life in the 19th-century United States, as well as the Introductions to the Penguin Classics Editions of Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country and The Age of Innocence. Her criticism has appeared, among other places, in the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The New Republic. It is so great to have her with us today. Sarah Blackwood, welcome back to the Norton Library Podcast.

[Sarah:] I'm so excited to continue our conversation.

[Mark:] Me too, it's great to see you again. And I'm sitting here holding your edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women for the Norton Library, and I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about this edition: its design and the color scheme. 

[Sarah:] I love it. I love this color combination. And, um, Norton, the, you know, the geniuses at Norton...

[Mark:] Mmm.

[Sarah:] ...sent me, uh, a mood board which was drawn from Greta Gerwig's movie. So, the color scheme on this edition is drawn from the palette in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women. Uh, in particular, two scenes: there's one, the one—it's a very well-known scene where Jo and Laurie are having their kind of big confrontation out on the hillside, and there's this green grass with blue sky behind them, and that's kind of the, you know, the title of Little Women is kind of in this, like, sort of, you know, darkish green; and – and then there's a scene when all four sisters are looking out the window, and Florence Pugh’s Amy is in the foreground in a lavender dress with Meg behind her in navy blue. So, you know, I don't know if that was – that was purposeful, but, you know, this lavender is kind of drawn from Gerwig's dressing of Florence Pugh in that lavender dress, I think. 

[Mark:] What a great explanation, that's a [Laughter] great logic to it...

[Sarah:] Yeah.

[Mark:] ...and it's very striking the – that field of lavender. So yeah, they are geniuses at the Norton Library...

[Sarah:] Yes. [Laughter]

[Mark:] ...so we – we defer to them whatever they choose to do. Do you remember when you first read Little Women?

[Sarah:] I do, uh, the fir – very first time I read Little Women was in a child's excerpted version. It was a mass market illustrated classic, was the – the imprint. And it was, I – I guess maybe ironically, a very small little book, like a tiny little, um, book, and it kind of reminds me of the Friends joke where Joey asks, “How little are they?” [Laughter] Um, and I read that when I was probably around eight. And I feel very fondly toward that experience because I come from a very loving but not particularly bookish home, and you know, there was no arrogance or really like knowledge around reading the correct edition or whatever, um, which was a way of approaching reading that characterized the entirety of my reading life up until I was in college. I would just read whatever, and I didn't have a sense of literary quality or lack thereof. Uh, I did, however, read the entire actual novel also as a child, but a little later, I think I was in sixth grade. I read it along with my best friend, and this is also a very meaningful reading story for me: we used to – we used to have sleepovers and sleep outside, she kind of lived in the woods, and so we'd sleep outside in the woods in a hammock, um, and we'd make like a nest of blankets and bring chocolate out there [Laughter] and read late into the night with flashlights. So, that was also this particularly kind of meaningful moment. And sometimes I think about my own scholarship in relation to those and I think they're both very formative. You know, I think my own intellectual trajectory, you know, I'm inter – I'm really interested in how books and art can help materially construct a person's sense of inner life, and that was the topic of my first book. And the topic of my second is kind of related to the hammock reading, how reading in community with others can help make art.

[Mark:] I'm trying to think of other interviews that we've done on the Norton Library but – and I can't off the top of my head think of one of these canonical works of literature that you would devote scholarship to that you've also read when you were in sixth grade or before.

[Sarah:] Right.

[Mark:] So—and I know that your introduction talks about this as children's literature and that the editor wanted a girl's book—so how do we square that this kind of can function as a canonical work of American literature but also you can read it when you're a kid?

[Sarah:] Right, well, you know, I actually my – my next project is kind of related to children's literature as, you know, as particularly, like you know, it's – it's long been an art form that is considered to be lesser than the sort of more, you know, advanced, you know, literary fiction, um, of most canonical literature. And so, you know, and Little Women is part of that – is part of that story. And um, it's weird because Little Women is so popular, and I tried to really keep that in mind when I was writing the introduction that this is a very important book for millions of people. Um, and just personally important, not like important to your scholarship or important to your career, but like the building blocks of your personality or your sense of yourself, you know, for many people, it's really tied to this novel. Um, and so how – how, you know, if – if we don't consider that, if we, like professional literary critics, don't consider that to be part of being a canonical work of literature, I – I don't totally understand what we're doing, right? Um, this is – this is the kind of story that just goes to the heart of what literature does.

[Mark:] So, when we talk about these books in the Norton Library, one of the things that we try to address is how and why these books are challenging.

[Sarah:] Mmhmm.

[Mark:] And with Paradise Lost and Dante, it becomes very evident what the challenge is for readers. Does Little Women also have a challenge, even if, as you're saying, sixth graders can pick it up?

[Sarah:] Right. Well I mean, I think for contemporary young people, one of the challenges is probably its length, but for contemporary adult readers who didn't read Little Women as a child, I think one of the challenges is thinking that it's just not high on the list of things I need to get read, or you know, like, it's something that I missed the – the moment for, I should have – I, you know, maybe I could have read it as a child, but I didn't and so now I'll never read it. Um, and so there's, you know, and honestly, I would connect both of – some of these challenges also to, uh, basically misogyny. [Laughter] Um, I think that – and as you know for contemporary young readers, there's that sense of well it's about girls and so I don't...

[Mark:] Mmm.

[Sarah:] ...necessarily need to, you know, we don't have a full demographic available to read it. You know, maybe girls will read it but boys don't need to, um, even though I'm always shocked when I pull my students and nobody's read Little Women but everybody's read Lord of the Flies, which goes – says some things about you know how we're communicating social and communal values to our children in this society.

[Mark:] But that could also come down to the length, also.

[Sarah:] Yes, I mean I think it's, you know, I think the idea is that it's – it's too long to assign in school and it, you know honestly, the way that, you know, public schools teach literature, it is too long. That, you know they, that's just doesn't happen any longer. But you know, the sense that, like, for adult readers who haven't read it and aren't, you know, don't feel like maybe they need to take the time to read it now, I think there's also an element of, maybe not misogyny, but like, you know, a suspicion of kind of fem pleasures: that this is a slight document, it's not like an important cultural document, it's very slight. Um, even though, I mean we discussed, um, in the, you know, in the other episode we've, you know, we discussed how I, you know, I think this book is really intense, there's a lot of intensity and – and insight into adult life, um, as well as the life of, like you know, childhood life.

[Mark:] Do you have a favorite line in this novel?

[Sarah:] Oh I do. Can I read it?

[Mark:] Absolutely, please. 

[Sarah:] Okay. [Laughter] So, my favorite line takes place in the second part of the – Part Two of the novel, and it's when Jo is feeling, um, really down, um, really is experiencing a depression, and she's talking with her mother, Marmee, a beloved confidant. And, um, so, Marmee opens this passage, and she says to Jo, "I'm glad of that Jo, for it shows that you are getting on. There are plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with father and mother, sisters and brothers, friends and babies till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward.” And then Jo replies—now this is my actual, this is my – my favorite—Jo replies, "Mothers are the best lovers in the world, but I don't mind whispering to Marmee that I'd like to try all kinds. It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many. Mine is so elastic it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it.” And I just when, every time I read Jo describing her heart as elastic, just wanting and stretching and kind of beyond contentment, it just, I mean, it makes me sort of tear up and just feel so much every time I read it.

[Mark:] That's the kind of thing, I think, people respond to about Jo.

[Sarah:} Mmhm, yeah.

[Mark:] That's wonderful. I love that you pointed that one out. I have a kind of a related line that I wanted...

[Sarah:] Mmhmm

[Mark:] ...I wonder if you could react to. I do this sometimes when I really want to be unfair to my [Laughter] to my guest. This is on page 455 of your edition...

[Sarah:] Uh huh.

[Mark:] ...in the – in the All Alone chapter.

[Sarah:] Yes.

[Mark:] Uh, “Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral story book, she ought at this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet with tracks in her pocket, but you see Jo wasn't a heroine. She was only a struggling human girl like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature being sad, cross, listless, or energetic as the mood suggested.” And I think...

[Sarah:] Oh, God.

[Mark:] I – I really respond to that characterization of her.

[Sarah:] Mmhm.

[Mark:] It's so, uh, intricate and so complex, and I – I just love that she pins her down that way.

[Sarah:] Yeah, and I mean can we talk about the phrase “mortified bonnet?” I mean, has there ever been [Laughter] a more evocative description of, you know, what the world wants women to be and how much Jo is like, you know, kind of can't and won't, um, be that? It's just fantastic. And it's just like one little, you know, just sort of tossed off phrase...

[Mark:] It is.

[Sarah:] ...in the midst of, you know – you know, hundreds of thousands of words. And, uh you know, that's just, that's Alcott; like, she's so just – just gets to the heart of it, yum.

[Mark:] Sarah, in our first episode, we talked about the various genres that this book touches on. How do you teach this novel? It seems like you have – you can have lots of different approaches depending on what the emphasis is for your class. What do you find really works?

[Sarah:] The class that I teach this novel most often in is actually a – I teach a seminar in Y.A. fiction. And the – the way that I structure my class is that we – we kind of have paired novels, um, so we'll te – I'll teach, um, a contemporary novel and then also teach some kind of, uh, pre – something written before the 20th century that, you know, that predates the ge– the marketing designation of Y.A. And we talk about, you know, the different, you know, the changing and evolving ideas about, um, youth, childhood, young adulthood, like, across time. Um, and so I always teach – I always teach Little Women in this class, and I actually usually do it in a – in a unit that I have called Queer Stories. Um, I really think of this novel, um, as a work of gender experimentation and, um, and pretty properly understood as queer. But then I will share that one kind of funny technique that I often use in the class is, you know, I don't know if this will be familiar to you but it might be familiar to other – other kinds of people, but we used to play this game in childhood called M.A.S.H., which stands for mansion, apartment, shack, house. And it's like a little, it's like a pen and paper game where you, um, forecast – you just, you sort of – it's like a game of chance that forecasts, like, what your life is gonna be: where you'll live, you know, will you live in a mansion, apartment, shack, or house; um, how many kids you'll have; what spouse will you have; what kind of job will you have. And so, I sometimes have the—I kind of, you know, I have my own way of doing it—but I have the students do it. Basically, I assign them to play as characters from Little Women so they can kind of play around with remixing different kinds of outcomes, including queer pairings and spinsterhood. Um, and, um, the game itself is obviously very con – very sort of constraining, it's about encouraging children to imagine there are, like you know, just a couple paths in life that you could have. And so I kind of used the constraints of that, of the game, um, to, like, get them to start kind of shaking loose a little bit of that, and then seeing how they might, um, reinterpret some of the ways that Alcott also uses the constraints of these var – of the – these genre – the genre which, you know, you know that the girls are kind of driving towards marriage the whole time, um, that's the – a constraint of the – of the book. But then what does she do inside that, you know, that kind of pushes against those constraints? And it's – it's – it's always very – it's a fun kind of exercise that we do.

[Mark:] Fascinating. We also, Sarah, as you may know, we like to have our Norton Library editors [Laughter] offer their hot take about their book. So, so much has been said about this novel over the years. Do you have something counterintuitive, completely unexpected, and controversial about this novel?

[Sarah:] Yeah, I guess if I were gonna try and, um, say something controversial—hot take on Little Women—um, I think that this is one of the great novels about disappointment. Uh, which is not to say, like, I don't want to say it to be a bummer, but I think that its major insight is to describe how impossible the world still is for fem and queer people. But the thing that I think is actually the most interesting is that it kind of says, so what, um, to that – to that, to its own insight, um, as long as we're still living in that world together. And so, you know, I think that the novel is often framed as a, you know, a ha – a happy story, a cheerful story, but I actually think there's a huge amount of disappointment in the story. But I don't think it's like a bummer kind of disappointment, it's actually, like, a communal disappointment, which I think is really interesting. And then the other kind of hot take I have is that I actually think Marmee is the key to the book, the mother. Um, but it's kind of a warmed-over take from me because I've written about this a couple times [Laughter] so yeah.

[Mark:] No, why so?

[Sarah:] You know, I think that, you know, when you really read the novel attentively, you can see how Marmee, you know, Marmee’s this – she sort of is in the novel this figure of, um, both aspiration—they love Marmee, they just, you know, as the – the – the passage I read from Jo, they earnestly and authentically love Marmee—but she's also in the book kind of as a threat.  Marmee’s life is not easy, and it’s really disappointing, I think, to Marmee, in some ways. And so, she's kind of there as basically the aspiration and the threat, um, to the girls. And the way Alcott writes Marmee, though, is so fascinating because she also, Alcott herself, had such an interesting relationship with her mother; they were so close, and they loved each other with this purity that is really remarkable. Um, and Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, in her journals, you see her seeing Marmee which is like, people don't see mothers often. Um, they're hugely influential and, of course, mothers, like, you want to kind of push back against them, like you know, like, they are these figures of conventionality and of – often. But Louisa really sees her mother: she sees the work that she's doing, she sees the, you know, the physical work, the emotional work, um, and you know. And so, when – when I say, like, Marmee is like a key to this novel, I – I really think that she's putting that she's – she's putting Marmee – Marmee is not like a hugely present character, she doesn't have as many scenes, for example, but she's just like the framework, um, within which each of the girls works, and it's very fascinating to – to track that as you read. 

[Mark:] Good, that is a hot take. I [Laughter] I think – I think that that qualifies. You mentioned the film at the beginning of this episode.

[Sarah:] Mmhmm.

[Mark:] How has Little Women been adapted, reappropriated in different media for our enjoyment other than the book itself?

[Sarah:] There's an – just a gazillion adaptations: screen adaptations, stage adaptations. You know, there's Greta Gerwig's which, um, really is a good adaptation. I have, you know, I have my – my quibbles, but it's – it's really a – a satisfying adaptation, movie adaptation, of the novel. And the – the – the book has been adapted for, you know, in Hollywood since the – the first one was a silent movie in the 19 –1913 or ’15. I can't remember exactly the date. But then the – the earliest, like, really exciting one is the 1933 movie version which stars Katharine Hepburn as Jo, which is very exciting. Um, and then there's a beloved 1994 adaptation with Winona Ryder as Jo, which is curious casting but somehow works. Um, and then, I actually, doing research for this book, um, I actually learned that there was apparently a Broadway musical in 2004, starring Sutton Foster as Jo, which I was like, "Oh I would have loved to have seen that, but [Laughter] I couldn't." But there's also, you know, you can really think about, Alcott didn't invent this formula of like four girls, but when you really pull back and you think about popular culture and how many stories we have of like a – a – a feminine or female foursome, you know, even including, like, Golden Girls, um, you know, this – the Babysitters Club. I mean, there's just a huge number of stories that kind of work within that formula, and I think that they're, you know, they're – they’re related. 

[Mark:] When you say that you admire the Greta Gerwig version, what's the element about it that, like, that you have to get in a movie in order for the thing to be successful? What – what is it about that movie that you respond to?

[Sarah:] Weirdly, it's not, uh, it's not, like, characterological. I think that the thing that I loved most about Gerwig's movie is she got the textures right. And I, this may be a little bit abstract, but when I read Little Women, I really respond to how textured the world that Alcott invents on the page is. You're just like – you're just, you know, so – like, you, when you're reading, you're just, like, in this world that has all of these fabrics and cloths and smells and food stuffs, and, like, you know, it's just, there's all of this texture in there. And, um, there's, like, an early scene in the Gerwig adaptation where the camera kind of pans up and you just, you get these, like, woolen socks on some of the characters, [Laughter] and it's just like, “Oh, I'm in for something good here.” She just really nailed all that texture.

[Mark:] That's good. What about music? Is there a Little Women playlist that comes to mind?

[Sarah:] Well, I'm gonna have to maybe play as type as a white woman who came of age in the 1990s... [Laughter]

[Mark:] Great.

[Sarah:] ...and say I – I actually, I would sort of like think about something like a Bikini Kill, kind of riot grrrl, like, punk. I was thinking about, um, recently, you know, a couple of their songs, and I was thinking about the lyrics to “Capri Pants” which the – the one of the main lyrics is – is, “If you – if you see me go – if you see me go away cuz I like you,” which is [Laughter] it really gets the energy of – of – of Jo in a lot of ways and her – her kind of dissatisfaction and anger but also like attraction to other people. And she's constantly in this sort of like push and pull of wanting to be, you know, one way, not being that way, wanting to be with somebody, not wanting to be with somebody.

[Mark:] The endotes that you've provided in your Norton Library Edition are really fascinating and – and quite helpful, and I wanted to ask you about, uh, one or two of them, actually they're sort of related. One of them is, you refer to – this is – goes along with page eight, and you say that Jo, well the novel describes Jo in a “gentlemanly manner.” And then you say, uh, and then in a little bit later, “I'm only Laurie.” And so, you – you – you remark that there is gender experimentation in this – in this novel, and the names are confusing as they were...

[Sarah:] Right.

[Mark:] ...on Friends, that you...

[Sarah:] Yes. [Laughter]

[Mark:] ...that you – that you were talking...

[Sarah:] Yes. 

[Mark:] ...about earlier. [Laughter] It caused great hilarity on Friends. So, what is Alcott doing, and how do you – how was that a throughline in this novel?

[Sarah:] Right. Well, I can sort of talk about, I think, two things: both the novel and then also Alcott. And first the novel: you know, I think I mentioned just a little bit ago, I really think of this novel as a work of gender theory. It's just pro – you know, it's profoundly curious about what gender is; what produces it; as something one might experience personally, socially, politically; what makes for a person's feelings or lack of feelings around gender identity; what life events come to be interpreted as essentially gendered, um, and why. You know, I mean, I think if – if a reader comes to the novel and just sort of expects, like, what the editor who kind of solicited the manuscript thinks—this is a “girl's story” or a “girl's book”—you're going to miss that kind of, like, theoretical, experimental quality of Alcott's engagement with, um, with gender. And the – and now I'll talk a little bit about Alcott in – as a person in relation – uh, in relation to this. Alcott, like Jo, you know, Jo is constantly referred to in these masculine terms, and Alcott actually also referred to herself—in her journals, in her letters, in her personal life—as a man or in masculine terms. She described herself as a father to her sister's child that she raised for a few years after her sister's death. She says explicitly in an – in an interview late in her life that she feels by some – that some freak of nature put a boy in a girl's body. So, you know, there's pretty strong evidence from Alcott herself that she was maybe what we would call today trans, and I think there's a lot of that energy that underpins what I, you know, what I'm – what I'm – when I say that I think of this as a gender theory or gender experimentation. You know, so, when we read about Jo behaving in a gentlemanly way or being chided by Meg later for acting like a boy, you know, I think we have to take seriously and earnestly, like, this is a book, quote unquote, “for girls,” but it was written by someone who was forced to live her life as a girl, um, but who didn't really want to be that. And I think that there's something very beautiful, um, about that and – and this goes back to my favorite passage because Jo responds to all that pressure, all that, like, energy put into making her feel like she doesn't fit, um, by realizing that she wants to try all kinds, right. So, I think, you know, the best part about the book's gender experimentation is that openness, that boundary crossing, that absolute refusal to live under terms of scarcity and limitation and rules that say, “girls are like this and boys are like this, everyone to their separate bathrooms.” You know, that these are eternal laws. I don't think – in Little Women the answer to that is all – is just a strong, “No, that's not the case.”

[Mark:] Can you talk a little bit about how this idea manifested itself in Alcott's adult life in terms of relationships and so forth?

[Sarah:] Yeah. I mean, you know, the scholars speculate, um, you know, Alcott never had to—within our ability to know through the archives—Alcott never had, like, a long-term romantic relationship with a man or a woman. There are a few, like you know, there's speculations about, “Well this, uh, person was probably the model for Laurie,” and it seems like there was, like, times in Alcott's life where she had some romantic feelings for some young men. She writes later in her life, she writes a number of really interesting essays, um, and she writes one called “Happy Women,” which is this full-throated defense of women living alone and like – or like women – women remaining unmarried is – is – is what the kind of topic of this essay is. And – and so, she – and – she has a – in a number of her work, she kind of, like, celebrates the – the potential and the positive aspects of remaining kind of single and unpartnered in – in one's life. So, you know, I mean one thing I actually also like about Alcott is that we don't actually know, and that might be a gift that she gives us too. There's a huge archive related to her; we – we know a lot about her life, but we don't know a huge amount about that. And that's kind of nice in a way, um, because I think it helps us honor that, you know, that just she's really committed to, like, a kind of openness in the face of a world that's constantly trying to close down ideas about gender or create gender as some sort of lim – you know set of limit – limitations rather than this, like, really beautiful kind of potential meaning-making that everybody c – could possibly engage with on their own terms.

[Mark:] So, when Jo feels like a boy or acts like a boy, it might not only be, “I want the same right and – rights and freedom and activities as a boy,” but there might be an even more complex aspect to this?

[Sarah:] Yeah, I – I and yeah – and I – I think that's actually a really interesting way to put it. And I think, you know, a lot of the – a lot of the feminist analysis of the novel from say the 1970s and 1980s picked up on, like, what, you know, some people call, like, the tomboy-ish aspect of Jo and kind of plugged it into that – that liberal feminism idea of, you know, equality between the sexes, ability to – ability to, like, live life like a boy because boys have more rights and access to independence than girls do. And I think that's there, I don't think it's not there, um, but I actually think one of the great innovations of some, like, more recent scholarship is that we're starting to also think about the way that, you know, um, gender in the 19th century is not only – is not only about these liberal questions around, um, rights—civil rights and you know and obligations—but that it's also, you know, there are a huge number of pre-20th century writers, not just in the 19th but even going back much earlier, who are really thinking about gender in terms of inner life and, um, emotional and psychological life; and, um, and the places where rules around gender and gender identity are painful and, um, limiting; and how various people are trying to put language to this problem. And it's all really an interesting, long lineage, I think, you know, a sort of history of trans life, um, which Alcott, I think, helps us also see. I think it's an important sort of area to kind of think about Alcott's Little Women today.

[Mark:] Sarah Blackwood, thank you so much for joining us on the Norton Library Podcast to discuss your edition of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Thanks so much, Sarah. This has been a real pleasure.

[Sarah:] Thank you so much for having me. It's been really lovely to talk with you about this.

[Mark:] The Norton Library Edition of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, edited by Sarah Blackwood, is available now in paperback and e-book. Check out the links in the description to this episode for ordering options and more information about the Norton Library, including the full catalog of titles.

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