PART ONE: CHAPTER ELEVEN - Experiments Practice Quiz — Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: PART ONE: CHAPTER ELEVEN - Experiments
What experiment do the March sisters propose at the beginning of Chapter 11?
They ask Marmee for permission to take a week off from all household duties and chores, spending their time entirely in leisure and play.
What condition does Mrs. March set for the experiment?
She agrees to let them try for one week, warning that "all play and no work is as bad as all work and no play."
What happens to Meg during the week of idleness?
She buys a blue muslin dress that will not wash, ruins her clothes trying to alter them to be fashionable, and finds time hanging heavily.
What problems does Jo experience during the experiment?
She reads until her eyes give out, burns her nose boating, gets a raging headache, grows so fidgety she quarrels with Laurie, and wishes she had gone with Aunt March.
What does Mrs. March do on Saturday to intensify the lesson?
She gives Hannah a holiday, stays in her room all day, and lets the girls manage the entire household on their own without any help.
What happens to Pip the canary?
Beth forgets to feed and water him during the week of leisure, and he is found dead in his cage on Saturday morning, starved.
Who is the uninvited guest at Jo's dinner party?
Miss Crocker, a thin, sharp-nosed spinster with inquisitive eyes who gossips about everything she sees, arrives unexpectedly for dinner.
What is the final disaster at Jo's dinner?
Jo accidentally puts salt instead of sugar on the strawberries, and the cream has gone sour because she forgot to refrigerate the milk.
How does Beth differ from her sisters during the experiment?
Beth keeps forgetting that it is supposed to be all play and falls back into her old dutiful ways, though even she grows unsettled enough to shake her doll Joanna.
How does Amy react to the week of leisure?
She quickly exhausts her limited amusements, becomes bored and lonely, and complains about staying home with "three selfish sisters and a grown-up boy."
What role does Laurie play in this chapter?
He is Jo's companion for boating and socializing, the invited dinner guest who gallantly eats the terrible food, and helps bury Pip by digging a grave under the ferns.
How does Mrs. March handle the experiment behind the scenes?
She and Hannah secretly do the girls' neglected chores all week to keep the house running, then on Saturday she removes that safety net entirely.
What malapropism does Amy use at the beginning of the chapter?
She calls Aunt March a "samphire" (a type of seaweed) when she means "vampire." Jo corrects her but says it is too warm to be particular about parts of speech.
What is the central moral lesson of Chapter 11?
That purposeful work gives life meaning and that leisure is only sweet when balanced with responsibility. Mrs. March says work "keeps us from ennui and mischief" and gives "a sense of power and independence."
How does the death of Pip reinforce the chapter's theme?
Pip's death is the most serious consequence of neglected duty, showing that carelessness can cause irreversible harm — a much graver result than ruined clothes or burnt food.
What does Mrs. March mean by "the comfort of all depends on each doing her share faithfully"?
She means that a household (and by extension, a community) only functions well when every member contributes responsibly — selfishness and idleness harm everyone, not just the idle person.
What balance does Mrs. March recommend at the chapter's end?
She advises the girls not to go to the opposite extreme either, but to "have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant."
How does Alcott structure Chapter 11 as a moral experiment?
She uses the format of a controlled test: the girls propose a hypothesis (all play is delightful), run the experiment for a week, and discover through escalating consequences that the hypothesis fails.
What is the symbolic significance of Pip's death?
Pip symbolizes the real cost of neglected responsibility. While ruined clothes and bad food are recoverable, a dead pet cannot be brought back — showing that some consequences of carelessness are permanent.
How does Jo's dinner party function as a comic set piece?
Alcott builds escalating failures — burnt bread, overcooked asparagus, raw potatoes, lumpy blancmange — culminating in the salt-for-sugar catastrophe, using Jo's overconfidence to generate both humor and sympathy.
What does "saleratus" mean in this chapter?
Saleratus is an old term for potassium bicarbonate or baking soda, used as a leavening agent. Jo's biscuits are "speckled with saleratus," meaning they have visible white specks from poorly mixed leavening.
What does "furbish" mean when Meg tries to "furbish up" her clothes?
To furbish means to polish, renovate, or brighten up something. Meg attempts to update her wardrobe by altering and trimming her clothes, but she spoils them in the process.
What does "ennui" mean in Mrs. March's final speech?
Ennui is a French-derived word meaning a feeling of listlessness, dissatisfaction, and boredom arising from a lack of occupation or purpose.
Who says "Lounging and larking doesn't pay" and what does it mean?
Jo says this at the end of the chapter, summing up the lesson that pure leisure without purpose is unsatisfying. She resolves to "go to work at something right off."
What is Mrs. March's concluding advice about work?
"Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for everyone. It keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion."