YMMV / Little Men

• Angel/Devil Shipping: Bess is the angel to Dan's bad-boy.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: For some, Tommy and Nan, although others appreciate that Nan was able to become a single, successful career woman in her own right. And because anything is preferable to Dan's tragic outcome, both Dan/Bess and Dan/Nat are liked. (Considering how Dan and Nat are constantly described in the book, this is unsurprising).
• First Installment Wins: Many people don't even know that Little Women had two sequels.
• Ho Yay: The close friendship between the rough, difficult Dan and the gentle, sweet violinist, Nat has been commented on and even fanfictioned by modern readers.
• Moe: Daisy who has only grown more sweet as she has grown up. Nat is the male version of this, being forever tender-hearted and gentle.
• Nightmare Fuel: In Jo's Boys, Rob gets bitten by Dan's dog, who's been acting strangely, and he and Teddy are terrified that Rob might have gotten "hydrophobia" (rabies). Thankfully Nan is on hand and the dog is fine, but Rob has to get his bite cauterized with a hot iron and just for a moment or two, there's a very real chance that Rob might die. Jo and Fritz are aghast when the boys tell them what happened.
• The Scrappy: The "pure, perfect, princess" Bess to a number of readers - just like her mother Amy.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Several regarding Nat:
    • Nat is caught telling a lie, and this is treated as a very serious issue. The problem is, a much older boy was threatening to beat him if he'd run through the boy's veggie patch - which he'd done because he was being chased by another older boy - so Nat got scared and denied it. And Karma Houdini neither of the other boys were punished or even given a talking-to. This left Broken Aesop an apparent message that lying to get out of a dangerous situation is not only wrong, but so much worse than threatening and bullying little kids who aren't able to defend themselves. Made worse later in the book, when Nat's previous "sin" of lying (which hadn't appeared since the veggie patch incident) is used as justification for everyone assuming he'd robbed one of the other boys and was refusing to own up to it. Even though he'd never stolen anything previously and the narrator even acknowledged his lies were only ever minor fibs.
    • Jo and the others continually worry about Nat being 'weak' - i.e. effeminate, gentle, soft and not traditionally masculine. Presenting that as a character flaw in today's media would only make the adults look unsympathetic rather than Nat.
    • Meg claiming that Nat isn't good enough for Daisy and her opposition to them as a couple. At the time the book was written, class and parentage were much more important than today, and Meg not wanting a former street orphan for a son-in-law was reasonable (even if he'd been basically raised by her sister). For modern readers, as Nat is a perfectly respectable, hard-working guy who Daisy adores, Meg's attitude seems like pure snobbishness. Likewise, Daisy obeying her mother is seen as less of a virtue and more of being a doormat. Even though the narrator of the book claims Daisy is an old-fashioned daughter for hewing to her mother's word like this, Meg is extremely happy when Franz tells the Marches about Nat's little money misadventures. He manfully paid off his debts by selling everything he could and taking on extra work teaching English and playing in orchestras, proves to her that he really is a good man who will care for her daughter. When he finally returns, Meg pries a crying Daisy off him just so she can hug him herself.)
  • Billy Ward's father is illustrated as having pushed his son's education far too hard by "keeping him at his books six hours a day". Nowadays, six-hour school days are the bare minimum (not counting homework). Internationally, some school days go as long as sixteen hours. (Although odds are Billy was doing the same reading and writing the whole time, without any of the breaks for recess, liberal arts, etc. that are considered healthy today.)
  • The opening chapter of Jo's Boys unceremoniously informs us that physically disabled Dick and mentally disabled Billy are dead now. And "no one could mourn for them, since life would never be happy, afflicted as they were in mind and body". While the idea that death is preferable to disability is still around, it's far less acceptable, let alone charitable or sympathetic.
  • Right after John Brooke's death, Professor Bhaer tells his students he "died as he has lived, so cheerfully, so peacefully, that it seems a sin to mar the beauty of it with any violent or selfish grief." Getting upset about the unexpected death of a close friend and relative as "selfish" and "a sin" would be an extremely hard sell in a children's book today.
  • In Jo's Boys, 24-year-old Dan is secretly in love with 15-year-old Bess. Jo tells him it can never happen (because of the class difference, not the age difference) but encourages him to keep carrying a torch for her because it will inspire him to be a good person.
• The Woobie:
  • Nat Blake the Heartwarming Orphan.
  • Inspirationally Disabled Dick Brown and Billy Ward.