Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 1

Women’s Struggle between Family and Career

The author of “Little Women”, Louisa May Alcott, was born on 29th November 1832 at Germantown and died in 1888 at the age of 56. Influenced by her writer father, she gained interest on writing at an early age. In 1860, her novel and poetry were published on The Atlantic for the first time. And about eight years later her most famous book “Little Women” which was highly praised as a counterpart of the famous English novel “Pride and Prejudice” was published and quickly became a best seller at that time.

“Little Women” is a story of the four March girls, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy which is set on the American Civil War. It describes these girls’ journeys from childhood to adulthood and how they deal with all the troubles and hardships that come along during their lives. Meg, the oldest, takes care of her three little sisters and chooses to live a poor life with her beloved ones; Jo, brave and decisive as she is, pursuits her own dream of being an author; Beth, who has a great interest in playing the piano, unfortunately dies of scarlet fever; And Amy, the youngest, is delicate to be an artist. The main character of the novel is the second-oldest March sister.Jo. It is her characteristics which are different from all the other girls in the family that makes her stand out. She has a temper and a quick tongue. And she is a tomboy and reacts with impatience to the limitations placed on women and girls. She does not like romance in her real life but to hold her family together. For example, at the beginning of the book, she claimed that:"I hate to think I've got to grow up and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster. It's bad enough to be a girl, any way, when I like boy's games and work and manners. I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy, and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with papa, and I can only stay at home and knit like a poky old woman." These words clearly delivers Alcott’s mind that she is unwilling to bend over men but wants to be equal with them.

And there are also many other significance in the book that Jo acts with a will like a man inside which presents what a feminist would do. I remember there is a section in the novel that when a telegram reaches the family with a scary news that their father gets very ill during the war, all the other girls get worried but do nothing except shedding tears. Only Jo sets out trying to help the family. As little could she do, she heroically cuts off her hair in order to sell it and raise money for her father. Jo’s action of cutting her hair actually intends to prove that as a girl, she could support the family and do things as men can do.

Actually what I can see from this novel is that the story is based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. Louisa herself was represented by the spirited Jo March because there are a lot of similarities between them. Like Jo March, Alcott could also not get over her disappointment in not being a boy, since opportunities for women are limited.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 2 As the author deeply holds the ideal in her mind that for women, having a family means professional loss and having a profession means personal loss, Alcott expresses her feminist sympathies through the character of Jo March in “Little Women”.

So it is not difficult to find out that “Little women” centers on the topic whether the young women should pay more attention to family duty or personal growth. In this novel, it shows us four different kinds of options that a woman has in the 1860s: she may could marry, like Meg; she could stay at home,like Beth; she could become a successful woman, like Amy; or she could struggle with her family duty and personal growth. For Jo, the problem of being both a professional artist and a dutiful women creates conflict against the boundaries set by nineteenth-century American society. And as far as I’m concerned, although at last Jo marries with Professor Bhaer and settles into a more customary life, the author, Alcott, does not intend to mean that paying more attention to family duty is more desirable than pursuing personal growth. In fact, it is just Jo’s choice. For her, the former is more realistic than the later. Form my point of view, the choice between these two things depends on the person who needs to make such a selection. What’s more important is that once we make the choice, we need to go along the road that we choose without regret!

第二篇：On little women

On Little Women

Li Xueting Class4, 2010, Foreign Languages School

ⅠIntroduction

Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). The book was written and set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. It was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869. The novel follows the lives of four sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March – and is loosely based on the author's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The first volume, Little Women, was an immediate commercial and critical success, prompting the composition of the book's second volume, entitled Good Wives, which was also successful. Both books were first published as a single volume entitled Little Women in 1880. Alcott followed Little Women with two sequels, also featuring the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Little Women was a fiction novel for girls that veered from the normal writings for children, especially girls, at the time. Little Women has three major themes:‖ domesticity, work, and true love. All of them are interdependent and each is necessary to the achievement of a heroine’s individual identity.‖

Little Women itself ―has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth.‖ Little Women has been read ―as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well.‖ Alcott ―combines many conventions of the sentimental novel with crucial ingredients of Romantic children’s fiction, creating a new form of which Little Women is a unique model.‖ Elbert argued that within Little Women the first vision of the ―American Girl‖ and that her multiple aspects were found in the differing March sisters.

Ⅱ The Story of the Book

The story happened in the winter. While Maumee’s husband is working at war, Maumee stays at home to raise their four daughters: Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy. On Christmas Eve, Maumee heard from her husband. They all set around the fire to read the letter. After finishing reading the letter, all girls are moved to tears. Jo wants to become a writer. So, she stays up to write the script for soap operas every night. Sometimes, she is the last one to get up. When the dusk falls, all the girls dress themselves up in the Jo's play. Jo and Meg get ready to attend the Christmas Ball, while Jo is curling Meg's hair. There is a strange smell from

the air. Amy screams, for Meg’s hair is being singed. They continue digging through the old clothes bin for a pair of white gloves.

Ⅲ comments on the book

Little Women was one of the most influential girls’ novels. Ruth MacDonald argued that ―Louisa May Alcott stands as one of the great American practitioners of the girls’ novel and the family story.‖ In the 1860s, gendered separation of children’s fiction was a newer division in literature. This division signaled a beginning of polarization of gender roles social constructs ―as class stratification increased.‖ Joy Kasson wrote that ―Alcott chronicled the coming of age of young girls, their struggles with issues such as selfishness and generosity, the nature of individual integrity, and, above all, the question of their place in the world around them.‖ Girls were able to relate to the March sisters in Little Women along with following the lead of their heroines by assimilating aspects of the story into their own lives.

After reading Little Women some women felt the need to ―acquire new and more public identities‖—which of course was also dependent on other factors like financial resources. While Little Women showed normal American middle class lives of girls, it also ―legitimized‖ their dreams to do something different and allowed them to consider the possibilities. More young women started writing stories that had adventurous plots and ―stories of individual achievement—traditionally coded male—challenged women’s socialization into domesticity.‖ ―Little Women also influenced immigrants to the United States who wanted to assimilate into middle class culture.

Young and adolescence girls saw, in print on the pages of Little Women, the normalization of ambitious women. This acted as an alternative to the previously normalized gender roles. Little Women also repeatedly reinforced the importance of ―individuality‖ and ―female vocation.‖ ―Little Women had ―continued relevance of its subject‖ and ―its longevity points as well to surprising continuities in gender norms from the 1860s at least through the 1960s.‖ Those interested in domestic reform could look to the pages of Little Women to see how a ―democratic household‖ would operate.

While ―Alcott never questioned the value of domesticity‖ she challenged the social constructs that made spinsters obscure and fringe members of society solely because they were not married. ―Little Women indisputably enlarges the myth of American womanhood by insisting that the home and the women’s sphere cherish individuality and thus produce young adults who can make their way in the world while preserving a critical distance from its social arrangements.‖ As with all youth, the March girls had to grow up. These sisters, and in particular Jo, were apprehensive about adulthood because they were

afraid that if they had to conform to what society wanted them to be, they would lose their special individuality in the process.

Alcott ―made women’s rights integral to her stories, and above all too Little Women.‖ Alcott’s fiction became her ―most important feminist contribution‖—even considering all the effort Alcott made to help facilitate women’s rights." Alcott thought that ―a democratic household could evolve into a feminist society.‖ In Little Women, she imagined that just such an evolution might begin with Plum field, a nineteenth century feminist utopia.‖

―Little Women has a timeless resonance which reflects Alcott’s grasp of her historical framework in the 1860s. The novel’s ideas do not intrude themselves upon the reader because the author is wholly in control of the implications of her imaginative structure. Sexual equality is the salvation of marriage and the family; democratic relationships make happy endings. This is the unifying imaginative frame of Little Women.‖

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