Skip to main content

'Little Women': A Classic for Young Adults

Little Women: A Classic for Young Adults 

- Soumya Mahalaxmikar

‘Little Women’–by Louisa May Alcott– is set against the backdrop of the American civil war and tells the tale of the March sisters and their journey through life. It is considered an American classic, is said to have been inspired by Alcott’s real life. The four sisters have been foregrounded as individuals with distinct personalities and flaws. It could also be considered as a didactic guide for young women of the time. Quite like the novel that the “little women” themselves live by, i.e ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ by John Bunyan. The sisters are shown to struggle between finding their own identity and living life according to societal obligations. Often dubbed as the main character of the novel- Jo or Josephine March- is perhaps the one that struggles the most given her personality and the conservative traditions of the time. “Fifteen-year-old Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt, for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce, funny, or thoughtful.” (Alcott 4). This description essentially portrays Jo as the awkward teenager with a love for the outdoors. From this she is shown to blossom into a young woman who ultimately gives up her life as a writer and settles down with Mr Bhaer.

Her trouble with negotiating her identity between social expectations and personal freedom to grow through experience is even shown through the abbreviation of her name from Josephine to Jo (a relatively masculine name), and in fact I thought Jo was a boy for the first few chapters. Meg’s conformity to the 19th century female figure acts as a foil to Jo’s “boyish” mannerisms. Meg could also be described as materialistic while Jo is more sentimental. This contrast is further brought out through the chapter in which Meg takes Jo to Sallie Gardiner’s party where Meg assimilates easily while Jo retreats to a corner having a harder time to connect with people. Her brash and ambitious nature often clashes with Meg and their youngest sister, Amy. But she gets along with Beth, given Beth’s calm temperament. Beth’s conformity to the domestic sphere also allows Jo to get in touch with and comfortable with her own feminine side.

Jo’s passion is depicted through her love for writing and aspirations to achieve the freedom that her writing provides her with. Anger is one of her significant traits as she says “I am angry nearly every day of my life” (Alcott 90); we see her grappling with it when she fights with Amy over the burning of the manuscript. Her anger might imply the collective anger felt by women in the 19th century being relegated to the submissive and domestic sphere. Jo’s sacrificial side is brought out when she sells her hair in order to raise money for her mother’s trip to Washington D.C. This also implies how financial problems tend to mature children sooner than they need to.

Through such little incidents over the course of the book we see the March sisters grow and learn from their mistakes and their bond continues to remain strong despite all the personal hardships faced by each of them; be it Meg with her inferiority complex and materialistic tendencies or Jo with her anger issues. Their Marmee acts an important guiding light for them, helping them whenever they face moral dilemmas. While this eventually shifts as and when the women begin growing into their own lives, we do witness a happy ending with them celebrating ‘Marmee’s’ birthday.


Work cited:

Alcott, Louisa. “Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.” Project Gutenberg, 1 May 1996, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/514.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of "The Tale of the Rose" by Emma Donaghue

 A Review of "The Tale of the Rose" by Emma Donaghue - Mayura Bhandari “The Tale of The Rose” is a retelling of the popular children’s fairy tale, “The Beauty and The Beast”. It is one of the short stories in the collection by Emma Donoghue, called Kissing The Witch . The story is narrated from the point of a young woman who describes herself as having an appetite for magic. She doesn’t desire suitors, finery or riches. When her father’s ships get lost at sea, her cushy life disappears. But without despair, she gets to work. She washes her father’s clothes, finding peace and satisfaction in it. When fortune smiles upon their family, her siblings ask for riches and finery, but she desires a red rose bud. Her father returns and hands her the rose, explaining that the price of that flower was that he had sold her to a Beast. Obediently, she heads over to the castle, nervous and excited for a new chapter in her life. She recalls the lore the villagers told her. About a young
Post a Comment
Read more

Marxism in Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett, the most eminent Irish playwright wrote ‘’Waiting for Godot’’ in French in 1949 and then translated it into English in 1954. This play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with astonishing success in Europe, America and the rest of the world in the post second world war era. For this reason, Martin Esslin calls it, “One of the successes of the post-war theatre” (Esslin, Martin, 1980) In this play, the two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait expectantly to see a man simply known as Godot, a character who does not make an appearance in the play, despite being the titular character. The play begins with waiting for Godot and ends with waiting for Godot. Marxism refers to the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their followers to form the basis of communism. Marxism introduced ideas such as Dialectical Materialism, Alienation, and Economic Determination. Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ has a minimalist setting
Post a Comment
Read more

Psychological Analysis Of Waiting For Godot

Psychological criticism adopts the methods of "Reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Here, we are going to apply the same form of criticism on Samuel Beckett’s play, ‘Waiting for Godot.’  Unanswered questions behind the characters behaviour are answered here. We would be looking further to the psychoanalytical approach, Sigmund Freud being the important proponent here. A major focus on the language and how dreams reflect our mental personality are given in his second essay, “Interpretation of Dreams.” The plot clearly states that Estragon has nightmares and Vladimir never addresses them and remains unhelpful towards it, being the one who is aware about their sufferings. The nightmares contain flashbacks and images of a gruesome and horrific event that has hap
1 comment
Read more