Abstract
For 136 years, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women has remained a classic in American children's literature. Although Alcott originally wrote the novel as a book for young girls, deeper issues run beneath the surface story of the March family. This thesis explores a few of these issues. Chapter One examines the roles of patriarchy and domesticity in Alcott's private life and in Little Women. Chapter Two emphasizes the Transcendentalist thinking that surrounded Alcott in her childhood, her own, feminized Transcendentalist philososphy, and how it subsequently infiltrates the novel. Chapter Three expolores the role of the struggling female artist in Little Women, as portrayed by the March sisters, especially Jo and Amy March, and how the fictional characters' struggles reflect Alcott's own problems as a female writer in a patriarchal society. Chapter Four discusses Alcott's reformist ideas and the reformist issues that surface in Little Women. Domestic feminism--the idea that a reformed family, in which men and women equally participate in doemstic matters, would lead to a reformed society--emerges as the predominant reformist issue in Little Women. Alcott believed that women should be able to choose the course of their adult lives, whether that included marriage, a professional career, or otherwise, without the threat of being ostracized from society. In Little Women, the March family serves as an example of a reformed, egalitarian family in which women exercise self-reliance, employ their non-domestic talents, and still maintain femininity.
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