Little Women - Influence

Influence

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 to 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 Plumfield, 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.”