The Value of Women and Little Women's Covert Feminist Messages
May Alcott's illustration of Meg.
Little Women by Luisa May Alcott is a novel about uncovering value in unexpected places. Throughout the novel, we watch the March sisters transform from little girls with their own downfalls, ignorances, and immaturity to strong, independent women who each have unique perspectives and talents to offer the world around them. The illustrations that are embedded throughout the novel, drawn, according to the title page, by Luisa’s sister May Alcott, illustrate beautifully this transformation. For instance, in the one seen here, the eldest March sister, Meg, realizes how childish and frivolous her actions (borrowing her friend’s clothing in order to look more wealthy and upper class) have been. In this scene, she recognizes her vanity and vows to change. Likewise, the other March sisters can also be seen conquering their weaknesses and embracing and utilizing their talents positively over the course of the novel. By the end of the novel, the March sisters seem to be feminist women, as they are independent, mature, and each pursuing their own ambitions and goals. Perhaps the Alcott sisters chose to illustrate transformative scenes of the March sisters to encourage young female readers of the novel to also become strong feminist women. It could be that Luisa and May Alcott wanted to demonstrate the value that liberated women can offer, thus encouraging a more important and respected place for women in their contemporary society.
Roberts Bros "Lives of Exemplary Women" advertisement.
The newfound value of women that Luisa and May Alcott illuminate through the text and illustrations in Little Women is also supported by the advertisements contained in the back of the novel. An advertisement for Jean Ingelow’s, a fellow female author, writing refers to her as “the first among the women whom the world calls poets,” which suggests that women were on the cusp of attaining a newfound respect and recognition within the field of literature at the time of Little Women’s publication. This advertisement for Roberts Bros’ “Lives of Exemplary Women” series also supports this notion. According to the advertisement, the series includes memoirs, portraits, correspondence, and accounts of friendships between “exemplary” women of the time. Women, like Jean Ingelow and the other “exemplary women” in the series, getting this kind of attention and publicity for their work suggests that a kind of feminist movement could have been in the works during this time. Then, perhaps, the feminist ideals and tendencies in Little Women are the Alcott sisters’ way of supporting this movement by demonstrating the value that women offer and thus why they deserve a more meaningful position in society.
The Independent's review of Luisa Alcott's biography.
The Athenaeum's review of Little Women.
This changing role for women in nineteenth-century society is further displayed through two reviews of Luisa Alcott’s writing. In this contemporary review of Little Women, the novel’s themes of feminism and women’s liberation are overlooked, as the reviewer instead focuses on the March sisters’ relationships to men and domesticity. In fact, the novel is even referred to as “a cheerful domestic story.” The reviewer also writes, “It is almost needless to say that Miss Jo is one of the strong-minded race of young women, and that she has started in life with the fallacious idea that a man’s love is by no means essential to a woman’s happiness.” Instead of writing of Jo’s independence, literary and financial success, and ability to support her family, the reviewer only comments on her marriage to Professor Bhaer. Despite all of her other accomplishments throughout the novel, the reviewer points to Jo’s marriage as evidence that women are dependent upon men’s affections. In doing so, the review misses the Alcott sisters’ ideas about women’s strength, abilities, independence, and value that are present in the novel and highlighted in the illustrations.
On the other hand, this review from The Independent acknowledges Alcott’s “boldness with which she defied the artificial proprieties of the old-time Boston code of culture.” The reviewer writes that in Little Women, as well as in Luisa Alcott’s other works, she demonstrates that, like herself, women can be ambitious, hard-working, independent, successful, intelligent, and determined. Unlike the first review (which discusses women only in relation to men), this one focuses on Luisa Alcott as an empowered woman, and how her empowerment comes through in her writing. The vastly different ways in which Little Women’s attitudes toward women were interpreted in these reviews displays that the role of women in society was unclear during the late nineteenth century. The diverse reviews imply that gender norms for women at this time were changing, leaving people with different ideas about how women were or should have been considered.
In Judith Fetterley’s article “‘Little Women’: Alcott’s Civil War,” she asserts that in the novel, there is “conflict between its overt messages and its covert messages” (371). Fetterley argues that Little Women’s “overt” messages are ones of domesticity and traditional gender roles (acknowledged by the first review), while its “covert messages” encourage a sort of feminist revolt (acknowledged by the second review). She claims that the Civil War setting of the novel is representative of this conflict both within Luisa herself, and within the novel. Fetterley’s argument that Luisa and the March sisters in the novel are “battling” between these ideas of womanhood illuminates the uncertainty of the time in terms of women’s place in society. Thus, Little Women is not just a “cheerful, domestic story,” as the first review claims; rather, it is a revolutionary text posing important questions to its society about how women’s roles were changing and how these “new women” would fit into and affect American culture.