Art as Valuable and Powerful

May Alcott's illustration of Amy and Laurie.

This illustrated edition of Little Women worked on together by Luisa and May Alcott, reflects not only the Alcott sisters’ feminist values, but also recognizes art’s power to transform. Over the course of the novel, Amy’s character undergoes a transformation from a somewhat lazy and selfish little girl to a mature, focused, caring, and determined woman. Her change is most evident when she travels abroad to study art; it seems as though it is this trip to Europe in which Amy really changes and matures. In fact, in this illustration, she is pictured spending time with Laurie while they are both abroad. In this scene, she even lectures him about his recent pointless moping and encourages him to be more productive and positive toward his musical aspirations and his family. This is a big change from the illustration we see of Amy in the first part of the novel, in which she is intruding on Jo and Laurie’s ice skating plans and is about to fall into the lake. Perhaps the Alcott sisters decided to illustrate these two scenes of Amy to demonstrate the more emancipated and sophisticated woman that she has become through her travels. Thus, they must deem Amy’s maturation and development into a more independent and ambitious woman, as well as her journey to becoming this new woman, to be significant in the novel.

Studying Art Abroad and How to Do it Cheaply by May Alcott.

In Studying Art Abroad, and How to Do it Cheaply, May Alcott Nieriker promotes this same experience, traveling and studying art, which reflects Amy’s growth in the novel. In the book, Alcott reveals that she also had the experience of studying art abroad in her lifetime. Perhaps this how-to guide to traveling and studying art is meant to complement May’s sister's novel, Little Women. The praise of traveling in May’s text, coupled with the illustrations of Amy’s maturation upon her trip to Europe, seem to reveal a shared belief that traveling and studying a discipline like art is beneficial to young women, as it benefitted Amy in the novel and May in her real life. Perhaps the Alcotts’ texts should be looked at together in order to illuminate the importance of travel and art in the development of independent, self-reliant, and feminist women. Considering the time of these books’ publications, in which women’s roles were changing and they were beginning to fight for a more meaningful place in society, and Little Women’s feminist messages, it is possible that the Alcotts were encouraging female readers to study art and travel abroad as the first step to becoming feminist women like the March sisters. Perhaps Luisa and May wanted these female readers to have this enlightening journey in order to recognize not just the value of art, but also the value that they had as women.

Jean Ingelow advertisement.

The advertisements found at the end of the novel also support the notion that art is valuable and beneficial. Two pages advertise the writings of a fellow female author of the time, Jean Ingelow. In the descriptions of Ingelow’s works, it is revealed that, like Luisa Alcott’s Little Women, almost all of her works contain at least one illustration. As parts of an advertisement, the descriptions are clearly meant to encourage readers to buy Ingelow’s works. Since they all mention their texts' illustrations, it seems as though illustrations were deemed desirable and important, just as they are in Little Women. The mention of illustrations in almost every one of Ingelow’s works being advertised points to the value that illustrations had during the time of Little Women’s publication. While illustrations are not as common in adult texts today, perhaps authors and publishers in the nineteenth century believed that illustrations added something to a text that words themselves could not portray. The advertisement also refers to Ingelow’s works as “beautiful” and “art,” often describing the books’ physical appearances. The importance placed upon the illustrations, as well as the book being described as art, demonstrates the idea found in Luisa (Little Women) and May (Studying Art Abroad, and How to Do it Cheaply) Alcott’s writings: that art has value, a value that goes beyond just beauty, and the power to benefit people.