Self-Fulfillment and Selflessness: Women’s Roles in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is often praised for the way it encourages women to chase their own dreams and break out of the rigid gender norms that often confine them. However, simultaneously, the novel also seems to value and even encourage nineteenth-century ideals and gender roles, and encourage women to be selfless. The question then becomes how the novel is able to promote these seemingly contradicting values alongside each other, and what effect this has on its message. This thesis set out to find an answer to this question by examining in detail how both self-fulfillment and selflessness are being promoted in Little Women. Doing so showed that the novel actually approaches both ideas with incredible nuance. Women are generally encouraged to pursue self-fulfillment, regardless of societal expectations and gender norms, but only when selflessness is part of this self-fulfillment. Similarly, selflessness is encouraged as long pursuing it does not happen at the expense of...Show moreLittle Women by Louisa May Alcott is often praised for the way it encourages women to chase their own dreams and break out of the rigid gender norms that often confine them. However, simultaneously, the novel also seems to value and even encourage nineteenth-century ideals and gender roles, and encourage women to be selfless. The question then becomes how the novel is able to promote these seemingly contradicting values alongside each other, and what effect this has on its message. This thesis set out to find an answer to this question by examining in detail how both self-fulfillment and selflessness are being promoted in Little Women. Doing so showed that the novel actually approaches both ideas with incredible nuance. Women are generally encouraged to pursue self-fulfillment, regardless of societal expectations and gender norms, but only when selflessness is part of this self-fulfillment. Similarly, selflessness is encouraged as long pursuing it does not happen at the expense of personal happiness and fulfillment. The novel shows that the two ideas are, in fact, more complicated than they seem, and that though self-fulfillment and selflessness appear to be two opposing values, they are actually not mutually exclusive.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

Self-Fulfillment and Selflessness: Women’s Roles in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women