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...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
This thesis will examine the stretching of gender expectations in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) and her sensational story “V.V. or Plots and Counterplots”(1865). On the basis of her...Show moreThis thesis will examine the stretching of gender expectations in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) and her sensational story “V.V. or Plots and Counterplots”(1865). On the basis of her writing, Louisa May Alcott seems to have understood before her time that gender is not merely physiological, but also a performance within a social context that has socially-constructed expectations of men and women. Alcott’s characters negotiate their awareness of the need to fulfill society’s expectations in order to be accepted whilst seemingly being aware of the ‘performance’ aspect of gender. Although Alcott’s female protagonists cross the boundaries of the socially-constructed ideals of behavior befitting women, and in some ways could be described as ‘liberated,’ they seek to be a man’s “little woman” and so seek to conform to some aspects of the social expectations befitting their gender. Instead it is Jo, the protagonist of her novel Little Women who deliberately tries to stretch the traditional boundaries of gender construction, desiring the liberties that only men in the mid-nineteenth century had.Show less
