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The role of women in little women
The role of women in little women
Short essay about louisa may alcott
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It is interesting that Louisa May Alcott writes Little Women, in which she incorporates her own feelings and experiences. In fact, Jo's character is a near replication of Alcott herself. This makes the novel all the more interesting and personal, with the author speaking directly through the protagonist. Alcott writes the
novel from third person limited point of view, focusing chiefly on Josephine March. She develops the characters brilliantly throughout the entire work,
especially the March girls. Each sister is entirely unique, and yet so tightly bound together through their love for one another.
Little Women takes place during the Civil War in a small town in Massachusetts. The Marchs live a life of poverty with their father in the
war. Through this hardship, the girls: Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, learn to be thankful in all circumstances and help those less fortunate than themselves.
The girls are very hopeful and dream of a brighter future. Each experiences adventures and pursues her own dreams. In the end, they are still gathered
as one family, grateful for their many blessings and for each other.
Josephine March is the protagonist, a tomboy who refuses to submit to the traditional image of ladyhood. This mindset is radically different from a
typical woman of her time. Jo possesses an innate passion for writing and literature in general. However, she loses much of her headstrong independent
nature through marrying Professor Bhaer. She gives up writing as he is a significant critic of her style. The reader is exposed to two the
dramatically different sides of Jo March. She is rebellious, fiery, and outspoken, wishing all the while that she was a man who could fight in the
war along side her dear father. Jo stresses and works to keep her family together, becoming extremely upset when Meg and Amy become married. With
their father absent, Jo assumes the male role as a father figure in many ways. Nevertheless, her flaws only make Jo a more lovable character. The
reader cannot help but adore Jo for her sheer humanity, much like Huck in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Amy is the youngest March sister. She is ladylike, artistic, and is regarded as the beauty of the March family. Often fantasizing a life of riches and
popularity, Amy's thirst for worldly pleasures represents the inner desires of man.
...approval by their family and the people around are considered as the most common trend between teenagers around the world and are used throughout the novel. Josephine was first introduced to the reading knowing that she was unsure of her identity and how she was searching for acceptance from her grandmother due to her illegitimacy. Marchetta created Josephine’s characteristic as one that the readers can truly understand and allow them to be able to feel a connection and a relation between the characters in the novel and themselves; it can make them realize that this is a social issues that each generation of teenagers face on a daily basis. The characters in the novel accompanied by the themes such as stereotypes and social statuses supported the author’s idea of creating a novel in which comment on the social issues and reflect reality within the novel.
...is book expresses her ever-changing life and tough it was on the women of this time period.
The Joy Luck Club is an emotional tale about four women who saw life as they had seen it back in China. Because the Chinese were very stereotypic, women were treated as second class citizens and were often abused. Through sad and painful experiences, these four women had tried to raise their daughters to live the American dream by giving them love and support, such things which were not available to them when they were young. These women revealed their individual accounts in narrative form as they relived it in their memories. These flashbacks transport us to the minds of these women and we see the events occur through their eyes. There were many conflicts and misunderstandings between the two generations due to their differences in upbringing and childhood. In the end, however, these conflicts would bring mother and daughter together to form a bond that would last forever.
The contrast between how She sees herself and how the rest of the world sees Her can create extreme emotional strain; add on the fact that She hails from the early 1900s and it becomes evident that, though her mental construct is not necessarily prepared to understand the full breach against Her, She is still capable of some iota of realization. The discrimination encountered by a female during this time period is great and unceasing.
In the story Little Women, the sisters all have to work together when their mother leaves. Mrs. March leaves to meet with the girls’ father after she is told he has become ill. During the weeks Mrs. March is gone it’s a test for the girls’ work ethic, since their mother is not there to tell them to do their work. The March girls start to change after a couple of weeks.
Louisa May Alcott Biography Best remembered for her books about the March family, especially her children’s masterpiece, Little Women, Alcott also wrote sensational novels and thrillers for adults. She was a very creative, difficult, and willful girl who was both moody and loyal. Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832, Louisa was the second daughter of Abby May and Amos Bronson Alcott. Being one of four sisters, who were Anna Bronson, Elizabeth Sewall, and Abba May, the Alcott sisters had a very happy childhood.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, was published in 1868 and follows the lives, loves, and troubles of the four March sisters growing up during the American Civil War.1 The novel is loosely based on childhood experiences Alcott shared with her own sisters, Anna, May, and Elizabeth, who provided the hearts of the novel’s main characters.2 The March sisters illustrate the difficulties of girls growing up in a world that holds certain expectations of the female sex; the story details the journeys the girls make as they grow to be women in that world. Figures 1 and 2 in the Appendix are of Orchard House, the basis for the March family home, where the Alcotts lived.
Watson, N. (2009) ‘Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868-9) Introduction’, in Montgomery H and Watson N (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University, pp.13-17
... Now that people of all economic groups were becoming more educated and more importantly literate, society changed. The first great, American, woman authors began to write. Lousia May Alcott wrote Little Women. This was a story attempting to give a realistic and sentimental view on life. This story was, like the works of Twain, relating everyday experiences and romanticizing mundane daily life, making her stories popular to the common person and most importantly, the children of the time.
The roles of women and how they were treated during the 1800’s are portrayed throughout Little Women, while also demonstrating how the main characters deal with these conformity norms. Through the 4 sisters, Alcott depicts different ways they dealt with being a woman during nineteenth-century expectations. While two conform, the other two attempt to rebel against the standards. Alcott doesn’t imply that one way is necessarily better than the other, but she shows that one is more realistic than the other.
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
she is able to meet her twin sisters that have been missing from her life for over 30 years.
...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.
...re many similarities when it comes to technique, characterization, themes, and ideologies based on the author's own beliefs and life experiences. However, we also see that it appears the author herself often struggles with the issue of being herself and expressing her own individuality, or obeying the rules, regulations and mores of a society into which she was born an innocent child, one who by nature of her sex was deemed inferior to men who controlled the definition of the norms. We see this kind of environment as repressive and responsible for abnormal psyches in the plots of many of her works.
According to the Internet Movie Database's exhaustive records, Louisa May Alcott's novel "Little Women" has seen itself recreated in four TV series, four made for TV movies and five feature length movies since 1918. The most recent version appeared in 1994 and features Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst, Samantha Mathis, Eric Stoltz, Susan Sarandon, and Gabriel Byrne. As a long time fan of the novel, who has happily carted her large leather bound gold-gilded unabridged edition whenever she has moved, I find that I was disappointed in this newest movie version. As a movie lover, however, I found the movie to be an enjoyable experience.