The Power of Love in Little Women
"Truly, love does work miracles!" (335) The March family portrayed in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, was the classic American family. The father is fighting in war, the mother is all knowing and wise and the four daughters are budding seeds of independence. In the beginning of the novel we are introduced to all four of the sisters. Meg, the oldest, is wise and very concerned with class and the styles of the times. Jo was the least like any of her sisters. She longs to be a boy and not have to worry about such petty things as her hair and what she is wearing. Beth is a kind gentle soul who is always contented with what she has. Amy, the youngest, is very conceited. She is always concerned with her looks and who she will marry.
"'It's so dreadful to be poor!' sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
'I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things and other girls nothing at all,' added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
'We have Father and Mother and each other,' said Beth contentedly, from her corner . . . . Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. 'Don't Jo-it's so boyish!'{Amy said}
'That's why I do it'" (p.3-4).
Though different in many ways, they all loved each other. It was, however, love from, and for, other people that changed them all in so many ways.
Being the oldest sister, Meg felt a lot of pressure on her to marry into the right class. She longed for pretty things and large house. She wasn't as conceited as Amy, but continually let Jo know how disappointed in her she was. Jo's unladylike tendencies disgusted her. After going to a coming out party for Annie Moffat, Meg was a changed pers...
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...n any other love. In her short life she changed many people for the better.
The March family survived many hardships and surpassed many obstacles. Without the love for each other, they wouldn't have made so far. Many years later, Mrs. an Mr. March are sitting back, watching their daughters and grandchildren romp in the orchard. They both see how much they have all grown and changed, Mrs. March turn to Mr. March and says, "Truly, love does work miracles! How very, very happy they must be"(335)
Work Cited
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. New York: Signet, 1983.
Douglas, Ann. Introduction. Little Women. By Louisa May Alcott. New York: Signet, 1983. vii-xxvii.
Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women. Philadelphia: Temple Press, 1984.
Hollander, Anne. "Portraying 'Little Women' Through the Ages. New York Times 15 Apr. 1994.
In the nineteenth century domestic, maternal women were considered the ideal. Several authors challenged this ideal while others glorified it and showed it as completely pragmatic. After all, who better to raise and feed the family than the one who is responsible for giving life to them? Louisa May Alcott shows her primary female figure in Transcendental Wild Oats, Hope Lamb, in a strong traditional female role. Hope is arguably the strongest character in the story and serves as an alternative to the typical modern feminist society promotes today. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance, Zenobia is the heroine who to a great extend runs the commune. She is bold physically, spiritually and intellectually. She is very much different from Hope Lamb, but in many crucial ways, they are all too similar.
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.
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.
One of the most well-known American Literary Classics is “Little Woman”. Louisa May Alcott’s stirring tale about hardship, loss, and coming of age is appealing to girls and women alike. In an homage to this classic story, Geraldine Brooks gives us “March”. Written for an older crowd, “March” is the harrowing account of Mr. March, the father and wife of the protagonists in “Little Women”. The companion novel details his adventures in the South, and the events that lead to him joining the Union Army in his 40’s. Mr. March is a multi-faceted man, with a head for teaching. However, the once innocent, well-meaning and naïve man who volunteered to be a chaplain in the Union forces was scarred beyond recovery by what he saw during his tour of duty. Throughout the book, he learns and changes from the person that he once was. Facilitators of this transformation include Silas Stone, Zannah the former slave, and his wife, Marmee. For better or for worse, they each changed Mr. Marsh and the way he thought about the world.
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.
At the time of the writing of the novel, society and women’s rights were slowly increasing. Through the four March sisters, Alcott depicts ways that women dealt with the norms of the time. Meg, marries young and creates a family; Beth is dutiful to her sisters and parents; Amy focuses on herself and her own beliefs and likes, which Amy does at first, but later settles into life as a lady; and Jo’s struggle to find a professional life, but also live a dutiful family life. While Meg and Beth conform to the 1800’s women expectations, Jo and Amy attempt to break away, and be individuals. Eventually, they both settle into a customary way of life. Alcott doesn’t suggest that one woman is stronger or weaker, nor does she suggest that in the end you must always rebel or conform, but she does recognize that one is more realistic than the other.
Louisa May Alcott’s powerfully written story Little Women has been famous for generations. Alcott wrote was about four young women in the March family who struggled against societal norms during the time of the Civil War. Multiple film adaptations have attempted to retain the emotional impact of her material while retelling her story on the big screen. The most recent adaptation, directed by Gillian Armstrong in 1994, was able to capture many hearts with its feminist twist on the classic novel. Armstrong’s film brings the family’s story to life by successfully displaying the personalities in the March family and by portraying the life styles during the time period accurately. However, specific reactions and descriptions had to be expressed in different ways considering the literary devices used by Alcott which could not be shown through elements of film without alteration.
The complicated nature surrounding Heathcliff’s motives again adds an additional degree of ambiguity to his character. This motivation is primarily driven by Catherine’s marriage to Edgar and past rejection of Heathcliff, since he was a servant whom Hindley disapproved of. Prior to storming out of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff overhears Catherine say, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now…” (Brontë 87). The obstacles that ultimately prevent Heathcliff from marrying Catherine provide insight into Heathcliff’s desire to bring harm to Edgar and Hindley. The two men play prominent roles in the debacle, Edgar as the new husband and Hindley as the head figure who refused Heathcliff access to Catherine. Following this incident, Catherine says, “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…” (Brontë 87). Catherine’s sentiment indicates she truly would rather be with Heathcliff, but the actions of others have influenced her monumental decision to marry Edgar. Furthermore, Heathcliff is motivated to not only ruin Edgar’s livelihood, but also gain ownership of his estate, Thrushcross Grange. This becomes clear when Heathcliff attempts to use Isabella
Catherine Earnshaw appears to be a woman who is free spirited. However, Catherine is also quite self-centered. She clearly states that her love for Edgar Linton does not match how much she loves Heathcliff. She is saying that she does love both, and she is unwilling to give one up for the other; she wants “Heathcliff for her friend”. Catherine admits that her love for Linton is “like the foliage in the woods”; however, her love for Heathcliff “resembles the eternal rocks beneath”. She loves Heathcliff and yet she gives him up and marries Linton instead, Catherine believes that if she marries Heathcliff it would degrade and humiliate her socially.
Catherine is trapped between her love of Heathcliff and her love for Edgar, setting the two men down a path of destruction, a whirlwind of anger and resentment that Catherine gets caught in the middle of. Catherine is drawn to Heathcliff because of his fiery personality, their raw attraction and one certainly gets the sense that they are drawn together on a deeper level, that perhaps they are soulmates. C. Day Lewis thought so, when he declared that Heathcliff and Catherine "represent the essential isolation of the soul...two halves of a single soul–forever sundered and struggling to unite." This certainly seems to be backed up in the novel when Catherine exclaims “Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind--not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being...” This shows clearly the struggle Catherine feels as she is drawn spiritually to Heathcliff, but also to Edgar for very different reasons. Edgar attracts Catherine predominantly because he is of the right social class. Catherine finds him "handsome, and pleasant to be with," but her feelings for him seem petty when compared to the ones she harbours...
During the first half of the book, Catherine showed different types of love for two different people. Her love for Heathcliff was her everything, it was her identity to love and live for Heathcliff but as soon as she found out how society views Heathcliff, she sacrificed their love and married Edgar Linton in the hopes of saving Heathcliff from Hindley and protecting him from the eyes of society. In her conversation with Nelly, Cathy who professed her love for Heathcliff quoted “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself.” Catherine proved Nelly Dean that the only person who can make her feel pain and sorrow is Heathcliff. The extent of her love was uncovered when she sang her praise of “I am Heathcliff” because this was the turning point in the book that allowed the readers to truly understand and see the depth of Cathy's love for Heathcliff. On the other hand, Catherine's love for Edgar wasn't natural because it was a love that she taught herself to feel. It might have come unknowingly to Cathy but she did love Edgar as she said “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees.” Cathy knew that it was not impossible to love Edgar for he was a sweet and kind gentleman who showed her the world but unlike ...
Louisa May Alcott tells the story of family growing together in her novel Little Women. The four March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy all mature in different ways over the course of the novel. Meg and Amy both deeply concern themselves with looks and reputation at the beginning of the book, but as the story progresses, each of these characters develops into women with unselfish
From the beginning of the novel and most likely from the beginning of Heathcliff's life, he has suffered pain and rejection. When Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, he is viewed as a thing rather than a child. Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out the doors, while Nelly put it on the landing of the stairs hoping that it would be gone the next day. Without having done anything to deserve rejection, Heathcliff is made to feel like an outsider. Following the death of Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff suffers cruel mistreatment at the hands of Hindley. In these tender years, he is deprived of love, friendship, and education, while the treatment from jealous Hindley is barbaric and disrupts his mental balance. He is separated from the family, reduced to the status of a servant, undergoes regular beatings and forcibly separated from his soul mate, Catherine. The personality that Heathcliff develops in his adulthood has been formed in response to these hardships of his childhood.
As the sisters gathered together to celebrate Marmee's birthday, they agreed that their lives were happy, rich and full. The little women had become cultured, confident young ladies. There at the table, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, along with one empty chair, symbolizing their love for Beth, sat the contented mother. She wished that such a moment could last forever.