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.
Little Women was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869; the books were written rapidly over several months at the request of Alcott’s publisher.3 Although skeptical about her ability to write a book for young girls, Alcott agreed to try. The first volume of the novel was published by Roberts Brothers, and the first printing of 2,000 copies sold out quickly; the company had trouble keeping up with public demand for subsequent printings.4 Alcott delivered the manuscript for the second volume on January 1, 1869, only three months after the publication of part one.5
According to Sarah Elbert, a literary critic, the term “little women” referred to the Dickensian meaning: It represented the period in a young woman’s life where childhood overlapped with young womanhood.6 Other views have suggested that the title was meant to illustrate the inferiority of women, or to describe the lives of people who are “unimportant” in society.7 Alcott created an entirely new form of literature in Little Women; she took elements from Romantic children’s fiction and combined them w...
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...Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Unrivaled Minds. Louisa May Alcott. Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. 2014. http://www.alcottfilm.com/louisa-may-alcott/ (accessed May 10, 2014).
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
Bibliography
Flannery. Classics Retold: The Movie and Television Adaptations of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. 14 September, 2013. http://www.thereadventurer.com/-home/classics-retold-the-movie-and-television-adaptations-of-little-women-by-louisa-may-alcott (accessed May 10, 2014).
Little Women. n.d. n.d., n.d. http://americanliterature.com/author/ louisa-may-alcott/book/little-women/summary (accessed May 10, 2014).
Unrivaled Minds. Louisa May Alcott. Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. 2014. http://www.alcottfilm.com/louisa-may-alcott/ (accessed May 10, 2014).
Wikipedia. Little Women. May 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Women (accessed May 10, 2014).
At first glance Edna St. Vincent Millay's first recognized poem, Renascence, seems to be easy to understand and follow. However, as this sing-songy poem is dissected, the reader embarks upon a world full of emotion, religion, confusion, pain and sin. This poem is split up into six sections or stanzas which separate the action of the poem into easy to understand parts. I have chosen to discuss the first section of the poem for my close reading.
Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1984.
This reaction from the blue poetry book shines a light on the power of literature- what occurred after she had read the first lines altered her state of mind,.
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.
While reading "What lips my lips have kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay, I realized many things about myself. The first thing was that I, after thinking I would never be able to decipher one word of poetry, actually could. I also found that I was able to enjoy it. Another thing was that the narrator (whom I felt was a woman- no man could portray these feelings like a woman) and I had strikingly similar feelings. There happened to be many other amazing findings, but these two were the first and most important to me.
It is significant that the revealed word comes "unsummoned" in a flash of intuition….and yet the implication of the poem is that the revealing of the word must be preceded by the preparatory, conscious, rational effort of probing philology…She [Dickinson] herself was well aware that inspiration, while all-sufficient when present, seldom came even to a great poet.
Mays, Kelly. "Poems for Further Study." Norton Introduction to Literature. Eleventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company Inc., 2013. 771-772. Print.
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
Barnstone, Aliki, and Willis Barnstone. A book of women poets. New York: Schocken Books, 1980. Print.
... 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.
“Lucille Clifton.” Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets, 1997-2014. Web. 12 Mar. 2014. http://poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/79 .
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
In what capacity would we be able to tell? All things considered, it 's straightforward: we start with youngsters and adolescents who have dreams for the future, and after that we watch them developed into grown-ups who need to adjust their arrangements to their circumstances. In that sense, Little Women helps us to remember other extraordinary nineteenth-century books in which kids develop into grown-ups, as Jane Eyre and Incredible
Throughout literature’s history, female authors have been widely recognized for their groundbreaking and eye-opening accounts of what it means to be a woman in society. In most cases of early literature, women are portrayed as weak and unintelligent characters who rely solely on their male counterparts. Also during this time period, it would be shocking to have women characters in some stories, especially since their purpose is only secondary to that of the male protagonist. But, in the late 17th to early 18th century, a crop of courageous women began publishing their works, beginning the literary feminist movement. Together, Aphra Behn, Charlotte Smith, Fanny Burney, and Mary Wollstonecraft challenge the status quo of what it means to be a woman during the time of the Restoration Era and give authors and essayists of the modern day, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a platform to become powerful, influential writers of the future.
The story Little Women takes place at a time when women were taking on uncustomary roles like physical laborer, family protector and provider, and military volunteer while their husbands served during the Civil War. Keeping within the boundaries of the time, Louisa May Alcott uses herself and her own three sisters to create this classical novel from personal experiences. Each sister is different. They each set goals and dreams for their selves whether it goes along with their contemporary society or not. With the assistance of their mother, friends and experiences, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy struggle between their personal expectations and society’s expectations as they plan for their future and choose their destinies.