The Female Struggle to Fit into Society in Little Women

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The Female Struggle to Fit into Society in Little Women

The Victorian Era hailed many prolific authors, which were mostly male. A woman who wanted to be a writer at this time was not respected and would have been accused of being whimsical and flighty. However, women such as Louisa May Alcott redefined the norms and followed her heart with her pen by writing Little Women. The novel follows the lives of the four March sisters – Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March – detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood trying to find their place in society. Even though so much has changed in the last fifty years, gender roles still take a huge toll in society. Unfortunately, breaking down gender roles is not easy; as women are still doing most of the housework but still expected to do more. Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was a struggling female author in the nineteenth-century, trying to defy the female stereotypes. In Louisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women, the theme of the struggle for women’s place in society due to gender roles is illustrated through the historical context and the characters shown in the novel.

Louisa May Alcott, one of the many women struggling to find her place in society managed to defy the woman stereotypes. Many events in Louisa’s life brought her to write her famous novel Little Women. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29th 1839. Her family consisted of four other girls: Anna, Elizabeth and May Alcott. Many can say that the March family in Little Women was based on the Alcott family. Even though she had a hardworking father, he was incapable of providing his family with a steady income which brought them on the verge of poverty. Just l...

... middle of paper ...

... Not every little woman can realize their dream without reality altering her vision.

Works Cited

Alcott, Louisa May, “Little Women”. Canterbury Classics: San Diego. 2012.

Greene, Jessica Brook, “A Woman’s Legacy: An Analysis of Feminist Themes in the Work of

Louisa May Alcott” (2000). University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects.

http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1383&context=utk_chanhonoproj

Laire, Delphine, “Little Women, a Feminist study”(2008-2009) . Ghent University Faculty of

Arts and Philosophy.

http://lib.ugent.be/fulltxt/RUG01/001/366/158/RUG01-001366158_2010_0001_AC.pdf

Fetterley, Judith, “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War”

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3177602?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103292006007

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