小妇人论文知网

小妇人论文知网

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Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

The following entry presents criticism on Alcott's novel Little Women. See also Louisa May Alcott Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism.

What is now known as Little Women includes both the original work by that title and its sequel, Good Wives. Written by Louisa May Alcott in 1868 and 1869 respectively, together these works have been long established as primary within the canon of juvenile literature and are considered by many to be the first children's books in America to break with the didactic tradition. Alcott introduced realism and entertainment to American children's literature, thereby achieving commercial success unknown to her moralizing contemporaries. Little Women is still read worldwide today.

Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1832, and raised in Concord, Massachusetts, and Boston. She was the second of four daughters of Abigail May Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott, a Transcendentalist, educational reformer, and well-known writer. Louisa, though more commercially successful than her father, faced many obstacles to the literary career she envisioned for herself. As a woman writer, she was expected to write sentimental and moralizing tales, and in order to earn a living as a writer, she was expected to cater to the sensational cravings of her audience. Although she did both successfully until her death in 1888, many critics argue that with Little Women, Alcott countered sensationalism with realism and subverted the moralizing purpose she often appeared to embrace.

Plot and Major Characters

In Part I, while Mr. March is away as a volunteer chaplain in the Civil War, the March girls, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, embark on "pilgrimages" toward selfimprovement, with the inspiration of John Bunyan's religious allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678). Their journeys, though, are largely determined by their own consciences and will rather than by dogma. Meg learns to overcome her vanity, Jo to overcome excessiveness and temper, Amy, greed and selfishness. Beth is already saintly and seems not to need change, but ironically, it is an act of charity—a visit to a sick infant—which results in the scarlet fever that weakens her health and precipitates her death.

Welcomed into this haven are neighbors Theodore Laurence (Laurie) and his grandfather, who are far from stock patriarchal figures; they are, rather, admirers who crave and aspire to the domestic peace enjoyed by the Marches. Laurie and Jo develop a close friendship that intrigued Alcott's readers, but she avoided the conventional romantic plot by refusing to have them marry. Jo, an unconventional girl who thinks of herself as the "man of the house" while her father is away, is more interested in developing her art and financially supporting her family than marrying.

Part II of Little Women, originally published separately as Good Wives, focuses on the girls' transitions into adulthood. Meg marries John Brooke, Laurie's tutor—a financially difficult but happy match. Amy loses some of her passion for art and marries Laurie after he has been refused by Jo and has recovered from the blow. Beth dies before she can reach adulthood, but her loss inspires Jo to take up her domestic role. Jo eventually marries Professor Bhaer, a middle-aged academic with whom she shares philosophical interests. They open a boys' school, where she, no longer a tomboy, becomes a mother-figure for the students.

Major Themes

Alcott's earlier work, often published under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard, is generally characterized by sensational characters and plots, violence, melodrama, and romance—all consistent with the expectations of her readers. When asked to write a "girl's book," Alcott was yet again forced to write according to others' interests, but in this case she opted for more realism than sensationalism by choosing the only girl-hood she knew for her subject—her own. Based on her life, and that of her sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, Little Women follows the adolescence of the girls into adulthood, captures their private, domestic experience concretely, delineates their matriarchal haven of comfort and frugality, dramatizes their creative play, and explores their struggles to become artists, good sisters, and eventually happy wives. Although the culture of her time demanded that Alcott produce moralizing tales, she displayed a certain amount of resistance to that mandate in Little Women, preaching moderation rather than excessive religious molding. The girls are guided less by rigid moral strictures than by their strong sense of family, sometimes conveyed by words of wisdom from mother Marmee, but more often by a need to get along as a sisterly community. In part II this theme of sisterly love expands to include marriage and the formation of new families, with new roles for the three surviving sisters as good wives. Self-improvement, social responsibility, domestic cooperation, and matriarchal power, as well as the importance of play and artistic development, all serve as prominent themes in Little Women.

Critical Reception

The influence of Little Women has been vast, but historically limited to a female readership. Early critics received the novel with sentimental praise and an appreciation of Alcott's ability to meet the minds of her child readers, a view shared by Angela Brazil in her 1922 review. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Alcott was appreciated, like many American women writers, as merely a local colorist with a talent for portraying the domestic sphere concretely. In academia, her novel was studied only by the scholars of children's literature until the 1960s and 1970s, when it came under closer scrutiny by feminist critics, some of whom were frustrated with its outdated sentimentality, others of whom dismissed it because it seems to uphold the traditional separation of men's and women's spheres (public vs. private). In the 1980s, the new emphasis on expanding the canon to include marginalized writers and works associated with popular culture brought more attention to Little Women. It has achieved importance within Women's Studies and the American literary canon in general for its detailed descriptions of nineteenth-century family life and of female struggles for social identity. As Carolyn Heilbrun suggests, Little Women has been particularly influential on female readers in the twentieth century who, craving models of female autonomy, found one, at least briefly, in Alcott's character Jo. Recent critics have continued in this positive vein, calling further attention to the subversive elements in Little Women, recasting Jo as an early feminist who, like her creator, made the most of the limited possibilities open to women in her time.

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Alcott prefaces Little Women with an excerpt from John Bunyan’s seventeenth-century work The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegorical novel about leading a Christian life. Alcott’s story begins with the four March girls—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—sitting in their living room, lamenting their poverty. The girls decide that they will each buy themselves a present in order to brighten their Christmas. Soon, however, they change their minds and decide that instead of buying presents for themselves, they will buy presents for their mother, Marmee. Marmee comes home with a letter from Mr. March, the girls’ father, who is serving as a Union chaplain in the Civil War. The letter inspires the girls to bear their burdens more cheerfully and not to complain about their poverty.
On Christmas morning, the girls wake up to find books, probably copies of The Pilgrim’s Progress, under their pillows. Later that day, Marmee encourages them to give away their breakfast to a poor family, the Hummels. Their elderly neighbor, Mr. Laurence, whom the girls have never met, rewards their charitable activities by sending over a feast. Soon, Meg and Jo are invited to attend a New Year’s Party at the home of Meg’s wealthy friend, Sally Gardiner. At the party, Jo retreats to an alcove, and there meets Laurie, the boy who lives with Mr. Laurence. While dancing, Meg sprains her ankle. Laurie escorts the sisters home. The Marches regret having to return to their daily routine after the holiday festivities.
Jo visits Laurie when he is sick, and meets his grandfather, Mr. Laurence. She inadvertently insults a painting of Mr. Laurence in front of the man himself. Luckily, Laurie’s grandfather admires Jo’s spunk, and they become friends. Soon, Mr. Laurence meets all the sisters, and Beth becomes his special favorite. Mr. Laurence gives her his deceased granddaughter’s piano.
The girls have various adventures. Amy is caught trading limes at school, and the teacher hits her as punishment. As a result, Mrs. March withdraws her daughter from school. Jo refuses to let Amy go with her to the theater. In retaliation, Amy burns Jo’s manuscript, and Jo, in her anger, nearly lets Amy drown while ice-s-kating. Pretty Meg attends her friend Annie Moffat’s party and, after allowing the other girls to dress her up in high style, learns that appearances are not everything. While at the party, she hears that people think she intends to marry Laurie for his money.
That year, the Marches form the Pickwick Club, in which they write a family newspaper. In the spring, Jo smuggles Laurie into one of the club meetings, and he becomes a member, presenting his new circle with a postbox. At the beginning of June, the Marches decide to neglect their housework. At the end of a lazy week, Marmee takes a day off too. The girls spoil a dinner, but everyone ends up laughing over it. One day, Laurie has English friends over, and the Marches go on a picnic with them. Later, Jo gets a story published for the first time.
One dark day, the family receives a telegram saying that Mr. March is sick in the hospital in Washington, D.C. Marmee goes to tend to him, and Jo sells her hair to help finance the trip. Chaos ensues in Marmee’s wake, for the girls neglect their chores again. Only Beth goes to visit the Hummels, and after one of her visits, she contracts scarlet fever from the Hummel baby. Beth teeters on the brink of death until Marmee returns. Meanwhile, Amy spends time at Aunt March’s house in order to escape the disease. Beth recovers, though not completely, and Mr. Brooke, Laurie’s tutor, falls in love with Meg, much to Jo’s dismay. Mr. Brooke and Meg are engaged by the end of Part One.
Three years pass before Part Two begins. Mr. March is home from the war, and Laurie is nearly done with school. Soon, Meg marries and moves into a new home with Mr. Brooke. One day, Amy decides to have a lunch for her art school classmates, but poor weather ruins the festivities. Jo gets a novel published, but she must cut it down in order to please her publishers. Meanwhile, Meg struggles with the duties of keeping house, and she soon gives birth to twins, Demi and Daisy. Amy gets to go to Paris instead of Jo, who counted on the trip, because their Aunt Carroll prefers Amy’s ladylike behavior in a companion.
Jo begins to think that Beth loves Laurie. In order to escape Laurie’s affections for her, Jo moves to New York so as to give Beth a chance to win his affections. There Jo meets Professor Bhaer, a poor German language instructor. Professor Bhaer discourages Jo from writing sensationalist stories, and she takes his advice and finds a simpler writing style. When Jo returns home, Laurie proposes to her, but she turns him down. Beth soon dies.
Amy and Laurie reunite in France, and they fall in love. They marry and return home. Jo begins to hope that Professor Bhaer will come for her. He does, and they marry a year later. Amy and Laurie have a daughter named Beth, who is sickly. Jo inherits Plumfield, Aunt March’s house, and decides to turn it into a boarding school for boys. The novel ends with the family happily gathered together, each sister thankful for her blessings and for each other.

《小妇人》 国外研究现状

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在露易莎·梅·奥尔科特的著名小说《小妇人》中，女主人公乔拒绝了完美的邻家男孩——洛里的爱，而嫁给了父辈的贝尔教授。这个令人伤感的结局给一代代的读者们带来了无穷遗憾，也引起了批评家们的激烈争论。本文认为，她的拒绝不仅来自于她的叛逆性格，她对自由、女性空间和男性力量的深切而本能的欲望，而且来自于她偏执狂般的维护一个充满慈爱、自我满足的女性社区的欲望。她的拒绝是自我挫败式的，但也确实张扬了自己的个性。故事的结局是一个叛逆和现实之间对抗的无奈的妥协。

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