Jul 24, · Critical Analysis of Little Women - Term Paper Little Women. Little Women Little Women was written in , the setting is New England in Little Women Little Women Little Women was written in , the setting is New England in the 19th Century during and after the Civil War. The story begins at Christmas time. The girl’s father is away in the war. It is Christmas and there are memories of better times Little Women. In: English and Literature. Submitted By mprairie. Words Pages 6. Little Women Little Women was written in , the setting is New England in the 19th Century during and after the Civil War. The story begins at Christmas time. The girl’s father is away in the war. It is Christmas and there are memories of better times
Differing views on Feminism in Little Women Term Paper
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's defining work, which brought her much fame in her time, is a biographical account of her family. In the bookher father Amos Bronson is Mr. March and her mother Abigail May is Marmee, while her older sister Anna is Meg and younger sisters Lizzie and May are Beth and Amy, respectively. And Louisa May is the lead character, Josephine or Jo March, the second daughter.
The novel, published inmade Alcott a major author of her era. The March family is poor all throughout, and the women are always doing routine housework, which bores and frustrates them.
March serves as a Union chaplain little women term papers the Civil War, which then rages, and he writes his family to inspire little women term papers to be more tolerant of their poverty and hardships.
The girls wake up on Christmas morning to find copies of books under their pillows, probably "Pilgrim's Progress" as gifts for them from their father. True to their shaping as charitable Christians, they donate their breakfast to another poor family, the Hummels. But Meg, the eldest, has wealthy friend, Sally Gardiner, who invites her and Jo to Sally's New Year's party. Jo meets Laurie at that party and when Meg injures her ankle, Laurie takes the sisters home.
Once home, Meg and Jo confront the grilling home chores that frustrate them. The story caters most to Jo - Alcott's impersonation - who is tomboyish, self-expressive, has a temper, hates romance and is obsessed with family unity and welfare.
She wants to be a writer and she becomes one, in the book as well as in real life. She rejects Laurie's offer of marriagealthough everyone expects they would end up with each other. In the latter part, she instead marries Little women term papers Bhaer when she gives up writingand this can be interpreted as either a triumph for her domestic values or a professional loss to and in her, who consistently displays an independent spirit in the novel, little women term papers. The sharp contradiction in Jo's choices is the very contradiction in Alcott's values between domesticity and personal rebellionanger, mental strength and independence she exuded in real life, and something which her father deplored deeply.
The sisters' interactions demonstrate the varying levels of maturity and vigor in young girls of their time. Alcott faithfully represents these in the different scenes of the novel. Amy's teacher catches her trading limes in school and punishes her. Marmee reacts by withdrawing Amy from school.
When Jo refuses to bring Amy along to the theaterAmy hits back by burning Jo's manuscripts. In further retaliation, Jo almost lets Amy drown while ice-skating. A telegram arrives to tell the women that Mr. March is hospitalized in Washington DC.
They are so penniless that Jo has to sell her hair to have money for Marmee's trip for Washington. While out of the house, the girls abandon housework, which they hate.
Meantime, Beth visits the Hummel family and in that visit, she is infected with the baby's scarlet fever, just like Alcott's real-life sister Lizzie caught the disease. To avoid getting infected, Amy, the youngest, escapes to the house of their aunt. Beth soon recovers, little women term papers. Meanwhile, Laurie's tutor, Mr. Brooke, falls in love with Meg. Meg, the eldest, has a sense of responsibility towards her younger sisters and the most domestically inclined.
She has some liking for luxury and leisure but is, on the whole, little women term papers, kind and loving, little women term papers. Right before the end of the first part of the novel, Mr. Brooke and Meg little women term papers engaged, little women term papers, to the shock and displeasure of Jo.
In the second part, Meg little women term papers Mr. Brooke have moved into a new home and Mr. March is also back from the War. Jo gets published for the first time, but she has to trim her manuscript first as the condition set by her Meg gives birth to twins, Demi and Daisy, and gets immersed little women term papers household duties even more than before. And their Aunt Carroll goes to Paris with Amy instead of Jo, because the aunt prefers Amy's ladylike manners and looks to Jo's rugged tomboyish appearance and ways.
Left alone, Jo perceives that Beth likes Laurie for herself and so leaves for New York to give her a chance to win him. In New York, Jo meets Professor Bhaer, who counsels her to change from sensationalistic writing to a simpler one, and she takes the advice. Upon her return, Laurie once more proposes to her, but she rejects him again.
At this time, Beth passes away - a parallelism of the passing away of Lizzie, Alcott's real-life sister, little women term papers. In the story, Laurie meets Amy instead in France and there they begin a relationship and soon marry. They soon have a daughter, named after their deceased sister Beth and also as sickly. Meantime, little women term papers, Jo develops a longing for Professor Bhaer and he follows her.
They are soon married also. Jo inherits her aunt's house, which she afterwards makes into a boarding school for boys. The family is once more happily gathered and each expresses thanks for everyone's blessings. Jo March seems to possess a combination of pleasant and unpleasant traits in equal measure.
As such, she is an oddity for a 19th-century fiction like Alcott's, little women term papers. But looking more deeply, Jo's little women term papers, anger and frankness are not un-appealing but merely reveal her humanity, little women term papers genuine personality. She depicts what can be said to be the first among many in a class of flawed but lovable heroes and heroines of children's fiction.
Beth March is quiet, very virtuous, shy and docile. Her first passion is to please others, although she utterly resents the housework she is doomed to do. She is also after keeping the family together and surviving. She embodies old-fashioned women's characteristics in 19th-century English works, such as those by Charles Dickens. Her all-too-good personality, however, does not seem to fit the realistic and grim framework of Alcott's fiction, which appears to shake the imbalance off with Beth's death.
Of the four sisters, Beth is very close to Jo, while Amy is closer to Meg than to the other sisters. And it makes sense, because Beth's weakness complements Jo's strength and both of them exude a rebellion against the preferred ways for women in their time.
Meg and Amy, on the other hand, complement each other too Meg's generosity parallels Amy's selfishness and coveting, and both can survive in a chauvinist world. Like Amy, Meg too has some liking for luxury and money, thus makes friends with rich girls, little women term papers, Annie Moffat and Sally Gardiner.
She is the typical or conventional woman little women term papers takes after her mother. Meg, like her mother, turns into a pleasant housewife, although she hates both housework and politicswhich her husband adores. In her inherent desire to please, she submerges her preference for wealth into a marriage to a man who is poor. Amy March is the youngest, the most artistic and the most calculating of the sisters. She has the refined manners of a lady that win others, like their aunt, whose favor she comes after, and Laurie himself, who first loved Jo.
She is Jo's direct contrast in inclination, little women term papers, although both are varieties of what is genuinely human.
Marmee, the mother, is a paragon of devotion and endurance to her family, whose courage is shown while her husband is away from home. There too is Laurie Laurence, the rich and friendly neighbor of the March family who adds color and romance to Jo and Amy.
Laurie is as much a disappointment to his grandfather as Jo is to her father. Laurie's grandfather thinks that Laurie is not manly enough to want to go into business and succeed in it, and Jo is not feminine enough to be a sweet, obedient and subservient as her sisters.
Amos Bronson Alcott, the father, is a straitlaced chaplain with Victorian values, which he wants to see in all his daughters. Alcott first wrote sensational little women term papers stories from the s to the s, published anonymously through a pseudonym in New England periodicals. The publishers were in agreement that the characters are colorful and well-conceived and the plots, tightly woven and complex. In most of her anonymous stories was a mysterious and vindictive woman who seeks to manipulate and to destroy, little women term papers.
Alcott also includes ghosts, opium eaters and mercenaries in her series. She took advantage of writing these very popular works as means of steady income for her family. Then she wrote the series on "Little Women," which was most successful in illustrating the life-sized struggles between adolescence and maturity among the sisters. It was the novel's faithful and lifelike depiction of the March family in a realistic way and Alcott's representation of New England manners and beliefs with accuracy that brought it fame and victory.
Critics ascribed its success to the organization of the novel, wherein each chapter had an entire episode with a moral commentary, as one whole treatise on adolescent psychology. These critics praised Alcott's characterization and viewed…. Bibliography Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. com Microsoft Encarta ® Online Encyclopedia accessed Microsoft Corporation Schafer, Nancy Imelda.
Life and Works of Louisa May Alcott. Camden County Free Library. Popular Culture and Gender Identification In the United States and throughout the world the popular culture has both reflected and created the identity of the individual and that larger population. One of the most important aspects of a person's identity is their gender. This is a socially constructed label that is applied to someone, most often based upon their physical sex.
However, there are many cases wherein a person's gender identification. Glende One of the most recent technological developments which has precipitated a greater democratization of the Internet is the proliferation of networking sites that have become prominent recently.
These sites attract millions of users and viewers or users and viewers and have become a source for the proliferation of popular culture. There is also a view from scholars that the link between popular cultures and the Internet is synergistic.
Amy burns Jo's manuscript - \
, time: 1:45FREE Little Women Essay
Little Women Little Women Little Women was written in , the setting is New England in the 19th Century during and after the Civil War. The story begins at Christmas time. The girl’s father is away in the war. It is Christmas and there are memories of better times Little Women. In: English and Literature. Submitted By mprairie. Words Pages 6. Little Women Little Women was written in , the setting is New England in the 19th Century during and after the Civil War. The story begins at Christmas time. The girl’s father is away in the war. It is Christmas and there are memories of better times Excerpt from Term Paper: Little Women, Louisa May Alcott's defining work, which brought her much fame in her time, is a biographical account of her blogger.com the book, her father Amos Bronson is Mr. March and her mother Abigail May is Marmee, while her older sister Anna is Meg and younger sisters Lizzie and May are Beth and Amy, respectively. And Louisa May is the lead character, Josephine or
No comments:
Post a Comment