Little Women
Apr. 24th, 2010 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dream*Little Women* - fab! Famous from first publication onwards. I’m only going to talk about one aspect of it.
On one hand, it’s a feminist Ur-text. It is all about women, doing womanly things which are valued, which are at the centre of the novel.
On the other hand, the Little Women are only free of male authority because Alcott shuffled Mr March off to the war. He comes back at the end, bringing back the patriarchy. I find the conversation that Marmee has with Jo about how Mr March has trained her not to lose her temper very disturbing. Talk about looming male authority.
So, in a way, the freedom the girls have is an illusion. It exists only for a brief spring before they grow up. (The title of the sequel is Good Wives).
Which leads me to another issue. I really resent that Jo ends up with Professor Bhaer. (And I’m not the only one. See: http://community.livejournal.com/ship_manifesto/237830.html#cutid1)
Alcott wrote in the end of a later work that she would marry her characters as she knew people would like as she had received so much flak for not doing it in another book. And, OK, fangirls don’t get to make the ending; the author gets to make the ending. (Cough, Torchwood).
But if Jo cannot marry Laurie, why, why, why must she marry Bhaer? She and Laurie fight all the time - and this is because they are equals. Equals! Compare this with Jo’s deferential relationship with Bhaer who does nothing but squash her. He tells her not to write, not to be creative, which means that she can’t earn her own living.
The more I think abotu Bhaer - the older man, a Transcendentalist philosopher, unsuccessful, poor - the more I think he is modelled on Alcott’s own father, which just makes it wrong, wronger, wrongest.
So, on one hand, yay for *Little Women* as a feminist text. And on the other, darn the forces of patriarchy.
On one hand, it’s a feminist Ur-text. It is all about women, doing womanly things which are valued, which are at the centre of the novel.
On the other hand, the Little Women are only free of male authority because Alcott shuffled Mr March off to the war. He comes back at the end, bringing back the patriarchy. I find the conversation that Marmee has with Jo about how Mr March has trained her not to lose her temper very disturbing. Talk about looming male authority.
So, in a way, the freedom the girls have is an illusion. It exists only for a brief spring before they grow up. (The title of the sequel is Good Wives).
Which leads me to another issue. I really resent that Jo ends up with Professor Bhaer. (And I’m not the only one. See: http://community.livejournal.com/ship_manifesto/237830.html#cutid1)
Alcott wrote in the end of a later work that she would marry her characters as she knew people would like as she had received so much flak for not doing it in another book. And, OK, fangirls don’t get to make the ending; the author gets to make the ending. (Cough, Torchwood).
But if Jo cannot marry Laurie, why, why, why must she marry Bhaer? She and Laurie fight all the time - and this is because they are equals. Equals! Compare this with Jo’s deferential relationship with Bhaer who does nothing but squash her. He tells her not to write, not to be creative, which means that she can’t earn her own living.
The more I think abotu Bhaer - the older man, a Transcendentalist philosopher, unsuccessful, poor - the more I think he is modelled on Alcott’s own father, which just makes it wrong, wronger, wrongest.
So, on one hand, yay for *Little Women* as a feminist text. And on the other, darn the forces of patriarchy.
