In this blog post, we’ll explore the four sisters’ journey of growth, their mother’s educational philosophy, and the themes of women’s self-actualization and feminist significance embedded in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’.
Even readers who had a contented smile on their faces throughout their reading of ‘Little Women’ might have found themselves thinking this to themselves as they closed the book.
“How could such a simple and wholesome novel rise to the ranks of the world’s literary classics?”
Louisa May Alcott’s (1832–1888) ‘Little Women’ contains no dramatic events, no tragic anguish on the part of the protagonists, and no complex relationships or subtle inner drama. It is an utterly ordinary story of the four sisters—the protagonists of the work—growing into adulthood while navigating minor conflicts. Moreover, even the process of their growth is so natural that the kind of extraordinary events we typically consider worthy of a novel are rarely to be found. The most significant events are the death of the angelic third sister, Beth, and Jo inheriting her great-aunt’s estate to run a school.
So, are the four sisters in this novel merely ordinary characters? Did they simply grow into adulthood in a natural and uneventful way? The author firmly states that this is not the case.
What greater task could there be than devoting one’s entire life to one’s parents and striving to make the home a happy place not only for oneself but for the entire family? Moreover, how immense was the effort she was making? What could be more difficult than a girl who had always been ambitious deciding to set aside her hopes, plans, and desires and willingly live for others? (p. 295)
These are words the author added directly, describing how Jo quietly took over the household chores that her closest younger sister, Beth, had been handling after Beth passed away.
Jo, who had ambitions to become a writer, great hopes for the future, and strong desires, sets all of that aside to devote herself wholeheartedly to the minutiae of household chores. By common sense, this is a failure and a surrender. Yet the author says that this, in fact, is a tremendous feat—something that cannot be achieved without truly arduous effort.
By today’s standards, this is a story that’s hard to grasp. From a young age, we’ve heard countless times that we must harbor grand ambitions. We live under the teaching that, in order to succeed and gain fame and fortune, we must sacrifice trivial matters, and that striving for success is the most valuable pursuit. Surrounded by such advice, the path before us seems to consist of only two options. Either strive for success, or taste failure and face frustration.
Of course, there seems to be one more path: rebelling against such advice and finding your own way. However, if that path is judged by the simple dichotomy of success and failure, it is easily dismissed as a path to failure.
Yet in the quote above, everything is turned on its head. It states that striving to let go of one’s desires is more difficult than striving to fulfill them. It says that striving to create a happy home for the entire family is a greater endeavor than striving for one’s own success. Why is that?
Because, no matter how positively one views it, selfishness plays no small part in the desire to succeed and fulfill one’s desires. Even if a writer pens an excellent novel that moves people and has a positive impact on the world, that work is still imbued with personal desire. Household chores, on the other hand, are done solely for the family. This work is by no means trivial compared to social success, because it is rooted in selflessness. And setting aside selfishness to practice selflessness is by no means an easy task.
As he throws the manuscript—which he had written solely for money—into the fire, Jo murmurs the following:
“I used to think how nice it would be if I didn’t have a conscience. I thought life would be so much easier if I didn’t have to strive to do the right thing and could feel at ease even when doing wrong. I used to think how nice it would be if my father and mother weren’t so strict about such matters. But I should be grateful to have such strict parents by my side. It’s far more pitiful to have no one around to guide you down the right path. Since I’m young, there are times when those strict principles feel like a prison to me. But they are the foundation for me to grow into a proper woman.”
We all carry our own burdens and walk our own paths. But every human being is imperfect. No one can walk the right path alone, without anyone’s help. To walk the right path, we absolutely need a guide. In this work, the person who plays the role of such a guide is the parents—and, among them, the mother.
The mother in the story leads her children down the right path through deep love, sincere advice, and a variety of experiences that allow them to gain insights through firsthand experience. Guided by their mother, the four sisters grow into people who find happiness in their own lives.
However, their happiness does not stem from achieving any particular success. It is because they have nurtured and cherished their own virtues deep within their hearts. In that sense, the four sisters are by no means ordinary. They live their lives possessing inner virtues and qualities that are rarely seen in this world. Moreover, when viewed against the backdrop of today’s world, where such qualities are hard to find, these seemingly ordinary women are, in fact, the truly special ones.
While reading this novel, I found myself wishing that someone would whisper these words to me:
“She’s really unusually kind. She’s really unusually humble. She’s really unusually upright. She’s really unusually honest. She’s really unusually pure. She’s really unusually cheerful. She’s really unusually spirited. Her eyes really sparkle in an unusual way. He’s really unusually stubborn. He’s really unusually considerate of others. He’s really unusually generous. He’s really unusually timid. He’s really unusually tearful. He’s really unusually affectionate.”
I want to see a colorful world full of such unusual people.
“What’s the point of all that? Does being kind put food on the table? Humans are selfish animals anyway. The most important things are money and success. That’s ultimately where the meaning of life lies. Smart people are the best.”
Rather than a world full of people who use words like these to crush that colorful world and try to fill it with just one color, I want to see a world where diverse colors coexist.
The four sisters in ‘Little Women’ are colorful. But what makes them so isn’t just their individual personalities. It’s because they received fundamental teachings from their mother—to be kind, to help others, to be diligent, to develop the strength to overcome hardships, and to be frugal.
It was upon these shared values that the four sisters were able to let their individual qualities blossom to the fullest. A mother who raises her children in this way is not someone who merely hopes her children will climb the social ladder or make a fortune. She is someone who hopes her children will live a life that suits them—a life they love—whatever path they choose, without losing sight of the fundamentals. And it is precisely such a mother who can raise her children to become individuals, each with their own unique color.
What would happen if we didn’t have such a mother by our side? What if all mothers succumbed to the world’s temptations, forcing their children to pursue success and expecting nothing else? What if only such materialistic mothers existed?
I can say with certainty that children would rebel, whether outwardly or inwardly. But what’s even more frightening is the fact that even while rebelling, the child eventually ends up resembling their mother. This means they fail to develop their own standards for life. What happens then? They become selfish. They become irresponsible. They mistake licentiousness for freedom. And perhaps that is exactly what our society looks like today. It’s incredibly difficult to find mothers like the one in this story in our daily lives.
I hope many mothers will read this story. I hope it will give them an opportunity to reflect on what it truly means to love their children. No—what mother doesn’t truly love her child? It’s just that there are ways and wisdom involved in love. I hope that many mothers who sincerely love their children will learn those ways through this story.
After all, isn’t the purpose of raising a child ultimately to send them out into the world? If so, isn’t it only natural to hope that one’s child will be regarded as a fine person by others? We cannot keep our children in our arms forever. Sometimes, a stern rebuke is needed more than warm, comforting words.
Let me add one more point. The spirit that the mother teaches her children in this work is none other than the Puritan spirit. It is a spirit grounded in diligence, honesty, and a willingness to help those in need—and an attitude that views life as a pilgrimage in which one “navigates countless difficulties and mistakes, guided by a heart that yearns for truth and happiness, to reach peace, the true ‘City of Heaven’ (p. 21).”
I hope that mothers who read this book will come to understand the American Puritan spirit and education, and, furthermore, gain at least some understanding of the fundamental spirit of the United States.
I encourage readers to compare this novel with Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’. Of course, since ‘Jane Eyre’ is a British novel and ‘Little Women’ is an American novel, their settings are fundamentally different. Furthermore, Jane Eyre from ‘Jane Eyre’ and the protagonists of ‘Little Women’ have fundamentally different personalities. In short, Jane Eyre is rebellious, while the protagonists of this work are relatively compliant. For this reason, ‘Jane Eyre’ is often regarded as the pioneer of feminist literature, whereas ‘Little Women’ is relatively less often described as a feminist work.
However, I believe this work is also one of the most important feminist novels, on par with ‘Jane Eyre’. This is not simply because the protagonists are women. Just as Jane Eyre did in ‘Jane Eyre’, the protagonists of this work—especially Jo, in whom the author projects herself—face the world with dignity, holding onto their own unwavering values, namely the values they learned from their mother.
This confrontation is not an act of rejecting existing values and order. Rather, it is closer to a struggle with oneself—facing one’s own destiny head-on and realizing one’s own dreams within it. I believe that, too, is a form of excellent feminism.
Just as Jane Eyre in ‘Jane Eyre’ proved her worth in a male-dominated society through the gentleness and sensitivity unique to women, the protagonists of ‘Little Women’ also fulfill their respective dreams based on that same gentleness and sensitivity. And through their examples, they give us the strength to embrace the world.
‘Little Women’ is a compilation of works originally published as separate books in 1868 and 1869. Initially, only the content corresponding to what is now Part 1 was published under the title ‘Little Women’. Upon its release, the book received an overwhelmingly positive response that surprised both the author and the publisher.
In response, Alcott wrote and published a sequel titled ‘Good Wives’. This work was also widely loved, and in 1880, the two volumes were combined and republished under the title ‘Little Women’.
It is widely known that the characters and events in the novel are closely tied to the author’s own life, leading some critics to classify the work as a “biographical novel.” In particular, it is widely acknowledged that the character Jo was modeled after the author herself.
‘Little Women’ was a huge success immediately upon its publication and was quickly adapted into two silent films. Since then, it has been adapted into films on several occasions, including the 2019 version directed by Greta Gerwig, and has also been adapted into various television series, such as the 2017 BBC production.
In addition, a musical adaptation premiered on Broadway in 2005, and an opera produced in 1998 was adapted for television in 2001 and broadcast nationwide in the United States. In a 2003 BBC poll, ‘Little Women’ was ranked 18th among all English-language novels of all time and 4th among works by American authors.
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown—now part of Philadelphia—to her devoutly Christian father, Amos Bronson Alcott, and her mother, Abigail May. Like the characters in ‘Little Women’, she was the second of four sisters.
In 1834, her father moved to Boston and founded a kind of experimental school, where he interacted with contemporary intellectuals such as Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Longfellow. Thanks to this, Alcott was able to grow up in an intellectual environment from an early age.
Olcott’s family moved a staggering twenty-two times over the course of thirty years, and it was not until 1858 that they were able to return to their hometown. It was there that Olcott wrote ‘Little Women’.
Her family was as poor as the March family in the novel, and like Jo, Alcott wrote from a young age to help support her family. She also published several works under the pen name A. M. Barnard, just as in the story. However, the work that truly brought her fame and success was, of course, ‘Little Women’.
Unlike Jo in the novel, however, she remained unmarried and lived as a single woman her entire life. She later published several other works, including ‘Eight Cousins’, ‘Under the Lilacs’, ‘Jo’s Children’, and ‘Aunt Jo’s Ragtag Bag’.
She passed away in Boston on March 6, 1888, from a stroke, two days after her father’s death. She was 55 years old. In 1996, she was inducted into the ‘American Women’s Hall of Fame’.
