primarily on Alcott’s happy childhood in a large,
formerly upper-class family who have fallen on
hard times. Alcott’s novel follows the sisters of the
March family in their transition from adolescence to
adulthood. She models Meg, Beth, and Amy on her
sisters and endows the character of Jo with much of
her own independent spirit, personal struggles, and
love of writing.
The novel is a window into Victorian life, espe-
cially in respect to the lives of women. The March
sisters must learn to accept the expected, but often
restrained, role for women as mothers and wives.
Jo especially has to struggle with her desire for an
independent life as a writer and the accepted role of
women during her time. Yet even Jo finds comfort
in the closeness and security family life creates for
the March girls. The sickness and eventual death of
beloved Beth, the European travels of Amy, and the
marriage of Meg test, but cannot break, these close
family bonds.
Despite the tragic elements present in Little
Women, the book remains an uplifting moral work,
designed to both entertain and impart moral lessons
to the reader. At the end of the novel, the characters
are left leading fulfilled, upright lives as mothers
in their own families. The domestic sphere that is
romanticized in the Victorian period is also ideal-
ized in the novel, and Little Women is at its heart a
celebration of family.
Cheryl Blake Price
tHe american dream in Little Women
The American dream has long symbolized a change
of fortune and the hope that through hard work or
luck, even the poorest person can prosper. Immi-
grants flooding into America in the 19th century
came looking for new opportunities that would lift
them out of the poverty they had experienced in
their home countries; for them, the American dream
was inseparably linked with material wealth. In
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the March fam-
ily offers a different view of the American dream—a
vision of prosperity based not on material gain but
on moral and spiritual wealth.
At first, the American dream seems to have
failed for the March family. Mr. March has lost the
family fortune in some unfortunate business invest-
ments. The four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and
Amy—are caught between worlds; by birth, they are
expected to associate with their wealthy neighbors.
However, their poverty creates a distinct difference
between them and their friends. Much of Little
Women deals with the temptations and frustrations
the March sisters feel as a result of their altered
situation, and from their trials the sisters learn that
“love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings
of life” are “things more precious than any luxuries
money could buy.” While each of the family mem-
bers strives to become a better person and overcome
individual faults, their piety and charity does not
protect the family from tragedy. Yet a silver lining
exists behind every difficulty because bad experi-
ences usually help teach the girls about the impor-
tant things in life.
In order to strengthen her moral argument,
Alcott provides some foils to the March family in
the form of the Gardiner and Moffat families. Both
of these families represent the traditional American
dream of social mobility gained through material
wealth; however, when compared to the Marches,
they are portrayed as lacking the happiness and
blessings of the March family. The wealthy Mof-
fats are described as “not particularly cultivated or
intelligent people, and that all their gilding could
not quite conceal the ordinary material of which
they were made.” During a short visit to the Moffat
home, Meg overhears some hurtful gossip about her
family and gladly leaves the Moffats to return to
the quiet sanctuary of her home. While this episode
does not completely cure Meg of coveting items
such as Sallie Gardiner’s fancy clothing and trinkets,
by the end of the novel she realizes that her life with
John in the “Dovecote” is far happier than the rich
life Sallie and Ned Moffat lead in their mansion.
The Marches’ poverty is often presented as
having advantages, and the relative independence
the girls receive from their situation is one of these
advantages. As the family fortune has been lost,
Meg and Jo offer to work to help support the family.
These two sisters obtain jobs outside of the family,
but Jo’s writing soon becomes a welcome source of
extra income and allows a few luxuries. Eventually,
Jo’s successes inspire her to leave her family and
move to New York to pursue literary prospects, an138 Alcott, Louisa May