140 Alcott, Louisa May
the reader a glimpse of the real dangers illness pre-
sented in the Victorian period.
The idea that Beth’s death highlights the bless-
ings of life is further reinforced by the final chapter
of Little Women. The chapter, entitled “Harvest
Time,” signifies the bounty and good fortune of the
harvest, but it also inspires images of transition and
death. It is here that Alcott reveals that Laurie and
Amy’s only daughter, also named Beth, is a frail,
sickly child. The similarity in the name “Beth” is not
a coincidence; like her aunt, it seems that little Beth’s
constitution is under constant threat. However, fear
of Beth’s fragility is bringing her parents closer and
even causing improvements to their characters. Amy
is “growing sweeter, deeper, and more tender,” and
Laurie is “more serious, strong, and firm.” The lesson
that both parents learn is that “beauty, youth, good
fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain,
loss and sorrow, from the most blessed.”
Cheryl Blake Price
parentinG in Little Women
Unsurprisingly, parenting plays a large role in Louisa
May Alcott’s Little Women, a book that primarily
chronicles the maturation of four sisters from young
adolescence to adulthood. Just as Little Women can
be seen as a guidebook for young adults (especially
girls) on proper moral and social behavior, it can also
serve as a primer for raising children. The parents of
Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy have a very specific task: to
mold their girls into industrious, helpful, and cheer-
ful Christian women. Through personal example,
daily lessons, and Christian teachings, Marmee and
Father succeed in this goal, but not without some
difficulties. Despite the hard work that parenting
entails, it is presented as the epitome of a woman’s—
and, to a large part, a man’s—life. The second part
of the book continues to follow the lives of the girls
once they marry and begin to have children of their
own, which affords the novel another opportunity
to model appropriate child-rearing practices and to
present parenting as a joyful, necessary, and fulfilling
experience.
At the novel’s opening, the March family is,
in effect, a one-parent household, as Mr. March is
away from home fighting in the Civil War. With
her eldest daughters growing rapidly, Marmee must
balance preparing her girls for adulthood with
household duties, charitable work, and money mat-
ters. However, she does have some help from her
two oldest daughters, Meg and Jo, who each “adopt”
one of the younger siblings to watch over and care
for. Although the novel certainly promotes the
traditional nuclear family, it also shows that caring,
successful families can come in other forms as well.
Mr. March’s absence in the early part of the novel
proves this, as does the example of the neighbor-
ing Lawrence family. The elderly Mr. Lawrence has
lived through the loss of his wife, son, daughter-
in-law, and granddaughter, and he is left only with
his grandson, Laurie. While the Lawrence house-
hold appears to be more disharmonious than the
Marches’ at times, it shows that a nontraditional
family can also flourish if proper parenting exists in
the home.
The biggest key to the Marches’ child-rearing
success is that they parent through example and
gentle guidance. Marmee’s management of Jo’s
temper is a good example of this parenting style. Jo’s
temper is infamous in the house, and she often has a
hard time controlling it. When Jo’s anger leads Amy
to have a life-threatening accident, Marmee steps
in and confides to Jo that she has a similar anger
problem. Showing Jo how she has overcome her
temper, Mrs. March prompts Jo to conquer her own
faults. Through parenting by example, little punish-
ment is called for; remonstrance, if given, is usually a
gentle shaming rather than harsh words or criticism.
For the Marches, corporal punishment is out of
the question. When Amy receives “several tingling
blows” on her palm as punishment for breaking a
school rule, Mrs. March states, “I don’t approve of
corporal punishment, especially for girls.” The novel
makes clear that children are to be raised with love
and kindness, not harsh words or spankings.
Rather than be sent back to a school that
endorses corporal punishment, Amy is immediately
withdrawn and is home-instructed by her mother
and older sisters. Much of the girls’ education has
been received at home, with Mr. March initially
overseeing instruction and the girls carrying on
their learning once he leaves to serve in the Union
Army. Yet there is another sort of education that
Mr. and Mrs. March are responsible for, and that