Her book “Little Women” follows the adolescence of the girls into adulthood, captures their private domestic experience concretely, dramatizes their creative play, and explores their struggles to become artists, good sisters, as well as happy wives. While it can seem to be a simple story, the novel centers on many social struggles of the time, the main one being the conflict between two emphases in a young woman’s life: that which she places on herself, and that which she places on her family. We see that there is a great emphasis on domestic duties and family detracts from various women’s abilities to attend to their own personal growth. An example of this would be Jo’s case, that has difficulties in being both a professional artist and a dutiful woman, pushing the boundaries set by nineteenth century American society. In the novel, Through the four different sisters, Louisa Alcott explores four possible ways to deal with being a women bound by the constraints of the century’s social expectations: marry young and create a new family, as Meg did; be subservient and dutiful to one’s parents, as Beth did; focus on one’s art, pleasure, and person, as Amy did at first; or struggle to live both a dutiful family and a good professional life of your own, as Jo did.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott focuses on four sisters; Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy March that are a part of a very poor, humble family. While their father is off at war, they are left with their loving mother at home encouraging them to be a better person and the better version of themselves. As all four girls go through love and loss, they discover that they are truly brave and courageous. One very important major event was when the March sisters struggle to improve their various flaws as they grow into adults. Jo dreams of becoming a great writer and does not want to become a conventional adult woman.
“The emerging woman… will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied… strength and beauty must go together.” Introduced to the novel of Little Women at the age of 11, I quickly fell under the trance of Louisa May Alcott’s astounding writing. Louisa May Alcott… Teacher, domestic servant, feminist, army nurse, and most famously, a novelist. Her self-reliance openly resisted the cultural worldview of women’s equality. Her personal literary legacy made a great impact on her society. Alcott wrote Little Women, her most acclaimed novel at the age of 35.
"While I was experiencing the routine miseries of childhood, my mother was discovering the Depression." (Chap. 6, p. 75) Baker often explains his mother 's, thoughts, opinions and point of view, this allowed for me to almost be in her shoes and gave me a different perspective on Russell Baker. While reading this book a theme that was very evident was women. In both Lucy’s life as Russell 's women seemed to play a huge in role their family and society.
Many girls desire a female role model from a young age. The way these women are treated, and deal with this treatment can heavily impact the way young girls view themselves, and their future as well. Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street brings attention to issues of sexism and gender roles. This is done through a series of vignettes about the main character Esperanza navigating life by the example of her many role models. Each role model impacts Esperanza in a special way, Sally who is married at 13, Marin who is waiting to be rescued by a man, and Alicia who is balancing school and home responsibilities.
The feminist critics look into this relationship of mother and child very deeply with different factors. Daughter – mother relation is dynamic in nature which has undergone sweeping changes down through the ages. Those particular changes have taken place due to the attention rested on mothers and daughters respectively, since every mother was once herself as a daughter and every daughter can attain motherhood later in their life. Feminist psychoanalytic theorists suggest, “The sex-role socialization process is different for boys and girls. While boys learn maleness by rejecting femaleness via separating themselves from their mothers, girls establish feminine identities by embracing the femaleness of their mothers.
"I want to do something splendid… something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.” Little Women by Louisa May is about the four March sisters-Beth, Jo, Meg, and Amy. They are growing up in Civil-war era New England and although they are lacking money, they do not lack love. As the 4 girls are waiting the arrival of their Mother on Christmas Day, they learn something about the spirit of giving along the way. This shows people that personal experience can change people’s values for the better, because people learn from their experiences, look up to their role models, and from the way that they are raised.
Each one of these reforms, the Market Revolution, Second Great Awakening, led to women becoming more vocal about their wants and needs, their children’s wants and needs but also to the countries wants and needs. Women were able to make changes happen by gaining the education, and independence but not by setting down and waiting for a man to give it to them but by stepping out of their roles and thumbing their noses at the establishment and demanding change. But the one thing that never changed over this time is that the mother is the nurturer of her family and the moral compass that guides her children on the right
The influence of Lady Gregory’s early life on her works, and her depiction of women, provides insight and acts as a contrast to the portrayal of women by other prominent male playwrights of her time and the characterization of the female character Grania. Using the play Grania, Lady Gregory explores possibilities for Irish women to defy gender expectations. To better understand Lady Gregory’s portrayal of women, it is essential to examine the effect of her early life on her works. Lady Gregory negatively characterizes her childhood years as silent, cold, and bound with strict religious piety. To recover from a life that was often suffocated by others, she later “created the means to insert herself into history” (Waters 24), and explores concepts of self determination and representation in her works.
Reading Response 1 Title: Only a Woman Author: Amel Benaboura Text type: Short story Date: 19/2/2018 Amel Benaboura’s short story ‘Only a Woman’ follows the hardships of life for Yamina, a young woman who grew up in patriarchal Algeria where violence towards women was common and went unpunished. So when Yamina is frequently abused and threatened by her older brother, she does not think to stand up for herself. One key theme in the text that is that you will never be free if you do not stand up for yourself and for your rights. Benaboura focuses her story on Yamina and how she learns to fight for her rights. Mrs Raïs is an important character in the story.