Akstein: Media Analysis

“Contradictory Views of Gender Roles within Little Women”

The independence of women is a major theme in the novel Little Women. However, the dilemma for Alcott appears to be that although most of her female characters are strong, they still conform to typical female roles. If we go back in time to 1868 when Little Women was written, we are faced with convictions that dictated women to be virtuous, pure, and asexual. Sexual activity amongst women was understood as something to be endured to gratify their husbands or to procreate. Family remained the chief patriarchal institution and society determined that males ruled over females. Thus, gender binaries were very clear and always enforced. There was little that tied the two sexes together, and while women may have depended on men financially, it was women that they turned to emotionally. However, in many ways Alcott resists these conventions in her attempt to create strong female role models, which support the self-determination of women, and thus contribute to the fluidity of gender roles. Indeed, it is the disappointment of sexuality, being made of “one sex,” while desiring to be another that exists as a complex issue surrounding a critical analysis of Little Women; therefore, an in-depth study of Jo March’s sexual ambiguity allows for a better understanding of the performative nature of gender roles in Little Women.

It is fairly plain to see that Louisa May Alcott’s book addresses the issue of gender roles in society and also provides ample opportunities to examine and question these roles. Most readers identify through Jo’s character, which in turn shows the most outward rejection of gender norms. As Quimby writes, “Fewer would have predicted that what seems to fuel the imaginations and excite the desires of generations of girlhood readers is precisely Jo’s refusal of normative girlhood identifications and desires; she wants to be the man of the family, not the little woman.” Thus, Jo is a great example of a strong progressive female character because she goes against her culture’s expectations, breaking most of the rules, and living her life according to her will and desires. Jo is also characteristically outspoken and has a passion for writing. Her bold nature often gets her into trouble. Therefore we are led to believe that Jo exemplifies the typical tomboy stereotype. By refusing to learn and enact femininity, the tomboy destabilizes gender as a natural construct. In a revelatory phrase, Jo March laments that “it’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy’s games, and work and manners. I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy” (Alcott). Thus, as this statement suggests, tomboy plots like Jo’s are popular in part because they provoke in readers an imaginative perception of the possibilities of perverse identifications and desires among children. Nonetheless, even though many critics do seem to agree that she is a tomboy, what the tomboy represents is open to interpretation. Quimby explains this dilemma further by arguing that “the impulse to normalize Jo is understandable, but it is an impulse defined by the regulatory frame of heterosexuality, which must expel the tomboy’s queer identifications and queer plot, a plot that renders gender unfixed, that we may someday understand as representative of a ‘full humanity’.” Furthermore, even though men are noticeably absent within Little Women and the men that are present are feminized, the inference that male rules female is still maintained. According to Tuck, “Jo’s refusal to perform her prescribed gender role rather illustrates a reluctance to grow up and leave behind her bi-sexual childhood and enter this womanhood of compulsory heterosexuality.” Indeed, it is not until the death of Beth that she is forced to leave behind her bi-sexual world behind her and journey into womanhood; thus, her sister’s death signifies the death of her own childhood. In addition, if we consider why Alcott refused to marry Laurie in the book, the most probable reason is that she had already united them within a romantic friendship. Therefore, as the book clearly suggests, Laurie and Jo are equally adept at occupying each others sexual spheres, and thus they can exist independently of gender and sexuality. Several indicators of Jo’s androgyny are apparent. For example, she is constantly referred to as boyish and much is made of the fact that she whistles. She is the breadwinner of the family, ultimately supporting them through her literary endeavors, and she is unable to perform any feminine tasks properly like cooking. Also, all her chores are masculine, she isn’t sentimental, and she plays all the male roles in their plays. In contrast, Laurie is quite feminized in that he prefers a girl’s name, is moody, and artistic. Thus, as Tuck observes, “Whilst they are aware of their biological maleness and femaleness and are vaguely aware of their socially separate spheres, they do not need to find their place within one or the other.” Yet, other critics would say that with the eventual demise of this relationship, the sexual boundaries within Little Women are no longer blurred and the hegemonic social order is fully restored. Thus, while it may appear that Little Women remained within its conservative roots and ultimately reinforced gender norms and heterosexual relations, one needs to place the novel within its historical context. Its place within the nineteenth century domestic novel genre allows us to appreciate that this book was and remains a radical novel that barely escapes censorship and succeeds in its attempt to question the sexual conventions and stereotypes of its era. Thus, I believe that Alcott creates an awareness of gender roles and their expectations by exposing them to us; and then by creating this awareness she allows readers to decide what they are going to do with that knowledge. She recreates the difficulties people face in real life when their actions, either consciously or unconsciously conform to gender roles or resist them.

Nonetheless, there are other feminist critics that believe Alcott’s characters support dominant and patriarchally defined roles for women, thus reinforcing the very roles we seek to reject. So, according to Alberghene and Clark “chief tension occurs between a liberal-feminist ideal of autonomy and a cultural feminist ideal of connectedness.” Thus, some argue that Jo provides a model of independence, even if she ultimately gives in to marriage. Yet others still say that she submits to prevailing cultural norms rather than contesting them. Also, there is a great deal of criticism surrounding Jo’s marriage to Professor Bhaer. Most critics seem to contend that he represents patriarchal values around which the March family circle ultimately revolves, and thus his marriage to Jo seems to perpetuate it. In addition, another subject of controversy for critics lies in the way Little Women shows us how negative emotions in fact actively produce the specific forms of gender the book elaborates. The message that comes through to readers according to Foote is that “women must learn to repress their anger, even if their anger is, in the world of the novel, just and reasonable.” One can take the example of Amy, who through her narcissism, acts as an antithesis to Jo. Amy’s argument to Jo is that gender conformity helps to compensate for uncertain class positions. Thus, many critics have made arguments about the transformation of Jo’s rebelliousness, and the domestication of her character. Foote talks about the way the domestication of Jo is “deeply implicated in the lessons of class that she slowly comes to engage with not just emotionally-angrily, or resentfully, or yearning- but critically.” Class is a moral orientation toward the world, and it is therefore tied to gender and its relationship to the moral. So, as these critics suggest, the characters endure a series of mortifying confrontations with their own social inadequacies, and that they experience very negative emotions. These are in turn transformed through the understanding that the home can aid in learning, practicing, and reconfiguring social distinctions into natural distinctions. Moreover, another negative criticism of Little Women lies in the title itself. Some wonder whether Alcott’s novel belittles women in serving as an instrument for teaching girls how to be “little.” Armstrong writes that “Little women tend to be restricted to little deeds when they live in a little sphere. Part of the pressure for an adolescent girl of this period is the need to choose an appropriately-sized sphere for the adulthood ahead of her.” Thus, the problems of little deeds and little spheres are pointers to the central problem: the fear of the littleness of womanhood. Also, in respect to Jo’s temperament, her efforts to break out of the vicious circle of anger are bound to fail if the circle is kept intact by the anger of others. That is because Jo’s weapons are words, and verbal expression of anger is unacceptable. Furthermore, her grief must be ignored in the effort to silence anger. Thus the text belittles women in diminishing the power of words.

The power of Little Women derives in large measure from the contradictions and tensions it exposes, and how it presents the feminist exploration colliding repeatedly against patriarchal repression. Thus, for a feminist reader of the book, two familiar questions arise: Is Alcott creating a supporting argument for traditional gender roles? Or is she taking a subversive stance towards society and its expectations of gender roles? Critics tend to place themselves on one side or the other; however, I believe that her purpose was simply to create an awareness of gender roles and their normative expectations through Little Women’s vivid female characters, though with significant attention to Jo’s overtly ambiguous sexuality. She thus highlights the effects that cultural constructions of gender have on individuals. These effects ultimately will be taken for granted, and will continue to manipulate people’s lives until, and unless, society is forced to acknowledge their existence.