The novel Little Women by Louisa May Alcott stands as an archetype of feminine writing from the nineteenth century, a story emphasizing the choices facing women in terms of home and family, career choice, and aspirations. Much of the sense of choice is placed in the hands of Jo, the strongest female in the novel and the one who becomes the center for her family as well. It is this power of choice and inner strength that has attracted generations of readers and that was the attraction for filmmakers recently when they produced a new version of Little Women and successfully shaped the story for a feminist age.
Little Women is not a complex novel nor a complex study of human nature. It is largely about Jo and her struggle to be good and to improve herself in the world, and as such it is believed to represent Louisa's own struggle with the same issue:
She personifies the battle to channel raw energy into acceptable conduits. Girls find in Jo their own fight to repress their aggressive, humorous, spontaneous instincts and turn them into ladylike submission. No one wants to be Meg, old and placid before her time, or Beth, too good to life, or selfish ad vain Amy. But Jo is tender and loving, brusque and abrupt, awkward and poignant. Everything she does is understandable, forgivable, and touching. . . (Saxton 4).
Critics generally agree with this assessment and with the idea that Jo is the strongest character:
The real attraction is not the book as a whole, but its heroine, Jo, and Jo is a unique creation: the one young woman in 19th-century fiction who maintains her individual independence, who gives up no part of her autonomy as payment for being born a woman--and who gets away with it (Janeway 42).
Little Women is the story of a family. The father is absent for half of the book, though he has helped shape the character of his daughters and remains a presence to which they refer. The way the novel is structured,...