After a long time leaving the promise unfulfilled to my bride, I finally read and will reflect on Little Women themes and symbols. I’m wasted as a scholar. But I try my best to be a careful reader. 

What are the main Little Women themes?

1. The Pilgrim’s Progress for women
2. Richness as poverty, poverty as richness
3. The fragility of life backdropping the robustness of courage
4. Creativity as a solution to logistical, emotive, visionary, and decisive problems

It seems to me the Little Women themes that came up the most centered on rich girls who think they’re poor.

Now, these particular Little Women themes showed up in myriad ways:

1. Monetarily rich girls who think they’re monetarily poor
2. Girls rich in marriage prospects thinking they’re poor in the same
3. Girls rich in power who think they’re either incompetent or politically at a disadvantage
4. Girls rich in pleasure who believe themselves suffering from asceticisms
5. Girls locally famous who believe themselves obscure
6. Most importantly girls rich in truth and love and beauty and goodness though they think themselves deceived and hated and ugly and, even at times, evil.

The primary motif of the whole book is that each of the girls — and the set of Little Women as a whole — goes on a pilgrimage. They start with a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress and end with their Father’s return blessing the end of that pilgrimage. Some folks seem to think their books are bibles, but that seems rather absurd to me considering the chapter headings, the constant reference to Pilgrim’s Progress, the transcendentalism of the writer, etc. 

And before I get into the rich-think-they’re-poor sections, I’d also note at the outset that they do share so, so much in common with Alcott and her transcendentalist friends. I won’t say the novel’s autobiographical predominately because I don’t believe in such things. I know people throw this term around all the time, but the truth is that there are autobiographies and then there are novels. “Autobiographical novel” is a term invented by cynical journalists who understand journalism and don’t understand the point of a novel (perhaps this explains Robert Cottrell’s recent ire with David Bentley Hart’s style… “manual”: that of a journalist in spirit criticizing a novelist at heart). This novel clearly diverges from Alcott’s own life at so many key junctures as to be utterly meaningless as a means by which to see the author’s life. What Little Women does to is give us a means by which to see precisely what the author sees from her perspective. And that perspective, mind you, is mid-nineteenth century upper middle class American transcendentalism. It could easily be garnered as well by triangulating her view with her contemporaries: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As an abolitionist and a feminist, it seems still more of that plays into her thoughts. But her passages often feel more like an Emerson novel than a missionary biography, her plots more like a Hawthorne short story than a scriptural parable, her visionary apocalypses like a spoiled Thoreau on a farm. 

Her perils follow. 

So do her virtues.

Money-rich girls who think they’re monetarily poor.

One thing that stood out to me: how poor these four girls seemed to believe themselves compared to how drastically rich they were in comparison to the real poor in their lives. It seems to me to be a common theme of the middle class, particularly the upper middle / lower upper class: they must convince themselves that they’re poor, that there are less people beneath them than there are above them. The poor truly have this as a waking reality, or not people so much as resources. But the middle class do not actually have the same needs. I once had the son of a pastor tell me he’d grown up poor and when I asked this rather portly person whether he’d ever gone without a meal, he grew awkwardly quiet: it was physically obvious that he hadn’t. I have. I once rationed crackers and mustard we’d cribbed from a diner’s condiment tray. 

The novel Little Women emulates this situation.

Many, many times the girls believe themselves to be destitute, to have needs. 

And yet.

The novel seems fillet and canned full of characters quiet clearly more poor than the girls. They’re wrong to think they’re poor, they simply think this way because Laurie’s their neighbor. It’s comparative wealth, not qualitative destitution. This is fundamentally a bourgeoisie novel, in the end; middle class transcendentalists begat it. 

But I began questioning the perspective around the time they identified themselves with the poor. Particularly when you come across passages such as:

Scarlet with shame and anger, Amy went to and fro six dreadful times, and as each doomed couple, looking oh, so plump and juicy, fell from her reluctant hands, a shout from the street completed the anguish of the girls, for it told them that their feast was being exulted over by the little Irish children, who were their sworn foes. 

We find out that their servant Hannah — who codes as a Black slave several times in the novel — is actually a poor Irish woman:

“We thought Hannah was overdoing the authority business, and your mother ought to know. She’d never forgive us if Beth… Well, if anything happened, you know. So I got grandpa to say it was high time we did something, and off I pelted to the office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and Hannah most took my head off when I proposed a telegram. I never can bear to be ‘lorded over’, so that settled my mind, and I did it.”

She’s not the only one:

Day and night she brooded over them with tireless devotion and anxiety, leaving John to the tender mercies of the help, for an Irish lady now presided over the kitchen department. 

They couldn’t deal with an Irish woman in charge. They’re also relegated to the crowd of the inhumane beasts:

“Hurrah for Miss March, the celebrated American authoress!” cried Laurie, throwing up his hat and catching it again, to the great delight of two ducks, four cats, five hens, and half a dozen Irish children, for they were out of the city now.

The families they help?

When I lost sight of Father’s dear old face, I felt a trifle blue, and might have shed a briny drop or two, if an Irish lady with four small children, all crying more or less, hadn’t diverted my mind, for I amused myself by dropping gingerbread nuts over the seat every time they opened their mouths to roar.

Similarly:

“…far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there, and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold. My girls, will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?”

Those were per Germans, in this case, perhaps a Yiddish family? Thank God for Marmee teaching them something of charity. All of this happens precisely in the years of the English genocide (as defined in sections b through e of the United Nations charter). 

So the girls are poor, but they’re not Irish refugees, their sworn enemies. They’re okay helping a poor German family, but the Irish? 

Girls rich in marriage prospects thinking they’re poor in the same.

This leads them to compare themselves to still fussier upper class girls and ends with, for instance, Meg making an absolute fool of herself among the super prissy party. Her main virtues — her mind, her character, her kindness — all go out the window for more shallow prospects. 

And that ends up losing her the favor of some of the “better” suitors she has.

She does, of course, tee herself up in this way for an even better union with an even better man.

girls rich in power who think they’re either incompetent or politically at a disadvantage

Several times this happens. It happens with Amy’s limes (which is more about privilege and bartering favor than it is about money), with Hannah’s decisions, with Jo’s obstinance concerning Laurie, with Meg’s naïveté among the prissier girls. 

As it turns out, over and again, their weakness turns out to be a strength. Meg’s interesting because of her virtue, Jo because of her stubbornness, Amy because of her generosity when she wants to be vain. 

girls rich in pleasure who believe themselves suffering from asceticisms

Often, the girls also think they’re suffering grave asceticisms. One week in particular, they take the entire week off without chores. And their mother lets them suffer the consequences which includes the death of Beth’s bird, no less. It’s awful food, a messy house, and so forth from their lack of industry.

They realize that the push-pull of discipline — that asceticism itself — can lead to a kind of pleasure.

girls locally famous who believe themselves obscure

These all converge to raise them in the opinion of their neighbors, though they think they live in something like a hermitage. In fact, as it turns out, they live on forever in the minds of American English speakers precisely because of the honesty about their obscurity, their local fame. 

girls rich in truth and love and beauty and goodness though they think themselves deceived and hated and ugly and, even at times, evil.

Generally speaking, they all four seem to come back to this pouty tone of “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms.” 

In truth, they’re well loved. They have a handle on what’s true, though they often feel tricked by high society. They enjoy the love of their suitors, though they think that they have no prospects. They find themselves horrendous, though they’re clearly quite handsome to their neighbors. They even think themselves beyond redemption, often overlooking their finest qualities.

All in all, like I said, the Little Women themes that show up again and again have to do with girls who don’t think they’re privileged showing immense privilege throughout the story. Some of this privilege is good, much of it bad, all of it blind.

That seems to be more of the story of pilgrimage than anything: you set your heart on pilgrimage, but you cannot see the way. And if you think you’re behind and talking down to the people that come behind you, you may not realize how far you’ve come and, therefore, how much the next journey mates depend upon your boon and favor and help.

The transition from girlhood to womanhood, in the end, is one of vision. Of opening one’s eyes and giving of one’s self to the world.

It’s quite difficult to actually do that in a truly selfless manner. Self aggrandizing martyrdom? Sure. Self-critiquing cynicism? Sure. Self-flogging asceticism or even pageantry? Of course.

But try — truly try — to revoke whatever you have and hold for the sake of another without once considering your own needs as less important. 

It’s almost impossible, but it’s good.

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Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash