Blog #1 - The Relevancy of the Little Women in Little Women

The Relevancy of the Little Women in Little Women

     According to Katherine Bucher and KaaVonia Hinton in Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation, young adults should have access to “well-written books that deal with important adolescent issues and that reflects their interests and concerns” (11). However, the definition of young adult literature varies due to questions about the age range of young adults which consequently leads to questions about young adult development, interests, and awareness. As Bucher and Hinton find, contemporary adolescents develop faster physically, cognitively, and socially than previous generations (2). Also, the issues of contemporary adolescents are different than those of previous generations. Although Little Women held wide appeal as a model of female behavior to the comfortable classes up to the 1960s, today its relevance has diminished due to its lack realism and the abundance of modern young adult literature that reflect this change in contemporary young adult development, interests, and awareness.

     In Barbara Sicherman’s “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text,” she acknowledges that Little Women is an American fairy tale (653). She finds that the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, provided young women with Jo March as the comfortable classes’ “model of female independence and of intellectual achievement and literary achievement” (650). Yet Sicherman acknowledges that Little Women did not have the same meaning and appeal to all classes of women. To working-class women, Little Women is an American fairy tale (653). Due to its descriptions of “everyday happenings,” working-class women even found middle-class domesticity “banal” (651). Today, young adults can begin working at the age of sixteen. Just as Meg and Jo discuss their jobs as a tutor and a companion in the opening chapter of the novel, modern teenagers are working outside the home in fast food restaurants and retail stores. The demands of working-class teens have shifted significantly since Alcott's day and even since the 1960's. Teenagers today expect to own a car and to have independence; they also have a sense of entitlement that is absent in Little Women unless Amy's selfishness could be considered a nod to self-centered youth. Alcott's characterization of the little women, girls who model mature behaviors for young American women, remains an admirable model today; however, according to Bucher and Hinton, young adults want to identify with characters. A modern audience is more likely to sympathize with Jo because she is surrounded by women, albeit loving family, whose greatest ambitions are to marry. Arguably, Amy could be the exception because she is an artist, yet her ambition and independence does not match Jo, who does not indicate a need for a man, while Amy's selfishness demands a partner to appreciate her as much as she appreciates herself. The social issues of today stretch modern young adults' awareness beyond the limits of parent-child relationships, being mindful of the poor, hooking a man, and establishing independence. While a modern audience may understand the need for manners and admire a good mother-daughter relationship, these remain the primary issues of the same comfortable class that existed when Alcott first published Little Women.

     According to Bucher and Hinton, a change in the perception of young adults is represented in young adult literature. Unheard voices such as the disabled, homeless, and gays are represented in literature (7). While the March's willingly give up Christmas breakfast and scarves to help the poor on Christmas morning, the starving German family is a means to demonstrate the need for generosity, but ultimately this act demonstrates that those who do not struggle typically remember those who do struggle on the days that they are expected to do so, such as Christmas and Easter. In terms of realism, this sense of Christian charity still exists today. However, it is more effective to hear the voice of the poor and the homeless. Young adults are more savvy today and are willing take the opportunity to read literature that reveals the realities of life. While Little Women can be counted amongst young adult literature that is about diverse people and a world beyond a working-class community, it does not necessarily cover the breadth of the modern realities of life and, therefore, lacks relevancy with a diverse modern audience.