Preview

Anne Dalke and Barbara Sicherman on the Theme of Feminism in Little Women

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
812 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Anne Dalke and Barbara Sicherman on the Theme of Feminism in Little Women
“The House-Band: The Education of Men in Little Women” by Anne Dalke discusses Auerbach’s reading of the novel. Auerbach interprets the theme of feminism in Little Women differntly than how Dalke interprets more positively views the feminism in the novel. “Reading Little Women: The Many Lives of a Text” by Barbara Sicherman also discusses the theme of feminism positively, but Dalke's focus is more narrow; Sichmerman discusses how Little Women appeals to a wide range of readers. These critical essays both discuss Little Women's feminism but focus on different aspects of the theme. Both Dalke and Sichmerman interpret Little Women's strong theme of feminism and discuss how the novel appeals to women readers. Sicherman discusses how readers learn from characters, and Dalke discusses how the characters themselves learn from the sisters' faults and experiences. Both critics focus on Jo as the main character that the readers and other characters learn from. Sicherman discusses many groups of readers who relate to Alcott's novel, especially Jo's example of a strong woman. One group of readers is young girls. “Adolescents from diverse backgrounds can interpret Little Women as a search for personal autonomy” (635). Dalke agrees that the novel is a good example of how to be strong and independent. Dalke discusses how the first half of the story is about the sisters' burdens and how they struggle to overcome them; the second half shows how the sisters grow and learn from their faults. Further, Dalke discusses how the characters learn from each other. While Alcott does not write a story of strong women who do not have faults, she writes of women who are stronger because they overcome faults. Dalke also recognizes that the women are stronger because they redefine gender roles. For example, “Laurie is taught by the March girls how to respond to women, children, and to other men” (560). When Laurie went to visit Amy in France, Amy said Laruie was too

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    In the novel, women play a significant role as they are featured in every scene of the story. However their roles can be defined negatively for they are portrayed as weak and as possessions of men. Steinbeck displays many different women who are displayed from a man’s perspective in a sexist era.…

    • 1773 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Atwood begins her speech with an anecdote and quotes this famous nursery rhyme to gain a personal connection with her audience and to introduce the subject of her speech – women in literature. Atwood established herself as a controversial writer, bringing her radical views such as feminism to the centre of political discussion. Throughout the speech Atwood explores the changing role of women in society through their portrayal in literature and how these roles have changed through time.…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Alcott grew up in a lesser fortunate home just like the March girls and had to work at the same kind of jobs as Meg and Jo to help support her family. She also grew up in a family of four girls. Further understanding of Alcott, she reminds the reader of the character of Jo March. The best way to see Alcott in Jo is through Jo’s love of writing. Jo writing and literature fancies are that to Alcott’s. Although Little Women is fictional, Alcott’s personal experiences and early life played a large role in creating the characters and settings, as well as, making the characters relatable. Even, though Alcott never married herself, she felt pressure from society at her time to make sure her alter ego, Jo March, got…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Fay Weldon’s ‘Letters to Alice on First reading Jane Austen’, through the didactic literary form of an epistolic novel, serves to encourage a heightened understanding of the role of women in Jane Austen’s social, cultural and historical context, and also aims to present the parallels of women in both texts. In doing so, it inspires the modern responder to adopt a more sincere appreciation for the perspectives of Austen and Weldon of women inherent in both ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Letters to Alice’. Through the inclusion of relevant contextual information from Austen’s time and didactic assertions of the fictional character Aunt Fay, Weldon implores the responder to accept her opinions on the role of women in both her and Austen’s context. Her discussion of this, which delves into marriage, feminism and the patriarchal influence, transforms a modern responder’s understanding of the themes and context explored in both texts, and moreover, alters the way in which the responder perceives the events and decisions of the women within the novels.…

    • 1643 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Little Women is the first book in series and received reviews that gave it a four out of five rating. The other two books both received reviews that gave them a three point eight out of five. According to Critical Reception, some critics say that Little Women is "an ideologically purified and strained realism". However, according to The March Family Stories, "Little Women was an overnight success, not just with girls but with the reading public in general". Both critics have their own opinion on Little Women, one negative, one positive. Overall, critics thought Alcott to be "a writer of charming stories for children which show them both in happy situations and in problematic ones" (The March Family Stories). Though all of Alcott's works received fairly positive praise, Little Women and the books that followed received the most due to readers' appreciation to the connections that Alcott…

    • 1691 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Suggestion for The Reader: How are women portrayed in the novel? Why might this be?…

    • 345 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Envision you are walking home and you see a rally of feminists storming through the city. You shake your head at them, puzzled as to why they are causing chaos once again. However, you hear one woman scream, “I will not leave until I gain equal pay as the rest of my male coworkers! I will not keep quiet any longer!” According to The Washington Post, “the Census Bureau calculates that the median woman in the United States makes 79 cents for every buck paid to the median man.” (Paquette) Women have always been underprivileged compared to men. Zora Neal Hurston effectively used setting, figurative language, characterization, and the manipulation of plot in Their Eyes Were Watching God to inform the audience how feminism has always been present and plays a big role in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not.…

    • 1605 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Since the foundations of America were built, the identity of the new American woman remained largely unchanged. Writings like Abigail Adams’ letter, “Remember the Ladies”, “The Quadroons” by Lydia Child and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs all helped shape the roles of women who were advocators for gender equality. Each piece speaks out to different types of women to empower them to action for the equality of men and women. As classic works of literature are viewed with a modern critical eye, the rights of women are been fought for longer than the first wave of feminism at Seneca Falls and have not progressed as much as the country of America has in the last one hundred and seventy years.…

    • 252 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Twentieth century literature is not always sympathetic to feministic sentiments. Novels such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Age of Innocence, and All the King's Men, try to undo the prominent effects the feministic movement of the 20th century. Women's denial of their inferiority is the underlying fear that materializes in these three books to produce reactionary actions and attitudes from their patrimonial society in order to prevent the inversion masculine and feminine role in the western culture. The patrimonial society dominates in all three novels, and its presence is a leviathan of power and intimidation that demolishes any hope for an upheaval of feminine leadership, independence, and liberation…

    • 2705 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Inspector Calls Women

    • 1953 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Women play a major part in enabling J.B. Priestley, the writer of the morality play ‘An Inspector Calls’, and John Steinbeck, the author of the novella ‘Of Mice and Men’, to successfully portray their messages. In ‘An Inspector Calls’, Priestley is able to enforce his message that there was a great need for change in 1945 post war Britain, away from the unjust and unavailing capitalist society to a socialist one where everyone is responsible for their counterparts through women. This is achieved by providing the audience with two female figures, allowing the audience to observe the developing plot to recognise how their course of change differs between the contrasting classes. On the other hand, Steinbeck displays how the persistent negative impression he gives of women is due to the desperation they face to survive, driving them to take unsavoury measures. Steinbeck also cleverly delays the reader’s understanding of this, manipulating the structure in order to increase the impact and therefore importance of his message that the…

    • 1953 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    I was first technically confronted with the concept of “Feminism,” when I was only ten years old. I really had no idea what the “F” word meant, considering how young I was. Looking back, I can now understand. Eleven years ago my parents divorced after fourteen years of marriage. My mother always taught me to be a strong and independent woman. She told me to always strive to reach any goal that I set for myself, and she would always stand behind me on everything I ever did……

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Wasserstein wants her audience to hear feminism issues such as: Dominant ideas of woman, relationships, learning gender, sexuality, women in politics, women fighting for equal rights and understanding and valuing difference. She wants us to see in the characters, real life instances where the choices we make in life directly affect the way we live and portray ourselves. She personally picked these characters from her real life while she was in college, and shaped them in a way that the real life person can’t deny the personalization of themselves. The characters continuously challenge on another in the aspects of motherhood and class, they all are successful in their own way. The women in the play represent the modern independent woman striving for equality amongst men.…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Feminist's View

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A feminist criticism is an approach to literature that seeks to correct or supplement what may be regarded as a predominantly male-dominated critical perspective with a feminist consciousness (Meyer 1658). The excerpt from A Secret Sorrow and “A Sorrowful Woman” are great from a feminist point of view. Both of these stories are about marriage and family, but their points of view are different. How would a feminist critic view the characters willingness to want a family or willingness to be separated from her family? How would a feminist critic analyze the time period of the two stories? What would a feminist critic say about the male leads? You are about to find out!…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, portrays a young married woman, Nora, who plays a dramatic role of deception and self-indulgence. The author creates a good understanding of a woman’s role by assuming Nora is an average housewife who does not work; her only job is to maintain the house and raise the children like a stereotypical woman that cannot work or help society. In reality, she is not an average housewife in that she has a hired maid who deals with the house and children. Although Ibsen focuses on these “housewife” attributes, Nora’s character is ambitious, naive, and somewhat cunning. She hides a dark secret from her husband that not only includes borrowing money, but also forgery. Nora’s choices were irrational; she handled the situations very poorly in this play by keeping everything a secret. The way that women were viewed in this time period created a barrier that she could not overcome. The decisions that had the potential to be good were otherwise molded into appalling ones. Women should have just as many rights as men and should not be discriminated by gender; but they should also accept consequences in the same way without a lesser or harsher punishment.…

    • 3445 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Female Power in Hamlet

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Griffith, Ellen Lee. The Tale of the Mermaid: An Essay on the Folklore and Mythology of the Mermaid, Accompanied by Illustrations of Objects from the Exhibition. Philadelphia, Pa: Philadelphia Maritime Museum, 1986. Print.…

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics