The Deconstruction of Traditional Gender Roles in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Louisa May Alcott’s best-known classic Little Women was published in 1869 and read and loved by a wide audience, consisting mostly of children and young adults, over the years, yet after more than almost 150 years it still retains its place among the most popular children’s books all around the world. Although Alcott wrote Little Women as a “conduct handbook for nineteenth century American young girls” (Gheorghiu, 2015, p. 39) at the time, it has now a worldwide audience, which is significant considering as a children’s book it leaves a remarkable impact on its young readers. Looking at the novel from a gendered perspective, I aim to discuss in this paper the issues of constructed femininities and masculinities in its society, how young men, but especially young girls, are trained and expected to be accomplished ladies and gentlemen. Through the novel’s characters, I will argue how these traditional gender roles are deconstructed by certain characters in the novel, mainly Jo and Laurie, at the same time comparing Jo to her three sisters who fit into the description of feminine accomplishment, and how Alcott’s deconstruction and defiance comes to a limit within the context of marriage.

Little Women revolves around four young girls, March sisters named Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, living in New England during the Civil War period. As their father is off fighting at the war, their household consists only of the four sisters and their mother, making it a fully feminine space. While each sister is naturally different from the other, as aforementioned there is a distinct contradiction and disparity between the looks and characteristics of Jo and her sisters. Looking at the sentences Alcott uses to describe the sisters for the first time puts this difference forward: The eldest sister Margaret, or Meg, is “very pretty,” “plump and fair,” and has “large eyes, plenty of soft, brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands,” (Alcott, 1947, p. 6) while Elizabeth, or Beth, is described as “a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with shy manner, a timid voice, and a peaceful expression,” and the youngest Amy is “a regular snow-maiden, with blue eyes, an yellow hair curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, always carrying herself like a young lady mindful of her manners” (p. 7). These descriptions apparently define these three sisters as pretty, shy, peaceful, pale, and mannerly; making them fit into the borders of feminine accomplishment. Yet, when the reader looks at how Jo, the second eldest and the main heroine of the story, is described, they come across quite a contrary image: Jo is “very tall, thin, brown,” “never seems to know what to do with her long limbs,” “has a decided mouth, comical nose, and sharp grey eyes,” “her long thick, hair…her one beauty…is usually bundled into a net, to be out of her way,” she has “long shoulders, big hands and feet, a flyaway look to her clothes, and the uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a woman, and didn’t like it.” The image of Jo is almost completely the opposite of her sisters; she is neither good looking, nor petite, nor does she know how to take care of her looks like a mannerly young lady, but mostly importantly she is highly uncomfortable with the change in her body, and the fact that she is turning into a woman. Considering she prefers to be called Jo, instead of using her full name Josephine, her uncomfortableness of having a female body reflects on the change in her name, to a masculine one. Yet it is not only the name that makes her masculine, for through the novel she is described as boyish, and a tomboy, who uses slang, whistles, and overall acts unfeminine. When she is criticized by her sisters for using slang words because “it’s so boyish,” her reply is that “That’s why I do it”. Jo’s preference of acting masculine and boyish is not an unconscious act or desire, as she is well aware of the fact that she desires to be a boy and dislikes the traditional roles young girls are subject to: “It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys’ games and work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman!”. While this quote suggests a gender-bending in Jo’s character, by most critics, readers, and Alcott herself, Jo is considered and identified as a tomboy. To expand Jo’s tomboyism and masculine behavior, I want to refer to Judith Halberstam, according to whom tomboyism occurs as a result of the restriction on female freedom. They discuss in their book Female Masculinity that:

Tomboyism tends to be associated with a “natural” desire for the greater freedoms and mobilities enjoyed by boys. Very often it is read as a sign of independence and self-motivation, and tomboyism may even be encouraged to the extent that it remains comfortably linked to a stable sense of a girl identity. Tomboyism is punished, however, when it appears to be the sign of extreme male identification (taking a boy's name or refusing girl clothing of any type) and when it threatens to extend beyond childhood and into adolescence. 

Halberstam’s claim above on tomboyism is parallel to Jo’s lines as she wishes to be a boy because she “likes boys’ games and work and manners” since they provide less restrictions and more freedom in general, instead of being stuck in restrictive domestic duties and manners that are forced and attributed to girls and women. Another freedom that is bestowed to men is going to college, which Jo wholeheartedly longs to do but is not able to fulfill, which she verbalizes as “How I wish I was going to college!” when she hears that Laurie, their neighbor, is going to college soon. She also “takes a boy’s name” as Halberstam suggests, and acts as the head of the family since their father is away; “I’m the man of the family now that papa is away” she says, thus showing “signs of extreme male identification.” Yet, she is not able to resist through clothing, as one thing that a young girl is strictly precluded during nineteen-century America is cross-dressing or masculine dressing; basically, she is not allowed to wear anything that does not involve a dress, which is another restriction on Jo’s way; a restriction on her bodily movements, and one on her masculine identification. Therefore, the best she can do to feel boyish or masculine is to take a boy’s name and position herself as the “man of the family.” This is also verbalized by Beth, one of Jo’s sisters, when she says, “Poor Jo, it can’t be helped that you wish to be a boy; so you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, an playing brother to us girls.” The question that remains is whether Jo’s tomboyism is punished for being extreme or not. This I will come back to towards the end of this paper.

While Jo is wrapped up in her deconstructive femininity, there is another character that defies the established gender roles: Laurie Laurence. The Marchs’ wealthy neighbor Laurie, whose real name is Theodore Lawrence, goes by the feminine-sounding nickname Laurie. When Jo accredits the name “Laurie Laurence” as odd, Laurie narrates the reason he is called so:

“My first name is Theodore, but I don’t like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead.”

“I hate my name, too — so sentimental! I wish everyone would say Jo, instead of Josephine.” (Alcott, p. 34)

It is remarkable that the former nickname of Laurie’s was also a feminine sounding one, perhaps even more than Laurie. The change from Dora to Laurie demonstrates that even after adopting a new nickname, he remains in the boundaries of his effeminacy. The thing with Laurie is that he is considered effeminate, by the other characters in the book and the readers alike, for being a “pretty” and “very polite for a boy” and wanting to be musician rather than taking up a “serious” profession. Alcott, by attributing names of the opposite sex to Jo and Laurie and defining them as untypical to what is expected by the society through their genders, defies traditional gender structures and stereotypes of femininity and masculinity. As a matter of fact, in one episode of the famous TV show Friends, where two characters decide to read each other’s favorite books, one of the characters is not able to tell the genders of Jo and Laurie because of the names that supposedly do not correlate with their genders. The dialogue from the show follows as:

Joey: These little women. Wow!

Chandler: You’re liking it, huh?

Joey: Oh yeah! Amy just burned Jo’s manuscript. I don’t see how he could ever forgive her.

Ross: Umm, Jo’s a girl, it’s short for Josephine.

Joey: But Jo’s got a crush on Laurie. (Ross nods his head) Oh. You mean it’s like a girl-girl thing? ‘Cause that is the one thing missing from The Shining.

Chandler: No, actually Laurie’s a boy.

Joey: No wonder Rachel had to read this so many times.

As seen in this example, by using names and naming as agency, Alcott is playing with the concepts of femininity and masculinity, to the point that Jo and Laurie are taken for the opposite gender as a result of, mostly, their names, yet also of their characteristics and the specific way they reject the roles assigned to them. What this brings about is the question of masculine and feminine identities. Alcott’s obviously challenging the notion of gender through these two characters, but which gender identity do Jo and Laurie actually belong to? According to Judith Butler, “there is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results” (Gender Trouble, 2010, p. 34). That is to say, despite Alcott’s specific gender attributions to Jo and Laurie, their identities arise from the way they act, which therefore, bestows Jo a masculine identity, while giving Laurie a feminine one at the same time. Gender is but “performance,” “as the effects of a subtle and politically enforced performativity, it is an ‘act,’” (2010, p. 200). One way gender acts exactly as performance in Little Women is through the enactment of Jo’s plays. Possessing a writer’s genius, Jo is constantly writing stories and plays, the latter of which she and her sisters act out afterwards. Jo’s choice of roles to act out is, undoubtedly, always male ones, while her sisters Meg and Amy who are defined as elegant, mannerly, and pretty by everyone, play the role of the damsel in distress. “No gentlemen were admitted in the play; so Jo played male parts to her heart’s content, and took immense satisfaction in a pair of russet-leather boots given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an actor”. In a way, Jo’s only opportunity to dress masculine, one of her unfulfilled desires, is through her enactment of male roles in these plays, which she takes on with great enthusiasm. Her performativity of the role here is at the same time her gender performance; although it is merely an “act,” so is gender according to Butler.

Much as Alcott plays with stereotypical gender roles and deconstructs tradition, when class comes into the picture; there seems to be an evident distinction between the female-dominated spaces (the March household that consists of five women), and the male dominated ones (the Laurence household that is fully male — Laurie, his grandfather, and his tutor John Brooke). The descriptions of the two houses make this difference quite clear:

The garden separated the Marches' house from that of Mr. Laurence. Both stood in a suburb of the city, which was still country-like, with groves and lawns, large gardens and quiet streets. A low hedge parted the two estates. On one side was an old brown house, looking rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls, and the flowers which then surrounded it. On the other side was a stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach-house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains. 

It might seem as if the stark difference between two houses is the result of class and not gender, yet gender and class are quite entwined in Little Women. Stephanie Foote mentions in her article “Resentful Little Women: Gender and Class Feeling in Louisa May Alcott” that “bluntly, gender and class are inseparable as we look at the kinds of negative feelings that the novel discusses. This lesson may seem too obvious — gender and class, after all, are now part of an established mantra of subject positions — but it bears repeating” (2005, p. 66). Gender and class are indeed inseparable in the novel, as the obvious poverty the March family suffers from is a result of the lack of male authority in the household, since the sisters lament that they used to be rich when their father was home. While this poverty urges Meg and Jo to work to support their family, therefore gain female independence to a certain level, it is still connected to gender as it results from it, putting the matriarchal March family to a lower position than the patriarchal household of the Laurences.

Moreover, while Jo’s writing stories and plays (even being able to obtain the chance to have them published in exchange of a small amount of money) can be interpreted as female independence, Alcott is apparently not fully able to defy the traditional norms, as the some of the stories Jo has published (thriller tales that are very much in demand) are considered “unfeminine” and “unfit” for a women, by Alcott herself: “Jo thought she was prospering finely; but, unconsciously, she was beginning to desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman’s character”. For a writer like Alcott who can challenge gender roles in a nonconformist manner, her making a claim that some writings are unsuited for women for fear of losing their “womanhood” contradicts herself. Furthermore, through the character Marmee (the sisters nickname for their mother), Alcott is instilling the notion of ideal womanhood that is dependent, obedient, angelic:

I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected, to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives, with a little care and sorrow to try them as God sees fit to send. To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and the sweetest thing which can happen to a woman; and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience. 

What Alcott draws here is the ideal traditional woman model that every young girl was expected to be; compliant, beautiful, “accomplished,” whose only aim at life is to be loved by a man, which suggests that she cannot be a complete woman without a man’s affirmation.

Whilst this could have been thought as a parody of the ideal female model, the fact there is no rejection coming from any of the other characters (Jo specifically), plus that all the sisters getting married and turning into this “model woman” that their mother suggests eradicates any possibility of irony or satire; thus, this comes up as Alcott’s own view, regardless of the image she drew before. This brings us to the previous question related to Halberstam’s tomboyism: Is Jo punished for showing “signs of extreme male identification”? In the latter half of the novel, The Marches’ old wealthy aunt decides to take one of the sisters to Europe with her for a vacation, and chooses Amy, instead of Jo, even though Jo “has wanted it for so long — it would have done her so much good, and be altogether splendid”. Aunt March’s rejection of choosing Jo apparently is stated as a result of her “blunt manners and too independent spirit,” thus, Jo’s blunt manners (referring to her masculine acts) and independent spirits (connected to the male freedom Halberstam talks about) result in the punishment of her, while femininity, manners, and obedience is rewarded through Amy. For Julie Wilhelm as well, “in this novel, performances of gender are narratologically linked to marriage. It is only after Amy plays the part of fine young lady better than Jo that she gets a trip to Europe, which ultimately results in her marriage to Laurie” (2009, p. 80). Plus, the independent spirit of Jo’s cannot prevent her from having to get married at the end of the novel. Marriage plays a remarkable role in terms of the definition of womanhood, as Beth who becomes ill utters these sentences before her death: “I only mean to say that I have a feeling that it was never intended I should live long. I’m not like the rest of you; I never made any plans about what I’d do when I grew up; I never thought of being married, as you all did.” The fact that Beth cannot see herself as a wife, results in her failure of being the ideal woman, thus, she dies. Through the cases of both Jo and Beth, the inability to act feminine and womanly is punished one way or another in the novel. As a result of this, Jo is pushed to the limits of femininity to become the quintessential woman and wife, like her sisters Meg and Amy, to the point to remark that “women’s special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens” when talking about her to-be husband. This apparently paints a typical wife picture that is compassionate, kind, and self-sacrificing. The name of the second part of the book being Good Wives completes this theory. Alcott inevitably rejects the idea that women can be self-sufficient and need to possess angel-in-the-house qualities to become a “good” wife.

Altogether, despite Alcott’s deconstruction of traditional gender roles and assigned femininities and masculinities, by not eliminating the dominance of the traditional women model and shaping the story in favor of it, she disrupts her anterior notions of female independence and freedom, especially through the change she makes in Jo, the most defiant character of the story, by turning the tomboy, rebellious writer into a domestic women who is content with the notion of “wiping tears and carrying burdens.” Although the fact that Alcott first aimed to end up Jo as a spinster (just as Alcott was one herself) can be taken into consideration, in the end she complies by the societal rules and marries Jo off, thus locks her up in the boundaries of being a Mrs. Perhaps, this could have passed as a frivolous issue if this hadn’t been a children’s book; yet with the way young readers take the novel’s characters as role models, the manner in which they stand in regard to gender and its stereotypes play a pivotal role. However, even after Jo March accepts her assigned womanhood and becomes a good wife, she is still considered as one of the most iconic tomboys and “female masculinities,” having left a striking impact on many feminist writers.