Women's Roles In Little Women By Louisa May Alcott

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The novel "Little Women " portraits the difficult journey from childhood to adulthood from four teenaged sisters Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy called the March girls, and how they survive growing up in a difficult time highlighting the inferiority of women as compared to men with the ideas explored throughout the novel being women 's strive between familial duty and personal maturation, the menace of gender labeling, and the need of work. As the novel develops it is fascinating that Louisa May Alcott writes "Little Women," reflecting on her own life and many of the experience of growing up during the nineteenth century. Jo 's character is a replication of Alcott herself with her speaking directly through the protagonist. Social expectations played a important role for women with the idea in which you had to marry young and create a new family which Meg does; be submissive and devoted to one’s guardians and own family, that Beth is; focus on one’s art, pleasure, and people, as Amy does at first; and struggle to live both a dedicated family life and a significant accomplished life, as Jo does. Both Beth and Meg obey to society’s expectations of the role that women should play, Amy and Jo at first try to get away from these limitations and grow their uniqueness. After some time both Jo and Mary marry and adapt a more established life. An example of the book briefly shows this messages being "Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than