copyright 1999, Sirpa Grierson

Invincible Louisa Meigs, Cornelia.  Invincible Louisa.  Little, Brown, and Company.  Boston, 1943.  pp. 12-29. Discusses Alcott's story of writing the novel and where her ideas originated from.  It talks mostly of her family and its own relation with the March family that exists in the novel.  She focuses on each character individually and the role that she intended for them to play in the novel. The Education of Men in Little Women Dalke, Anne.  "The House Band":  The Education of Men in "Little Women."  Goes beyond N. Auerbach's interpretation--"primacy of the sisterhood"--of the first part of Little Women to point out that Alcott creates in the novel's second half a balance for the female ambitions expressed and sought after in the first and gives the males in the family the opportunity to participate in a new, expanded family life. Female Characters in Little Women May, Jill P.  "Children's Literature in Education." v11 n1 pp. 10-20.  Spr 1980. Discusses how the female characters in the novel represent a significant break for the typical nineteenth-century New England housewife image, noting that they suggest that women have a right to express themselves freely in conversation, to choose roles for themselves, and to maintain their goals after marriage.

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