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Oct 16, 2023 · Key Takeaways. The idea of living forever is attractive, but does it make any philosophical sense? There are more than a few philosophical problems with immortality and the ways some...
- Marmee
- Jo March
- Amy March
- Postmortem Assessments
- Imposters
- Asymmetry
- Indicative Meaning
In Alcott’s novel, Marmee is depicted as the ideal mother and the moral center of the March family – a dutiful and loving wife and mother dedicated to helping those in need. Gerwig describes her as follows. “Marmee (Laura Dern) has none of the pretensions of the other mothers, no artifice. She’s a hippie before they existed” (2019a). Producer Amy P...
Jo knows these suffocating feelings and restrictions. She expresses her frustration to her mother in a line taken directly from Alcott’s novel. “Women have minds and souls as well as hearts, ambition, and talent as well as beauty, and I’m sick of being told that love is all a woman is fit for” (Gerwig 2019). Gerwig tweaks the scene and adds a feeli...
Unlike Jo, Amy does not fight her bridal fate. In Alcott’s novel and most film and television adaptations, Amy plays the part of the spoiled girl. In other movies – Joan Bennett (1933), Elizabeth Taylor (1949), and Kirsten Dunst (1994) – Amy’s bratty antics serve as comic relief. Gerwig, however, adds depth and develops her character into a complic...
Let us assume, however, that all four March girls did go on to follow their passion and that each girl became a successful artist in her own right. Amy is a budding Mary Cassatt. Meg, the next Katherine Hepburn. Beth, the next Fanny Mendelssohn. And Jo joins the ranks of the Brontes and Jane Austin. Their lives would be objectively meaningful, for ...
As women experience more freedom and success, nagging self-doubt about the worth of their work and lives persists. Psychologists identify this as Imposter Syndrome, which is prevalent among (but not exclusive to) high-achieving women and minorities. When actor Jodie Foster was receiving one of her two Oscars, she said, “I thought it was a fluke, I ...
There is a puzzling asymmetry in Wolf’s theory. On the one hand, a person can be wrong about whether her life is objectively meaningful. Let us say, for example, that no matter what story she tells herself and others, Amy’s decision to devote her talents to become “an ornament to society” is not objectively worthwhile. On the other hand, a person c...
Wolf is not entirely off base in talking about meaning in terms of a psychological state, that is, feelings of satisfaction with one’s life (or career, marriage, etc.). When the average person on the street talks about meaning in life, she often speaks about feelings or psychological states. This same person would likely find it counter-intuitive t...
- Kimberly Blessing
- blessika@buffalostate.edu
May 17, 2018 · The Story Behind Little Women: Louisa May Alcott, Transcendentalism, & Unexpected Success. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is best known as the author of the 1868 novel Little Women. The second...
- Carl Gregg
Little Women illustrates and supports the view that, while feelings of fulfillment may be indicative of meaning in life, they are not necessary for it as Wolf argues. Instead, we should lean into the objective side of Wolf’s theory and evaluate
Dec 19, 2014 · What makes Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women immortal, when as a nineteenth-century moral story for the young it should properly have been forgotten long ago? A portion of the reading population might like to forget it, as Elaine Showalter points out in her illuminating introduction to my Penguin Classics edition: “in male literature. . .
Dec 30, 2019 · Beneath the seemingly mundane exploits of the four sisters lurk the deeper themes of the meaning of love and marriage, the relentless drive and cost of ambition, the pain of self-doubt, the devastating experience of death and loss, and grief’s transformative power.
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Mar 28, 2023 · The book describes a grieving family affected by the Civil War as well as the struggles faced by the women in it, such as the aunt and mother of the March siblings, to maintain their social standing in society.
