Analysis # 6: Feminism, Little Women, Angels in the House

[Quote from Little Women]
Holding a hand of each and watching the two young faces wistfully, Mrs. March said, in her serious yet cheery way - '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 as 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 sweetest thing which can happen to a woman, and I sincerely hope my girls may know this beautiful experience.

To millions of girls living in the mid 1800's (as well as today) the names Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy became recognized names in virtually every American home.When Louise May Alcott's book Little women was published in 1868, the world was presented with an ideal model of female virtue, modesty, sacrifice, purity,and womanhood through the story of the March sisters. For over the a century the March sister have remained in literature the unrivaled "angles in the house".

Mother's encouraged their daughters to strive as best as they could to emulate the pious virtue of Meg and quite humility of Beth. Until the the mid 50's women in literature were traditionally portrayed as saint-like goddesses within the home.
In Gilbert and Gubar's essay "The Mad Woman in the Attic" they argue that, "the images of the 'angel' and 'monster' have been so ubiquitous throughout literature by men that they have also pervaded woman's writing to such and extent that few definitively 'killed' either figure" (812).

One of the works of fiction that is attacked by Gilbert and Gubar is Alcott's Little Women because it reinforces the "angle" image of women that was originally constructed from men's desire to dominate women "because women are defined as wholly passive, completely void of generation power they become numinous to male artist" 815). Like many female writers during her time, Louisa May Alcott reinforces the male stereotypes about women. The March sisters are encouraged to stay at home and become good housewives. Their mother says the best and sweetest thing is to be loved and CHOSEN by a man.

Like novels and self help books during the Victorian era Alcott, "enjoin[s] young girls [towards] submissiveness, modesty, selflessness; reminding all women that they should be angelic" (816). Images of sacrificial women in books who were devoted to their husbands and homes and nothing else became the norm in society until the late 1950's. Through books and ladies magazines women measured their own worth, fashioned their identities around a mythological ideal woman found in fairy tales.

The challenge that female writers encounter when created a female character is to avoid retelling the cliche "angle" "monster" story about women. Female writers today must create female characters that are three dimensional and does not exaggerate their flaws are inflate their virtues. "The woman writer acknowledges with pain, confusion, and anger that what she sees in the mirror is usually a male construct, the "pure gold baby" of male brains, a glittering and wholly artificial child" (813).


Perhaps the "madwoman in the attic" is every woman who tries to break free from the prison that society has placed her in. Those who questions the norms of their society are often considered "mad" by the critics. Women like Jane Austen had to hide their writings lest other should think them strange. Fortunately, "by the end of the eighteenth century women were not only writing, they were conceiving fictional worlds in which patriarchal images and conventions were severely , radically revised" (824).

Today the madwomen in the attic have escaped are now free to run over the pages of fiction.

Works Cited

Gilbert, Sandra and Gibar, Susan. "The Madwoman in the Attic". Rivkin, Julie. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell publishing; United Kingdom, 2004.

Alcott, Louisa. Little Women. New York: VIKING, 1996

Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyIwNPUK0k

Analysis # 5: Postmodernism, Discipline and Punishment

The church has always served as not only a place of spiritual worship, but also as a means of reinforcing social norms and punishing deviant behavior. According to to Foucault’s essay Discipline and Punishment, “Foucault suggests that citizens of the Western democracies act as their jail-keepers. They internalize the social control that monitors society and maintains the disciplined efficiency of the social system” (559). Although in might be offensive to many people to view the church as a prison, in many ways the church/temple is like a panopticon. The Priest, Pastor, Rabbi, Guru ...etc serve as ever watchful prison guards over their congregation whose eternal soul hangs over the balance between heaven (reward) and hell (punishment).

Foucault says, “In England, it was private religious groups that carried out, for a long time, the functions of social discipline” (559). Even within early American society until our present day churches have enforced laws that forbid drinking, gambling, abortion, birth control, and homosexual marriages. The goal of the church for many years has been to sift out the wicked and uplift the righteous. Foucault says, “The constant division between the normal and the abnormal, to which every individual is subjected, brings us back to our own time, by applying the binary branding and the exile of the leper to quite different objects […] All the mechanisms of the power which, even today, are disposed around the abnormal individual, to brand him and to alter him” (554).

According to the Bible, God is the supreme watchman. He is the unseen guard at the center tower of the panopticon that surveys all. Proverbs 15:3 says: the eyes of the LORD are in every place, beholding the evil and the good. If heaven symbolizes the watchtower and earth symbolizes the prison cell, than are we not all prisoners who live in fear of God. No matter where we go, the Bible reminds us that God is watching! “For what matters is that he knows himself to be observed [he] must never know whether he is being looked at at any moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so” (555).

Within a religious congregation the members are fully aware of the gaze not only of God but of the priest/pastor as well. Numbers 32:23 says: be sure your sins will find you out. The Bible serves as a guidebook for obedience and discipline. This helps to maintain the power and order in society. “By means of wise police, the sovereign accustoms the people to order and obedience” (Foucault 560). Believers are taught that sins and deviances will be punished in he afterlife. As a result believers strive to live moral lives for fear of “discipline” in the afterlife. “Generally speaking, it might be said that disciplines are techniques for assuring the ordering of human multiplicities” (Foucault 562).


Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. "Discipline and Punish".Rivkin, Julie. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell publishing; United Kingdom, 2004.