SOURCE: "Female Stories of Experience: Alcott's Little Women in Light of Work," in The Voyage in Fictions of Female Development, edited by Elizabeth Abel, Marianne Hirsh, and Elizabeth Langland, University Press of New England, 1983, pp. 112-27.

In the following essay, Langland offers a comparative discussion of Little Women and Work, arguing that "the developmental pattern expressed in Work is central to understanding key tensions in Little Women. "

"I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful and pleasant lives. . . . 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."¹

Marmee's words in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women express the goal of female ambition and growth: the passive state of being chosen and becoming "good wives...