SOURCE: "Reading Little Women," in A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott's Place in American Culture, Rutgers University Press, 1987, pp. 195-218.

In the following chapter, Elbert identifies major themes in Alcott's work as exemplified in Little Women, tying them all to an ideal of "domestic democracy."

I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I'm out of my sphere now, for woman's special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens. I'm to carry my share, Friedrich, and help to earn the home. Make up your mind to that, or I'll never go.

Jo March in Little Women, chapter 46

The title of Louisa May Alcott's most famous book is a common-place nineteenth-century expression. In the opening chapter, Marmee reads a Christmas letter from her absent husband to his daughters, which tenderly admonishes them to "conquer themselves so beautifully that when I come back to them...