Gray Space in Little Women

This is a "Reading Critically" paper I wrote for my Children's Literature class on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

Saoirse Ronan as Jo in Little Women (2019)

In Chapter 14 of Little Women, the idea of separate spheres is prevalent. During the time this book was written gender roles were clearly defined. Domesticity and republican motherhood defined how women and girls were supposed to act in society. During the time that Little Women was written, this idea of womanhood was hegemonic. Separate spheres play a role in depicting how Jo is breaking out into the public sphere and Laurie is breaking out of his role in the private sphere. This idea of separate spheres zones in on the internal struggles both characters face. Jo and Laurie’s characters represent nonconventional gender roles. Jo’s struggle with fulfilling her role as a woman pushes her further to break away from her expected gender role. Louisa May Alcott critiques these hegemonic ideas of gender by creating a gray space that makes it hard to define gender roles.

During the nineteenth century separate spheres and gendered identities were put in place in order for people to follow an assigned role in society (Hateley 2). Erica Hateley writes about how boys in fiction during this time were presented as “movers, doers, explorers, adventurers, creatures of action, guile, mis- chief, intellect, and leadership” (2). Girls were written as domestic workers who would care for the house and were “training to be housewives and mothers” (Hateley 3). These ideas were very hegemonic during the early to mid-nineteenth century. However, a shift happened at the end of the nineteenth century. Shawna McDermott describes how this shift affected the idea of gender roles. Tomboys were beginning to be written into stories and the idea of gendered roles began to disappear (McDermott 135). This mirrors the gray space that is created by Alcott in Little Women. Specifically, in Chapter 14 titled “Secrets”, we see the gray space very clearly. In this chapter, Jo decides to sell her story to a newspaper in order to earn money to support her family (Alcott 180). Normally, men would be earning a living to support their families, however this example depicts the subversive idea of a woman or girl earning a wage. The gray space, evident in this chapter, allows for subversive ideas like tomboys to enter the storyline.

Alcott wrote Little Women with a two-fold message that creates this gray space that allows Jo to both remain inside and outside of the gender roles expected of her. This gray space allows for Jo to break out of the private sphere and into the public. Even though Jo is breaking out of her role in the private sphere, she does so with caution. Alcott’s gray space is meant to introduce this subversive idea in a slow and meaningful way without overwhelming the reader. She understands how unpopular the idea of a woman earning a wage is, so Alcott wants to carefully normalize this idea. Alcott writes, “She put on her hat and jacket as noiselessly as possible...Jo gave herself a shake, pulled her hat over her eyes, and walked up the stairs, looking as if she was going to have all her teeth out” (177). Jo’s nervousness in this scene emphasizes how nervous Jo was when trying to break out of gender norms. Another way this subversive idea is introduced to Alcott’s audience is through Laurie’s presence. When Jo tells Laurie the news of selling her story, Laurie is very supportive and happy for his friend. He shouts, “Hurrah for Miss March, the celebrated American authoress!” (Alcott 180). Since Laurie is a boy, his support for Jo’s actions matters to the plot. This demonstrates how Alcott creates a gray space for a subversive character, like Jo, to become accepted and thought of as normal.

Laurie and Jo’s friendship is another example of the gray space Alcott creates. From the beginning, Laurie and Jo have always been supportive of one another. Laurie’s wealthy upbringing caused him to have a specific role in the private and public sphere. Specifically, Laurie deals with an internal struggle as to whether or not he should stay at home and care for his grandfather, Mr. Laurence. In Chapter 14, Laurie talks about wanting to run away from home and all his duties. Jo scolds him when she says, “I don’t know what I should do if you acted like Mr. King’s son; he had plenty of money, but didn’t know how to spend it, and got tipsey, and gambled and ran away, and forged his father’s name, I believe, and was altogether horrid” (Alcott 179). In this scene, Jo is fulfilling her gendered role as a republican mother. A republican mother’s role in society is to educate young men into becoming good citizens. Jo is looking out for Laurie and wants to make sure that he is not straying too far from his designated path in the private sphere. When Jo is acting like the republican mother, she is not fully breaking out into the public sphere. This action of scolding seems to undermine Jo selling her story to the newspaper and earning money from it. By showing two versions of Jo contradicting one another, Alcott wants to emphasize the internal struggles women and girls faced in the later half of the nineteenth century.

Jo’s feminine qualities are still clearly visible in this chapter, when Jo acts frightened and timid when running into Laurie. Alcott describes, “In ten minutes Jo came running down stairs with a very red face, and the general appearance of a person who had just passed through a trying ordeal of some sort” (178). Even though Jo and Laurie are very close to one another, Jo struggles at first to tell Laurie the news about selling her story. Up until this point in the book, Laurie and Jo have always confided in one another. Since selling her story was a big step for Jo, in breaking out into the public sphere, it explains why she is quiet. Usually, Jo loves to talk and share her stories, however in this scene we see a shy side of Jo. This depicts the internal struggle that Jo is continuing to face while breaking out in the public sphere.

Literature containing tomboy characters has developed this gray space that Alcott uses. Karin Quimby explains, “One trope that defines the middle space in many tomboy plots, including Jo’s, is the girl’s cross-gender identification with a brother or male peer, such as the relationship Jo forms with Laurie” (4). Jo’s tomboy-ism is further emphasized when she is with Laurie. In chapter 14, we see Jo feeling most comfortable to act her true tomboy self. She is running down a hill with Laurie and taking out her hairpins and hat as she runs (Alcott 181-182). This scene exhibits how Jo is both literally and metaphorically running away from her domestic roles. Since this is the first time Jo is leaving the house on her own, Alcott wants us to focus on Jo’s newfound independence to break out into the public sphere.

Alcott uses Jo’s character to have her readers imagine what a world would look like and be if gendered roles did not exist. Jo is able to exhibit both feminine and masculine features in this chapter. In the opening of the chapter we see Jo being scared and in the end we see Jo running freely down a hill with no worries. This switching back and forth between personality qualities can show how Jo may have been both a tomboy and girly-girl when she needed to be, or it can show how Jo was able to be both and did not have to label herself as either. Quimby explains this newfound way of thinking when she writes,

“Alcott’s repre-sentation of Jo in Little Women may in fact have been an attempt to express not only the “choice between domestic life and individual identity,” as Sarah Elbert puts it, but the experience of being “born with a boy’s spirit under [her] bib and tucker,” of being a “freak of nature,” of having “a man’s soul” in “a woman’s body,” as Alcott described herself on several occasions” (7).

Jo is seen as representing tomboys in literature. However, by only studying Jo as such limits her as a character who represents so much more. Jo is unique in that she can act with both masculine and feminine qualities. Alcott uses Jo’s actions and personality traits to represent the gray space that exists in Little Women, where Jo is free to act as she pleases.

Looking closely as to why Jo chooses to act the way she does in this chapter, can help us understand this gray space Alcott has created. Carrie Hintz and Eric. L. Tribunella describes Jo’s tomboyish qualities. They explain, “The traits most Americans are likely to name as constitutive of this code of (tomboy) conduct include a proclivity for outdoor play (especially athletics), a feisty independent spirit, and a tendency to don masculine clothing and adopt a boyish nickname” (Hintz and Tribunella 441). Jo takes on masculine qualities in order to exert her self-autonomy, showing that she has the power to choose how she acts and dresses. Julia McQuillan and Julie Pfeiffer further elaborate, “In an attempt to explain variation within sex categories, sociologists have argued that external social structures (our actual experiences in the world) organize our behaviour more than socialization (how we’ve been told to behave)” (19). Even though Jo is constantly told by her sister Meg to stop acting like a boy, Jo continues to be her tomboy-ish self. In the end of this chapter Jo says to Meg, “it’s hard enough to have you change all of a sudden; let me be a little girl as long as I can” (Alcott 182). This quote shows how Jo attributes running down a hill, with being a little girl. Jo’s idea of how a little girl should act, differs from Megs. One reason why we see two sides of Jo in this chapter, one of her being a tomboy and the other of her being a republican mother, can be because of Meg’s constant authority in Jo’s life. Even though Jo brushes off Meg’s comment, it still seems to influence how Jo will act in the future. Jo faces the internal conflict with how she is to act based on external forces in her life.

Since Jo’s character challenges gender norms in Chapter 14, of either being a republican mother or tomboy, we are left to choose how we view Jo. Alcott has created this gray space where we are able to view Jo as fulfilling both roles. For young girls and women reading Little Women, this gray space can inspire them to be their true selves and not have to worry about being what others want to be. Even though Little Women is not an adventure book, it provides girls with the space to escape reality and their domestic roles. In Chapter 14 we see Jo’s ability to break out into the public sphere, inspiring readers to do the same. Alcott’s gray space in Little Women, creates the space for women and girls to imagine what life would be like without gender roles.

Works Cited

Alcott May, Louisa. “Secrets”, edited by Anne Hiebert Alton, Canada, Broadview Press, 2001, p. 176-185.

“Genders and Sexualities” in Hintz, Carrie and Eric L. Tribunella, Reading Children’s Literature: A Critical Introduction, 2nd Edition (Broadview Press), p. 441.

Hateley, Erica. “Gender” in Lissa Paul and Philip Nell, Keywords for Children’s Literature (New York University Press). Raynor e-Book. Selected entries.

McDermott, Shawna. "The Tomboy Tradition: Taming Adolescent Ambition from 1869 to 2018." Children's Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 44 no. 2, 2019, p. 134-155. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/chq.2019.0022.

McQuillan, Julia, and Julie Pfeiffer. “Why Anne Makes Us Dizzy: Reading ‘Anne of Green Gables’ from a Gender Perspective.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 17–32. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44029443. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020.

Quimby, Karin. "The Story of Jo: Literary Tomboys, Little Women, and the Sexual-Textual Politics of Narrative Desire." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 10 no. 1, 2003, p. 1-22. Project MUSEmuse.jhu.edu/article/49637.