Signet Essay Contest Winner 2016: Jessica Nielsen

On the surface, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is simply the story of four sisters growing up together. On a deeper level, however, the novel explores the journey through life and the transition from youth to adulthood. The complex use of the word “little” in the novel emphasizes that this journey is a continuous, and not a finite, process.

The March sisters often use the word “little” as a nostalgic term for the better or freer times of childhood. Meg is heard to wish for the time “when [they] were little” (Alcott 4), remembering the luxury and comfort of riches and a complete family. However, this memory of the past continues to help them in the future as they resurrect their Pilgrim’s Progress game in a quest for personal improvement. Throughout their lives, they continue to be “little pilgrims” (Alcott 223) although physically grown up. The fact that their childhood game is not truly left behind, but continues to be a part of them and an inspiration to them, perfectly illustrates the continuous nature of growth. Lessons learned as children rarely become irrelevant because one has mastered the concept–there is always room for improvement, and always a reason to keep learning from the past.

It is interesting to note that “little,” when used to describe objects or material possessions, often acts to add perspective to the situation and emphasize the contrast between worldly matters and the matters that are truly of most importance–namely, love, family, and kindness. Meg has to learn this lesson the hard way when the “little things” (Alcott 286) that Meg buys cause tension between her and her husband John. Learning the difference between the two is one of the most vital lessons of growing up, and one that the March sisters are continually coming to understand. Meg does become wiser and learns to put John ahead of her pride. Amy, however, who spent so much of her childhood lamenting her relative poverty, has a harder time learning this lesson, blessed as she is to marry Laurie. None of the sisters is perfect, but they all keep striving to keep perspective and eschew materialism.

Perhaps the most potent use of the word “little,” however, is in its sense of a quest for improvement. “Little,” as mentioned before, is sometimes used to describe a child, while at other times the phrase “little women” implies propriety and elegance, as when Jo commits to “try and be what he [Father] loves to call me, ‘a little woman,’ and not be rough and wild” (Alcott 10). Here, “little” is a word used to symbolize growth and the potential for improvement. A “little woman” is one who has not yet reached her full potential. Although the sisters are not perfect, nor ever will they be, their awareness of their own imperfections, coupled with earnest exhortations from their father to make him “fonder and prouder than ever of his little women” (Alcott 10), lead them to continually strive for personal improvement. Later in the novel, Meg’s husband John refers to her as a “little mother” (Alcott 400); this term may seem simply one of endearment, but it too reflects the process of growth and development in the same way as before. She is now a mother, but contrary to what many children believe, she is not suddenly perfect in that role. Meg still has much to learn about marriage and about parenting that will take her a lifetime to learn, as do all her sisters in their respective roles.

Throughout the course of the novel, and through their lives, the March sisters learn, grow, and develop as “little women.” They do not forget the past, but rather learn from it; they begin to focus on matters of lasting importance; they strive to continually learn and grow. This process, one that never ends, has its true purpose in the struggle itself; though the sisters never arrive at perfection, the effort involved leads to immensely satisfying lives because they know that they performed the best that they could.