Palacký University in Olomouc

Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies

Feministic Approach to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Essay
Theory of Literary Interpretation
Prof. PhDr. Michal Peprník, Dr.

Veronika Kolesárová
Master’s Program, 1st year
AF
30th April 2023
 In this essay, we will analyse the book Little Women, a novel written by a famous author,
Louisa May Alcott from the feministic perspective. The book is considered to be on of the
greatest novels written in English. It was published in 1847 which was a revolutionary year for
gender ideas and feminism. Let me start with a short description of the novel´s plot. The story
revolves around a wealthy man named Heathcliff who lives in the ancient mansion of Wuthering
Heights. He is the landlord of the man called Lockwood. The book is based on the recollection of
the stories that the housekeeper tells Lockwood. Lockwood keeps it in the form of a diary where
he writes everything that the housekeeper mentions about Heathcliff and the Wuthering Heights
manor. The title of the book comes from the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling.1 The adjective
Wuthering describes a strong wind or a place where such wind blows. The novel is well known
for its unusual structure as the story is told through flashbacks and events are often presented out
of chronological order. We rarely encounter sequential arrangement of the events. When the
book was published, gender equality started to emerge and feminism became the topic for
discussion. As women are an important aspect of this work, we are going to focus on the
feministic approach and the way the story promotes feminism .The work was published in the
period of time when gender equality and feminism started to prevail. The dictionary definition of
the term feminism is as follows: “questions the long-standing, dominant, male, phallocentric
ideologies, patriarchal attitudes and male interpretations“2. In literature, it can be interpreted as
male dominance over women and how they are treated in society. In this essay we will briefly
describe women´s characters and then analyze 3 elements: the roles of the women in past, the
superiority of genders and satirical chauvinism.

There are 4 women that play a key role in the story. One of the main characters,
Catherine Earnshaw, is the portrayal of non - stereotypical woman figure. She is the principal
female protagonist and has both masculine and feminine traits. She considered to be an
adventurous, independent tomboy which is not typical for the Victorian era. In the book she is
described as “a wild, wicked slip she was—but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and
lightest foot in the parish: and, after all, she meant no harm; “.3 Then, there is another Catherine
Cathy Linton, portrayed as a generous, kind and warm-hearted woman. She is the daughter of

1
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights (Stansted: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1997), 3.
2
Cambridge Dictionary
3
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights, 30.
Catherine Earnshaw and resembles her mother . While Cathy is not exactly like her mother, there
are some parallels between the two of them. She is represented as “the most winning thing that
ever brought sunshine into a desolate house: a real beauty in the face, with the Earnshaws’
handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons’ fair skin and small features “.4 The next significant female
character in the novel is Isabella, who is initially portrayed as being unintelligent and immature
but later proves to be the opposite after marrying Heathcliff. She shows her strength by stating:
“I surveyed the weapon inquisitively. A hideous notion struck me: how powerful I should be
possessing such an instrument! I took it from his hand, and touched the blade“. 5 It can be
anticipated that by saying this she wants to emphasize the fact that the weapons are not only
meant for men, but also for women who have the same power to wound someone. This
illustration demostrates how gender equality was pushed forward. The last woman in the story is
Nelly Dean. Nelly is the storyteller in the book. She is a significant character in the story as the
most conflicts revolve around her. Moreover, she knows the surroundings very well as she states
in the beginning of the story: “Before I came to live here, I was almost always at Wuthering
Heights; because my mother had nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw that was Hareton’s father, and I
got used to playing with the children... “ 6 Nelly is truly aware of everything that is happening at
Wuthering Heights, so it is not difficult for her to narrate the story. She is considered to be
a homodiegetic narrator as she is also a character in the story. As women are indispensable part
of the story of Wuthering Heights, we will focus on the analysis of their roles and how women
are constrained in culture and society.

Firstly, we will deal with the roles of women in past, more precisely in the 19th century
when the book was originally published. According to Freud, women’s lives were dominated by
their sexual reproductive function and women’s emancipation movement is something that
should not be discussed. In his books, Freud solely supported the ideological and biased opinions
on women empowerment. It is very obvious that he supported mysogenic ideas and he was
extremely biased when it comes to feminine sexuality. As oppossed to Freud, Juliet Mitchell
disagrees with the purely economic understanding of the position of women in society and she
suggests looking beneath the superficial description that Sigmund Freud provides.7 In Wuthering

4
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights, 137.
5
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights, 103.
6
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights, 26.
7
Nolan, O´Mahony, Freud and Feminism, (Summer, 1987), 159,
Heights, Catherine, for example, emphasizes the equality in the relationship between her and
Heathcliff by stating “ I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s
more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same“. 8 She
highlights the importance of being equal especially in terms of opportunities and rights that both
of them have. In that time, women were inferior to men in many aspects. However, one
controversial element appears in the story that marks the increasing superiority of women. There
are two characters named Catherine which may be interpreted as highlighting the women
characters and increasing the strength and importance of women in the community.

Connel argues that gender is a way in which social practice is ordered.9 It is also about
relationship of desire and power. For instance, Catherine, and later Cathy, are depicted as naive
characters and in the story, they fall in love with the first man that they encounter. It is obvious
that the author´s attitude is to portray them with a strong desire to have a man around them at all
times. However, “gender exists to the extent that biology does. “ 10 By this we mean that even
though the women are biologically less strong than men it does not mean they should have lower
social status or should be humiliated by the male population. It could be argued that the author of
this novel portrays women in a tomboyish manner to highlight the fact that even women in that
period of time could have had masculine characteristics and behaviour. The situation where this
is clearly portrayed in the novel is when Catherine talks to Heathcliff about perfectly spend hot
day in July. “The pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till
evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about
among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead. That was his most perfect idea of
heaven's happiness , mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and
bright white clouds flitting rapidly above“.11 By claiming this, she expresses her adventurous
character and shows the features of behaviour that were not acceptable for a woman in that
period of time – braveness and courage. She was more than just an obedient and timid girl.

One of the prominent themes in the novel is satirical chauvinism, which is evident in the
behaviour of the male characters towards the female characters . According to Cambridge
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30090854.pdf?refreqid=excelsior
%3A36d33dadf9e659f6d46e1e3c58a2b90c&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1.
8
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights (Stansted: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1997), 58.
9
R.W.Connel, Masculinities (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 71.
10
Connel, Masculinities, 72.
11
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights, 180.
dictionary, this term may be described as “an attitude of superiority toward members of the
opposite sex, superiority of men or vice versa. In this specific case, we are dealing with male
superiority over women.“12 In addition to men, most women are suffering cultural alienation that
triggers many problems and disagreements. 13 The male characters exhibit chauvinistic views
toward the female characters throughout the entire book. For instance, Heathcliff, one of the
book's key protagonists, is abusive to Catherine, the person he is in love with. In the novel
Wuthering Heights, Catherine often describes a character of Heathcliff and how he behaves
towards her. “He is an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid
wilderness of furze and whinstone“. 14 The chauvinistic ideas that were common at the time the
novel is set are evident in this behaviour. The author of Wuthering Heights wants to decrease the
oppression by putting women characters forward and allowing them to have the same
opportunities as men. The idea of this movement is to “separate men from the mainstream
masculinity with which they were familiar with and to reconstruct the personality in a way it
produces a new, non-sexist self. “15 He argues that masculinity should not be brought fore, rather
the individuals ought to be reconstructed in a way to avoid being sexist and discriminatory.
However, Sigmund Freud in his work Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, conceptualizes that
we cannot ignore the differences between men and women because those differences are formed
from the early childhood. 16 He states that there will always be some kind of superiority of men
over women when we consider it from the biological perspective. Freud writes that “
‘Masculine’ and ‘Feminine’ are sometimes used in the sense of activity and passivity, sometimes
in a biological, and sometimes, again in a sociological sense“. 17

In conclusion, in this essay we showed how the feministic approach can be applied in the
analysis of this work and how women were portrayed in that era. We have noticed that the story
of Wuthering Heights marked the beginning of gender equality and female emancipation period
in the world. Depiction of 4 women characters (namely Catherine, Cathy, Isabella and Nelly) in
Wuthering Heights allowed us to explore the distinction between men and women in the
12
Cambridge Dictionary
13
Elaine Showalter, The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1995), 31.
14
Emily Bronte, The Wuthering Heights, 75.
15
Connel, Masculinities, 130.
16
Sigmund Freud, Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, (New York: First Touchstone Edition, 1995), 174.
17
Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, (1905), 219.
Victorian era. The emphasis was placed on the women as individuals characters who were
depicted as strong, sometimes rebellious and disobedient. As it is evident from the novel, the
women played a key role in portraying the elements of femininity and masculinity. We offered a
detailed analysis of the women characters and how they were portrayed in relation to men by
evaluating the feminism-related themes.

Bibliography (The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed.)

Bronte, Emily. The Wuthering Heights. Stansted: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1997
Cambridge dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/
Connel, R.W. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995
Freud, Sigmund. Sexuality and the Psychology of Love. New York: First Touchstone Edition,
1995
Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. 1905
O´Mahony, Nolan, Freud and Feminism. Summer, 1987.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/30090854.pdf?refreqid=excelsior
%3A36d33dadf9e659f6d46e1e3c58a2b90c&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1.
Showalter, Elaine .The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1995