Ideas for Reports and Papers
1. What perspectives on marriage does Alcott present in Little Women, and how do these views align with modern attitudes?
2. Considering Little Women is often seen as a dated, sentimental, and moralizing novel, why do you think it has remained popular for over a century? What valuable lessons can contemporary readers extract from the book to enhance their lives?
3. Little Women is the first of three books about the March family. Read either Little Men or Jo's Boys and compare it with Little Women. What new insights about the family are revealed in the sequel? Do you observe any changes in Alcott's narrative style?
4. In her novels, what does Alcott seem to convey about the tension between women's pursuit of political, economic, and educational equality and the obligations of domestic life?
5. Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson Alcott, and their neighbor in Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson, were prominent figures in the transcendentalist movement. What does the term "transcendentalist" signify? Investigate and provide a report on the history of transcendentalist thought in America.
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