SOURCE: "The Borders of Ethical, Erotic, and Artistic Possibilities in Little Women," in Signs, Vol. 15, No. 3, Spring, 1990, pp. 562-85.

In the following essay, Murphy examines critical debate surrounding the question of Little Women's status as a feminist novel. She argues that the power of the work is largely derived "from the contradictions and tensions it exposes and from the pattern it establishes of subversive feminist exploration colliding repeatedly against patriarchal repression. "

Twenty years of scholarship about Louisa May Alcott's most famous and enduring work, Little Women, testifies to the complicated process of reexamining a novel widely recognized as a classic in American children's literature.¹ This critical reevaluation of Alcott has been complicated by the publication of her previously uncollected and largely unavailable gothic thrillers,² which reveal a new dimension to the familiar author, both enriching our reactions to Little Women (especially to the silencing of Jo March's own...