SOURCE: "Little Women in the Twenty-First Century," in Images of the Child, edited by Harry Eiss, Bowling Green University Press, 1994, pp. 199-214.

In this essay, Minadeo considers the relevance of Little Women to today's readers for whom gender roles are less limiting than in Alcott's time.

Reading Little Women used to be easy. Before feminism changed the way American girls looked at the future, Louisa May Alcott's book was simply a manual showing girls how to be ideal women. From Alcott's book girls learned to serve others and forget themselves, to put ambition aside for marriage and family, and to hide their negative feelings. Reading Little Women these days is much more confusing because feminism has helped girls understand the future isn't limited by gender—that biology is not destiny. It is difficult to read Little Women anymore without resisting its overt messages about the nature of femininity...