SOURCE: "Life with Marmee: Three Versions," in The Classic American Novel and the Movies, edited by Gerald Peary and Roger Shatzkin, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1977, pp. 62-72.

In the following essay, Ellis claims that unlike the film adaptations of Little Women, which stereotype girls, Alcott's book represents them as serious and capable people.

In times of economic and social upheaval, the sphere of home and mother is always there to fall back on. This at least is what popular literature and the media would have us believe. Yet war and economic depression often necessitate changes in the family that bring reality into conflict with the ideal of a single male breadwinner and his flock of happy dependents. Men in wartime leave home to fight, while female members of the household are drawn into the labor force—paid and unpaid—in support of the war effort. And when employment is...