Didactic Fiction in Alcott’s Little Women

On the surface, children’s literature appears to be very straightforward and light-hearted, failing to carry within a particular story any deeper inherent meaning—the language is simplistic, there’s a limited viewpoint, and characters oftentimes are portrayed as caricatures. As would be expected, little respect is given to this genre of writing, having been brushed aside as simplistic and trivial. George Orwell, a profound literary figure in his own right, said: “the worst books are often the most important because they are usually the ones that are read earliest in life” (Hunt, 1). Because of this lack of acknowledgment by the literary establishment, the critic P. Hunt maintains that children’s books should be displaced from the literary canon altogether (7). But when viewed from both a critical and emotional standpoint, children’s literature occupies a very dense subgroup of the Literary Canon. It appeals to a broad dual readership of children and adults. With this, a children’s author carries the burden of having to satisfy two different needs (that of the child, who primarily seeks to be entertained and awed; and that of the adult, w

Peter Pan focuses primarily on children growing into adults. In Little Women, Alcott accepts this inevitable changeover with the four March sisters maturing as the book progresses. J.M. Barrie takes a much different approach. Whereas Alcott seeks to grapple with the hardships of everyday life, putting her characters through common situations and conflicts, Barrie writes to escape from reality (class notes, 4/3/03). When Barrie teaches his readers about childhood, he does so through the character of Peter Pan, who “symbolizes the child’s reluctance to be absorbed into adult life” (Jan, 68). And so because Peter Pan is afraid to confront reality, he constructs for himself a parallel, upside-down world to which he can fly to in comfort. The critic Isabelle Jan contends that a child making such a flight into another, dreamlike world is no easy task: Peter, like all children, “require a sponsor and a guide” (68). What Barrie tries to convey, I think, is that for adult readers, we frequently grow-up too quickly, and so he presents to us a fantasy land of sorts that allows us to escape from our reality. But it’s worth examining whether Peter actually possessed such a confederate at his side to aide his flight.

ho is in search for morals and values to pass along to their children) at once. Such is the complexity of children’s literature. The argument I put forward in this paper is such: children’s literature is a vital tool in didactic fiction, as in the words of Phillip Pullman, it teaches lessons “about what it means to be human, to grow up, to suffer and learn” (assignment handout, 11/3/03). I will argue why, and discuss how, Little Women and Peter Pan fall into this category of educating their respective readers.

So while unimaginative critics can dump children’s literature into a category of the insignificant, it is quite evident that the genre holds an important position in literature. It is a genre appealing to both children and adults, teaching two different lessons for each of its audiences within the same text. Little Women, by teaching young girls the lessons of maturing into women, and the joys and problems that come along with

Some topics in this essay:
Isabelle Jan, Little Women, Peter Pan, Literary Canon, George Orwell, Gardiner Alcott’s, Louisa Alcott, Amy Jo, Professor Bhaer, Lukens Alcott’s, little women, children’s literature, peter pan, literary canon, didactic fiction, meigs 213, amy jo, escape reality, human nature, teaching readers,