Girlhood and Christmas: Little Women and expectations of young women in nineteenth-century America

‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’ is the memorable opening line to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1). Beginning with Alcott’s 1868 novel and considering nineteenth century gender roles for women more broadly, I am picking up threads of the experience of ‘girlhood’ through the festive period. My particular focus is on Christmas traditions of piety and theatrical performance, exemplified by the March sisters’ representation as both moral daughters and artistic performers. The so-called confines of girlhood as experienced by a nineteenth century girl to the home is questioned by the theatre world created by the sisters, which I view as a positive construction of girlhood and shaping ideas of coming of age. I will also turn to how nineteenth century girlhood has been depicted in adaptations of Little Women by Gillian Armstrong (1994) and Greta Gerwig (2019), as they imagine the female-centric world of the girls and their relationship to the festive period.

By examining young women’s relationship to the festive period in the nineteenth-century, one can see how modern-day adaptations recall the nostalgia and sisterly world of the novel, and equally how Little Women represents a particular experience of being a young woman coming of age through the moral codes and types of performance they engaged in.

What is girlhood?

It is important to define the concept of girlhood as Alcott and her contemporaries would have understood it. Girlhood is part of our modern-day vernacular, widely documented on social media, a celebration of the female experience, the good, the bad and the ugly. First documented in literature in Samuel Ricardson’s Clarissa in 1748, and for a 19th century audience, the title itself, Little Women, offers one perspective of the role middle-class teenage girls held in society (OED). They are women in training, with a somewhat diminutive adjective ‘little’ to denote youth and inexperience. Frances Armstrong has described the period of the novel as significant to understanding the coming of age of the sisters: ‘"Little womanhood" is a stage on the journey to greatness… Their memories of girlhood can remind them of the advantages of the real littleness of childhood, which provided a safely contained space for the direct and physical acting out of desires’ (Armstrong 454). Armstrong posits coming of age for these girls as a an ultimately positive experience, these formative years leading them to ‘greatness’ in the adult world (454). She draws out a contrast between this nurturing and nostalgic view of childhood and the adverb ‘littleness’, denoting the social and physical limitations to the girls’ world living in Civil War America. They are restricted by their economic situation, the conflict at home and their gender, which limits their education, and yet they find joy in each other as sisters able to express their desires.

Turning to Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women in 2019, she connects girlhood with memory, delineating the female-centric world of the characters. Her first flashback sets up the theme of memory and girlhood as she brings the viewers to Christmastime 1861. The script reads: ‘the sisters, all together again in the past, in the snowglobe of girlhood and memory that is ever present but forever gone, are in a flurry of getting ready for a holiday party’ (Gerwig 11). The nostalgia that pervades the audience’s mind is encapsulated in Gerwig’s stage direction. Their home is ‘a snowglobe of girlhood and memory’, a festive metaphor for girlhood itself, a glistening, beautiful landscape of comfort and a flurry of movement. It is a contained space, and Gerwig poignantly adds that this memory is ‘ever present but forever gone’ (11). The girls are grown up, but the memory of Christmas is what transports us to the past, to the first scene with the sisters all together as a pure moment of joy and coming together that holidays bring.

Figure One. Gerwig, Greta. Little Women. 2019.

The use of flashbacks in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of the novel serves to enact this idea of both reminiscing on the safety and comfort of childhood as well as expressing frustrations about their economic and physical limits. Gerwig’s non-linear film shifts from childhood to adulthood, perhaps suggesting that the girls never truly leave this behind. Gerwig’s thematic style as a filmmaker is preoccupied with young women escaping their social world, as seen in Lady Bird and Barbie, but this dream of flight also leads to an acknowledgment of the beauty of their childhood and relationships with women. Critics Dr. Niña Jen R. Canayong and Ms. Rey-ann C. Matalines underline that ‘the matriarchal circle of the family stays completely self-contained and entirely female’, which shapes our reading of the novel as it is an exclusive world (7). The harmonious world of the sisters is not without disputes and family pressure, particularly around their class and lack of mobility, but my focus within this self-containment of the March sisters is the element of fantasy which moves them outside of their social sphere. It may be unfair to say that Alcott confines her March sisters to a conservative narrative. Their options of free time would be limited, and the experience of childhood for women was much shorter than men’s as they reached marriageable age much sooner, as young as twenty for Amy. Girlhood as encapsulated by the title ‘Little Women’ is only small inasmuch as society judges women’s lives to be small, and Alcott (and later Gerwig) resists this in portraying a rich world of sisterly troubles and triumphs, socially and morally confined and yet artistically rewarding, as we will see next.

Morality and the festive period for girls

I am now turning my focus back to Alcott’s novel and how Christmas represented the pinnacle of expectations of charity and piety for young women in nineteenth century America and England. Beginning with the March sisters’ Christmas celebrations and then considering Christian celebrations through music and the work of Christina Rossetti (Alcott’s contemporary), there is a trend to be found in the moral and domestic role women occupied.

The enigmatic, independent Jo March complains about their lack of money in the festive opening chapter of the 1868 novel. It soon transpires that the four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, are in no need of material gifts: they are the heart and soul of each other’s worlds in their warm yet simple home. The wintery scenes which open the novel and famous cinematic retellings of Little Women are iconic in cultural imagination, especially the Christmas play that the sisters put on and their candlelit singing in an intimate moment of sisterhood. In the iconic opening to the novel, Alcott declares the lack of agency that these young women have in the same moment as marking Christmas as a pivotal moment in a Christian child’s calendar. Specifically for young girls then, Christmastime plays a key part in their social formation and, as we will see later, creative freedom.

     Alcott provides a domestic social commentary where Christmas is a key season, accented by joy, childhood, and loss by writing the experience of Christmas for four girls somewhat confined to their home and small town in Massachusetts. Alcott has furnished readers with a lifetime of comfort in the fireside of the sisters’ attic and snowy escapades. The intersection between domesticity and religious teaching is significant in the novel, as Alcott represents the wider societal views of young women educated to be virtuous and moral.

So how do 19th century girls spend their Christmas morning? First by reading Pilgrims’ Progress, the religious allegory by John Bunyan which was extremely popular in Protestant households (1678). The presence of this book speaks to the religious education that children undertook at this time, thus the domestic experience of Christmas is intrinsic to understanding girlhood for the March sisters in 19th century society. The Christian values taught by their mother are lucid throughout the novel, and her instruction on Christmas day is a potent metaphor for the piety expected of young women. Marmee instructs her daughters to ‘Look under your pillows on Christmas morning, and you will find your guidebook’, hinting to the spiritual book they will receive as a gift (13). The choice of a religious gift is telling of the teaching of daughters, and their goodness is received from their mother, emphasising the traditionally female role in a household. Importantly, in late 19th century America, celebrating Christmas was normalised, and Alcott was one of the first to depict a middle-class family Christmas in her novel (Murfin). When Marmee asks the girls about giving food to the Hummels, they obey immediately, their daughterly duty foregrounded as the sisters are completely devoted to their mother. Rachel Canayong and Rey-ann Matalines have noted that Beth symbolises the ‘ideal’ model of girlhood: ‘Out of the four sisters, Beth has been the best example in showing the normative behaviour of female sex at that time’ (60). Adding to Canayong and Mataline’s judgement of Beth, her portrayal is the most aligned with stereotypical expectations of femininity as she is devoted, quiet and self-sacrificing. As the pinnacle of the ‘dutiful daughter’, she is the first to agree to give food to their poorer neighbours, and the sisters do this heartily.

Indeed, the capturing of this scene in the 1994 film adaptation is beautiful and light, rather than this moment serving as a doctrine, it becomes jubilant as they all break into an acapella rendition of ‘Here we come a-wassailing’. Director Gillian Armstrong’s interpretation focuses on the joy of the festive season and the message of goodwill that the sisters represent.

Figure Two. Armstrong, Gillian. Little Women. 1994

‘Wassailing means going door-to-door singing in exchange for food and drink and it is thought the tradition pre-dates Christianity and formed a mid-winter tradition’ (BBC Music). This song was popular in the mid-19th century and the lyrics reflect the good deed they are doing in offering their Christmas breakfast. This picture encapsulates girlhood and sorority, four sisters walking in the snow with food and a whistling hot kettle, singing joy and welcoming in a snowy day.

The author however does not shy away from presenting the desires and vanity of the sisters in their childhood arguments and mishaps. One such example can be seen in Amy’s reluctance to give up her breakfast orange, offering a complication to the notion of being a kind and giving young woman.

Figure Three. Ibid.

The presence or absence of food reveals a lot about social status, and here oranges are a luxury, as they had only just begun to be widely traded in civil war America. The symbol of the orange and the world beyond the March home is significant, as Shana Klein wrote that ‘Depictions of fruit were not just an accessory to the dining room. They were an accessory to the American empire and a device to endorse America’s growing territorial and economic gains’ (Southern Cultures). Situating the female world of Little women within its Civil war context of a plantation economy and the slave trade offers a glimpse at the world outside of the female characters, which they seemingly engage with very little. Here, Amy’s childish desire to keep the orange represents more the process of becoming a ‘good’ girl as stipulated by charitable and pious characteristics expected of American women.

Therefore, Alcott outlines the transformation of these young women as they display piety and thus align with nineteenth century Christian expectations. Mrs Hummel describes them as ‘good angels’ in their Christmas offering of goodwill and although they do not attend church, the girls are portrayed in this angelic light through their good actions (17). They are described as ‘good’ and this adjective represents the god fearing behaviour expected of young women. The expectation of sacrifice, goodness and virtue at all times is seen in Coventry Patmore’s Victorian model of the ‘Angel in the House’, a moral woman who populates the domestic sphere (Melani). In fact, a contemporary of Alcott, Christina Rossetti’s, was painted by her brother in a similar fashion to the ‘good’ little women of Alcott’s novel. Her Christmastime hymn, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ portrays ideal femininity through religious devotion. The speaker, despite their low status, offers their ‘heart’ as a gift, and this may also be found in the unconditional love taught by Marmee in Little Women and learnt by the sisters through their trials and tribulations. Marmee acts as a role model for the Christian, nurturing woman the sisters are expected to become, and this is intrinsic to their social formation as young women.

Figure Four. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’. 1848-9

Christina Rossetti in fact modelled for her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting entitled ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ (1848-9), encapsulating the projection of girlhood in 19th century society. The religious lesson and meek pose of Mary, shown as a saint and accompanied by an angel, fits in with the reading of the novel as a wider commentary on expected gender roles that women struggle with as they grow up and express their desires. However, as we have seen, the sisters are more complicated than stereotypes of traditional moral femininity, and we will next see how the theme of performance both aligns the characters with expectations of young ladies and also resists such narrow societal roles as they experiment through theatre.

Performance and spectacle: the pinnacle of girlhood?

The theme of performance creates a space for girls to be whoever they desire, and travel far beyond their home. Girlhood in the society of Alcott is delineated by a heteronormative view of womanhood, and another mode of performance which shows the sisters’ inclusion and exclusion is through fashion and class. As a series of ‘repetitive acts’, Judith Butler’s seminal model of the repeated performance of gender asserts that the identity of ‘woman’ is never fixed, but that clothing is one mode of establishing a normative gender appearance (Butler 2543). In the instance of growing up and desiring to leave girlhood behind, Little Women’s focus on performing being a ‘grown-up’ woman reflects the nineteenth century beliefs of what a woman should look like. Here, the focus on hair and costume to achieve what the young girls consider an ideal woman’s fashion is telling of their youth and act of being a ‘grown-up’ woman. They aspire to the lifestyle of a wealthier middle-class society woman.

One comic example of this is when the older March sisters are getting ready for a Christmas ball. Alcott brings humour to the moment where Meg’s hair is burnt, as they are imitating how a grown-up woman would act. There is irony behind the so-called ‘all-important business of `getting ready for the party'’, which connects the performance of girlhood for the March sisters to contemporary readers who see the pressure to get ready for an event (Alcott 25)

The desire to grow up and attend these parties is a desire that reveals the eve of womanhood, and perhaps this is a timeless wish. For example, Gerwig phrases Amy’s complaint to her sisters comically as she asks ‘Why can’t we all go to the party?! It’s not fair!’, suggesting her position as a girl wanting to be older and able to join her sisters (alas the youngest sister’s curse!) (Gerwig 11). She is excluded due to her age, class, and gender, but the tension here relates back to Butler’s useful model of performativity around gender roles. Amy’s wish is to conform and grow up, as she sees in her sisters’ participation in the grown-up world of dresses and ballgowns the model of womanhood.

Alcott subverts the normative performance of girlhood however through Jo’s characterisation. She subverts codes of ‘proper’ behaviour for girls, exemplified at the party, where she observes the dancing as an outsider. She intentionally looks on from the curtain, symbolising her desire to not fit in and to not become another society woman. She meets Laurie, and in their first dance, another joyous experience of youth is captured by Gerwig’s script: ‘Laurie bows, Jo awkwardly curtsies and then they go dancing wildly up and down a wrap-around porch’ (16). They dance ‘wildly’, another image of youth and unbridled emotion which is much more natural that Jo’s ‘awkward’ curtsey (Gerwig 16). Alcott describes their dance as equally spontaneous and liberating, where Jo is ‘full of swing and spring’ (Alcott 31). This moment is crucial in establishing Jo’s journey to womanhood is non-traditional, as she rebels against the social circle represented by the ball. A harsh truth is made lucid by Canayong and Matalines, as they state that: ‘Following the norm receives acceptance and being deviant becomes a social outcast’, suggesting that Jo becomes a pariah in this resistance to the norm(59). Alcott’s representation of both traditional gender roles, particularly in the moral behaviour we have already seen, and the unconventional Jo, posits a new interpretation of nineteenth century girlhood that is more imaginative than Canayong and Matalines suggest. As the sisters both participate in the world of dressing as young women and following society events, but also keep a critical distance, the novel offers a reading of an alternative girlhood. 

Furthermore, re-examining the space of the home repositions it as a place of escapism from the stereotypes of girlhood that I have outlined. The primary way in which the sisters occupy themselves at Christmas is through their acting. The theatre, or attic, is a space reserved for play and imagination, a world which the sisters define and control. As children, the Christmas show that they create is evidently a way to overcome class and gender limitations which prevent them from going out into society to see shows and spend money. We admire their ‘clever’ design of ‘antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory’, (17).

Figure Six. Ibid.

Evoking the glittery and colourful set design, Alcott underlines the second-hand nature of their set, costumes and props, but adopts a tone of admiration which reinforces how creativity is an incredible gift that marks sisterhood. Through their resourcefulness and imagination, they can make tin into glitter, and such a magical description places Christmas as a font of nostalgic memory for sisters. This spectacle and theatrical space for the sisters offers a wider view of girlhood as a creative time. Indeed, this is shared with other local girls, as Alcott describes their home becoming a theatre: ‘On Christmas night, a dozen girls piled onto the bed which was the dress circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy’ (18). Readers are invited to share in the revelry and the homemade nature of their show. Theatre offers a creative outlet which is fulfilling and much more diverse than the stereotype of dutiful obedience in young girls.

The message of the novel and its reflection on the role of young women in society may be to upkeep virtue and goodness, but, as I have shown, the portrayal of girlhood as purely pious is too narrow to describe the rich and colourful lives of the March sisters. The novel engages with societal trends where Christmas is a female centric celebration, following the Christian nineteenth century traditions of goodwill and morality. Equally, Little Women offers an alternative model of girlhood through the creative freedom to perform and experiment with the grown-up world of women as well as in their attic theatre. As the film adaptations have shown, the festive joy is a key facet of childhood memories and encapsulates their love and formative period coming of age as young girls. Alcott reflects on gender roles propagated by society and the performance of the girls, through the shared experiences of the sisters, effectively represents the 19th century experience of girlhood as a multidimensional and creative time in their lives. Coupled with the adaptations, the anxieties and joys of girlhood in Little Women maintains the timeless experience of sisters which resonates with a modern-day audience, even if readers today are often much less restricted by their gender.

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Bibliography

Primary Sources

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Armstrong, Gillian. Little Women. Columbia Pictures, 1994.

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