Little Women

As I began reading Little Women, the young characters, their diversity, playfulness, their innocent thoughts and sisterly love towards each other delighted me. Their plays, their neighbor and the friendship was brilliantly portrayed and its natural innocence kept intact. I oscillated between thinking that it was at times unnecessarily preachy and that it provides some good lessons. It does provide good lessons, in parts, especially during their younger days. The sisters shared some envious chemistry, and their awe towards their mother was portrayed so earnestly. One can’t help but believe that some part of this must have come from personal experience because of the honesty is seen in some of the lines. It was reminiscent of my childhood days and the many moral dilemmas that young hearts face at the time, dilemmas that seem utterly trivial today.

But as it progressed, as the kids grew older, I found the book steering towards being a text book on morality. Its visions of ideal women, women’s place in the society seemed even anti-feminist. But perhaps only whiffs of feminism were existent in the 1800s when the book was written, and the book may have even been considered bold for its expression of some feminist ideas.

 The later part of the book was disappointing for its idealization and commercialization. It idealizes the qualities of a perfect woman, and seems to have been written to cater to popular thoughts with the intention of selling more copies. I didn’t quite like the turn Jo’s life assumed. Yes, assertive girls like Jo didn’t stand a great chance to secure for themselves a ‘suitable man’ owing to their vivacity, but the fact that she gets married to a professor 15 years her senior makes me wonder if the author was insinuating that girls such as Jo would only get much older and queer guys, something which even her pleasant description of ‘the old man’ and ‘their happy paradise’ in the book cannot mask. Add to that her subtle remarks about the place of women in society, saying that “a woman’s happiest kingdom is her home, her highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife and mother”; or Jo calling her childhood castle-in-the-air of wanting to be famous and writing books a selfish one, and indefinitely push her dream of writing one to a distant-if-possible future. She seems content with her life, but that’s only owing to the charm of fiction. It also seems to me that the idea was to write a good, well-accepted, bound-to-be-popular book, thus explaining the artful inclusion of popular notions, especially the ones delineating the role of women in society, even though the author herself may have not believed in the ideas so articulated. That is the disappointment that I take from this book, this idea that the book was written in order for it to get popular. That likens it to the sleazy stories Jo wrote for the magazine for money. What justifies this idea further is that the book draws inspirations from the author’s own family, her sisters and parents, with the exception of the Father perhaps who seems to be absent much throughout the book but wasn’t so in reality. It is said that Jo’s character was modeled on the author herself, and also that the author was a feminist who remained unmarried all her life. Now any woman writer with feminist inclinations and daring enough to be unmarried in the mid-1800s and not submit to the popular notions of woman as was prevalent would hardly seem to concur with some of the ideas about woman expressed in the book. Perhaps the ideas were so articulated because they would most definitely sell as opposed to the droll bold ideas that any feminist woman then may have had.  

Now disappointment number 2. Much as the Marches in the book, the author’s own family too in reality was poor, but in reality the relationships weren’t as smooth and idealistic as in the book. The author perhaps has put forth her idea of a life in contrast to her real life and vented that out in the book. That is the disappointment number two, the excessive idealization of family lives and values in the book, which makes it abjectly fictional.

It is very refreshing to read something that eggs you on to write, create, do, for the sake of art, for the sake of happiness. True art is an honest manifestation. Thoughts put forth honestly, whether the thoughts themselves are honest or not.

An unbiased view of the world around you. Is it possible at all? To think independently without the influences of your gender, your upbrinding, your state of mind? Our view of things are not as much a reflection of the things themselves as much as they are of us. Yet, even with these filters, if thoughts are expressed in their whole, without the influences of worries, rewards, consequences, appearances, conformity, non-conformity, if you can express all that you feel,, and be true to yourself, it is pure, it is beautiful. It leads me to think that all great art forms are great for this very reason.

Of Women

So many of us have so often encountered countless people, men and women, who meet us with a long list of what a woman must and mustn't do, wear, talk, pray, hope and say. So much so that most of us, when faced with doing something new and untried often find ourselves wondering what people would say of this. While we all have some obligations towards maintaining decorum, no obligation should be at the cost of one's own freedom of thought. Moreover, obligations and opinions are often subjective, so one must always be true to one's own thought, to oneself. Certainly the prevailing conditions have improved much for the woman of today in comparison to the woman of Elizabethan era, or even during the time of Virginia Woolf herself. Even so, one cannot help but find disparity  still existing in the treatment of women. I still see brothers deciding how much their sisters should study, who they should marry, where they are allowed to go and so forth. Yes, family is important, but in the name of family, or protection, a woman should not be stifled. We must teach our women to protect themselves rather than impressing upon them that they need protection by a male. Sadly, most women are now so complacent in their subjugated role, ever so dependent on the males of their house for the tiniest of the things. So content have some become that they want to continue in this role and very often don't realize the subjugation until pushed to the point of exasperation. And even if one woman were to attempt to break free and set her own path, the possibilities and the feasibility of it seems so unlikely that very few venture out at all.  She has very few people to look up to, and most of them who may have pursued their wish end up being the subject of ridicule. The question also arises that if a woman in content in her role as a subjugated woman, why raise this hue an cry at all? After all, woman empowerment should essentially be leading up to happiness, contentment. The problem however is that most women are content with such a role because they don't know what other possibilities exists for them besides that, as also because perhaps their lives are much better than their peers whose family imposes on them more restrictions that their own. Essentially comparing their situation to someone more downtrodden and being thankful for that. Also, over centuries us women have been wired to please others and keep others (parents, grandparents, brothers, in-laws, husband, relatives) happy and to place others happiness above her own, a trait that is considered most desirable in any woman. I love my family, but any family which, in the name of family values and love, twists a woman into doing things that go against her very nature, are they even considering the woman's happiness at all?