COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Compare and contrast: Little Women and Treasure Island.



Compare and contrast: Little Women and Treasure Island.

This is a lovely and heart rending tale about the March family--a family who loses its wealth and gains much more--love and unity. Young girls are only human, and they have a natural yearning for worldly possessions. It is up to them how they cope with it, which brings us back to the March girls. Their desire to help others even when they don't have much it is indeed remarkable. This book shows how in all times, love and hope are the most faithful companions, for when all else fails we can depend on them (Blumin, 1989: 16). Honest and true intentions are really the most valuable possessions one can have. And this novel shows us the beauty of simplicity and the importance of the small human deeds that count even though they cannot be visibly seen. Some might not like this story but the unique thing about it is that it is based on a completely true story of Louisa M. Alcott's own life.

Unsurprisingly, parenting plays a large role in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, a book that primarily chronicles the maturation of four sisters from young adolescence to adulthood. Just as Little Women can be seen as a guidebook for young adults (especially girls) on proper moral and social behavior, it can also serve as a primer for raising children. The parents of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy have a very specific task: to mold their girls into industrious, helpful, and cheerful Christian women. Through personal example, daily lessons, and Christian teachings, Marmee and Father succeed in this goal, but not without some difficulties (Baym, 1978: 18). Despite the hard work that parenting entails, it is presented as the epitome of a woman's—and, to a large part, a man's—life. The second part of the book continues to follow the lives of the girls once they marry and begin to have children of their own, which affords the novel another opportunity to model appropriate child-rearing practices and to present parenting as a joyful, necessary, and fulfilling experience.

At the novel's opening, the March family is, in effect, a one-parent household, as Mr. March is away from home fighting in the Civil War. With her eldest daughters growing rapidly, Marmee must balance preparing her girls for adulthood with household duties, charitable work, and money matters. However, she does have some help from her two oldest daughters, Meg and Jo, who each "adopt" one of the younger siblings to watch over and care for. Although the novel certainly promotes the traditional nuclear family, it also shows that caring, successful families can come in other forms as well (Alcott, 1993: 69). Mr. March's absence in the early part of the novel proves this, as does the example of the neighboring Lawrence family. The elderly Mr. Lawrence has lived through the loss of his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, and he is left only with his grandson, ...