Little Women and Cultural Production
According to Bourdieu, “the ideology of creation directs the gaze towards the ‘apparent producer’ of work and prevents the audience from asking questions about who created the creator and gave them this power of creation in the first place” (as cited in Hesmondhalgh, 2006, p.212). Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production does not just involve going beyond the individual creator to the wider network involved, nor does it mean reducing art to its social context; as David Hesmondhalgh puts it “Bourdieu offers instead a theory of cultural production based on his own characteristic theoretical vocabulary of habitus, capital, and field” (2006, p.212). Bourdieu defines a field as “a separate social universe having its own laws of functioning independent of those of politics and the economy” (1993, p.162), while habitus is any socio-cultural behaviour that is field-specific. The “fields” are organized around or by specific forms of capital. By identifying the key fields with respect to specific social spaces, one can study the interconnections between these different areas, and also look at the level of autonomy they have with respect to one another. Fields are constituted by struggles over positions within them, which usually take place between established producers and institutions, and disruptive newcomers (Hesmondhalgh, 2006, pp.215-216).
Applying Bourdieu’s theory to Little Women adds a new layer to the way the book is interpreted and looked at today. It is evident from Alcott’s personal correspondence as well as the book itself that not all the decisions made were products of the singular creator, but the product of interactions between different fields of production. The individual publisher may not reflect the demands of the entire industry, but their decisions about what is worth publishing do reflect what is in demand within the literary field. The publisher’s demands are informed by what is in vogue within the literary field, and the latter is shaped by the collective demands of different publishers. Little Women’s conception is thus not just the result of an individual choice to create, but one initiated by demands of the literary field and society. Little Women was a culturally produced work of art before it ever came into being.
Alcott’s power as a creator was endowed upon her as a result of interactions within the different fields of literature. This is best evidenced by the marriage of the daring and ambitious heroine, Jo March. Everyone was desperate for Jo to marry Laurie, her (incidentally rich) childhood best friend, that is, everyone except Alcott. Despite the failure of her first novel, Moods, Alcott still held to her views about marriage and would have liked to have seen Jo end up a literary spinster, much like herself, largely because in the 1860s it was near impossible for a woman to marry and continue creating art (Rioux, 2019, p.187). However, demands of the industry and societal norms dictated what she was and was not allowed to write, and to have her heroine end up a spinster would have spelt certain death for the book. The result was the character of Friedrich Bhaer, a kindly professor in his late thirties to early forties who was arguably almost the polar opposite of Laurie. The build up to Baer’s proposal to Jo is nothing like that of the events leading to her sister Meg’s marriage, or any of the other proposals in the book. It is decidedly not romantic, at least not in the vein of iconic literary proposals like that of Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813).
One may conclude that this is a result of Alcott being forced to marry off her characters, resulting in a section of the book that does not feel as real as the rest, but I would argue that this part of the novel is deliberately crafted as such. As can be seen from her letters, Alcott had this sense of smug amusement at her own writing decisions, especially the way that she pairs Jo off with a man. She writes,
Jo should have remained a literary spinster, but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare to refuse and out of perversity went & made a funny match for her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but rather enjoy the prospect. (as cited in Campbell, 1994, p.124)
The lack of ‘real’ romantic build up is Alcott expressing her autonomy as an author because she wields the power conferred upon her in a way that conveys the meaning she originally wanted through the subtext. Although she never directly criticizes marriage, she does challenge its romanticization. Alcott rewrites the form of the sentimental novel, by keeping its promise of marriage but omitting any and all sexual or romantic appeal in the pairing, subverting the conventions of the form (Campbell, 1994, pp.125-126). Through her refusal to ‘justify’ Jo ending up with Bhaer she manages to draw one’s attention to the ridiculousness of the institution while also adhering to the boundaries set on her by the publishing industry.
What makes Little Women a text that has lasted, is the fact that the question of what the book is about is still hotly debated. Is it the story of a rebellious young woman whose ambition leads her to go beyond the norms and restrictions set by society, or is it the story of her slow assimilation to the status quo? (Rioux, 2019, p.164). Alcott exposes the boundaries set on her by existing power structures by engaging her audience but leaving them frustrated at the end. As Campbell writes, she calls attention to the genre’s limitations through her technical fulfilment of them while simultaneously resisting closure and in doing so, sets her own work apart from the rest (1994, p. 126). The tension between visions of feminism and the proponents of traditional family values are a product of the power structures that have shaped the book. However, it is not just a product of cultural production but has also shaped not just women’s literature, but also many individual writers and artists. Ursula K. Le Guin describes Jo March as “the original image of women writing” (Rioux, 2019, p.150), and says that Jo was a source of validation for her own ambitions. Susan Cheever, acclaimed memoirist, and Louise Rennison, author of the bestselling series The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson, have written introductions to the novel, detailing the enormous influence it had on young girls including themselves (Rioux, 2019, p.153).
As a book that celebrated the seemingly ordinary events of the everyday lives of women, the novel set in motion a new set of interactions within the literary field. It was revolutionary to have a narrator who spoke directly to an audience that primarily consisted of young girls who read the book, without correcting or preaching to them (Rioux, 2019, p.66). As Susan Cheever and many others have written, Alcott opened up a new way to write about women, making literature accessible and giving a voice to a previously silent section of the population (as cited in Rioux, 2019, p.153). Whether she intended to do so or not, her work became a blueprint for works like Susan Coolidge’s (the pen name for Sarah Woolsey) What Katy Did (1872) and L.M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) and paved a way for coming-of-age novels written about girls growing up in an ordinary world (Rioux, 2019, pp. 157-245). While Alcott’s work was not necessarily revolutionary, it was disruptive in that it offered a new way to tell stories about women. Alcott’s work also inspired numerous adaptations with more than four films based on the book, multiple miniseries, and even operas and an anime series. Each adaptation brings something new to the text, a new layer added by new habitus within the fields they are products of.