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摘 要

本文意在探讨路易莎·梅·奥尔科特的小说《小妇人》中的女性话语，主要从三个部分进行研究：第一部分探讨《小妇人》中记号语言，重点探究了颜色、自我身份的构建以及拟声词、感叹词的使用，这些皆是本能与冲动的体现，各有其不同的意义；第二部分探讨文章中的女性写作特征，集中探讨了《小妇人》中的心理描写和身体书写；第三部分探讨《小妇人》的写作风格以便通过其简单朴素、平凡琐碎的描写探知小说中的人物性格特征。通过分析小说中的女性话语旨在帮助读者更好地从女性话语角度理解《小妇人》，同时亦可加强对女性主义文学批评任务的细致了解。

关键词：路易莎·梅·奥尔科特；《小妇人》；女性话语

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 Luisa May Alcott and Her Works 1

1.2 Theoretical Basis 2

2. Literature Review 4

3. Analysis of the Female Discourse in Little Women 6

3.1 Semiotics in Little Women 6

3.2 Performances of Female Writing in Little Women 9

3.3 Features of Linguistic Behavior in Little Women 11

4. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

1. Introduction

• 1. Luisa May Alcott and Her Works

In the 1850s and 60s, there emerged a lot of women writers and works in the history of American literature. Some of them explored deeply feminist ethics, domestic ethics and social ethics. And Louisa May Alcott was one of the outstanding representatives. Alcott was a best known writer for her writing of the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo’s Boys.

On November 29, 1832, Louisa May Alcott was born when her father was 33 years old. They lived in Germantown at that time, which is now of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, She passed away on March 6, 1888 with her honourable and marvelous life. She never got married in her whole life, but she adopted her sister’s daughter whose mother died of illness. Alcott’s family moved to Boston in 1838, where Alcott’s father established an experimental school and joined the Transcendental Club with Ralph W. Emerson and Henry D. Thoreau. Alcott’s family had four daughters and Luisa M. Alcott was the second girl. Their father was a transcendentalist and educator named Amos Bronson Alcott and their mother was a social worker named Abby May. Her eldest sister was Anna Bronson Alcott; her two youngest sisters named Elizabeth Sewall Alcott and Abigail May Alcott. In 1840, this family moved to Concord, Massachusetts. During the four years that followed, they inhabited in the rented cottage and in the Utopian Fruitlands Community. On April 1, 1845, they moved to their purchased house which was named “Hillside” in Concord with Abigail May Alcott and Emerson’s financial help and settled down. Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was a philosopher, an educator and a transcendentalist. Because he was indulging in chasing his dreams in all his life, he could not provide for his family. Therefore, sometimes some conflicts happened between Bronson Alcott and his family. In the case of that, Louisa May Alcott had to work to help support the family from an early age. She did many jobs, such as a temporary teacher, seamstress, governess and domestic helper and writer. In her childhood, the well-known intellectuals of Ralph W. Emerson, Henry D. Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s thoughts as well as her father’s opinions on education and tough views on child-rearing shaped young Alcott’s mind with a desire to achieve perfection. Louisa M Alcott later became a transcendentalist, a feminist and an abolitionist due to her childhood experiences.

In the early of her career, Alcott sometimes used the pen name A·M·Barnard. Her first book was Flower Fables (1849). In 1857, Alcott was impressed by Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Brontë and went through her hard times in 1850s. In the 1860s, Alcott started to receive controversial success for her writing. When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital and later published Hospital Sketches (1863). After two years, in 1865, her novel Moods was also published which based on her own experience. Alcott became more successful with the publication of the first part of Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (1868), which was a semi-autobiographical on account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, and the second part of Little Women named Good Wives (1869). This novel was very well received and is still a popular children’s novel today. Its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo’s Boys (1886) completed the “March Family Sage”. Her eminent works were Old Fashion Girl, Works and Work: A Story of Experience and so on. All her works have brought her a great deal of reputation and also have attracted many scholars to make researches on Louisa May Alcott and her works.

This thesis centers on Luisa May Alcott’s novel Little Women. Little Women tells a story happening during the American Civil War and follows the lives of four distinctive sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy in the March family, detailing their lives from childhood to womanhood. Mr. March is a soldier and isn’t at home. Mrs. March is the main breadwinner of the family and she specially pays attention to her children’s family education. She nurtures them not to be followers of money and power. As to four sisters, Meg is a dutiful wife and loving mother. Jo, the protagonist of this novel and the epitome of the author, is sanguine and independent to support her family. Beth is introvert and she loves playing piano, unfortunately, she dies of disease at her young age. Amy is a lady with good manners, and she favors artistic things such as sculptures and paintings. The March family has great intercourse with their rich neighbor of Laurence family.

1.2 Theoretical Basis

Feminist criticism was a characteristic method to literature. It was innovated until late in the 1960s. An enterprise of feminist criticism is to reveal that there is a distinctive feminine type of experience or “subjectivity”. This type consists in a person’s mind, sense, value and perception of oneself and the outer world. Related to this enterprise is the attempt to specify the features of a “woman’s language,” or the distinctively female style of speech and writing in sentence structures, characteristic figures and images, and the types of connections between the factors of a discourse. This thesis will probe into the female discourse from semiotics, female writing and linguistic behavior which are extensively influenced in western literature.

Semiotics is originated from the Greek root “semeion”. Julia Kristeva labels a “semiotic” as a “chora” or prelinguistic, pre-Oedipal and unsystematic signifying process, which centers on the mother. At the end of the nineteenth century, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce described a study that he called “semiotic,” and the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure also independently proposed a science that he called “semiology” in his Course in General Linguistics (1915). Since then semiotics and semiology have become alternative names for the systematic study of signs, meanwhile, they function in all areas of human experience. C.S. Peirce distinguished three classes of signs, defined in terms of the kind of relations between a signifying item and what it signifies: 1. An icon functions as a sign by means of inherent similarities or shared features with what it signifies; 2. An index is a sign which bears a natural relation of cause or effect to what it signifies; 3. In the symbols (or the “sign proper”), the relation between the signifying item and what it signifies is not a natural one, but entirely a matter of social convention. Saussure also introduced many of the most important terms and concepts exploited by current semioticians. They are the following: 1. a sign consists of two inseparable components or aspects, the signifier and the signified; 2. a verbal sign is “arbitrary.” That is to say, there is no immanent or inherent connection between a verbal signifier and what it signifies; 3.the identity of all elements of a language are determined by difference, or a network of relationships, which consist distinctions and oppositions from other speech sounds, other words.

Some French theorists radically claimed that all western languages are completely and ineluctably male-engendered, male-constituted and male-dominated in all their features. These linguistic features imposed on females an environment of marginality and subservience, or even of linguistic nonentity. To evade this dilemma, Hélène Cixous thinks that there exists an incipient “feminine writing” which has its source in mother, in the stage of the mother-child relation before the child acquires the male-centered verbal language. In her view, this prelinguistic and unconscious potentiality manifests itself in those written texts which abolish all repressions undermine and subvert the fixed signification, the logic and the “closure” of our phallocentric language, and open out into a joyous freeplay of meanings.

It is not easy for feminists to break out the current male-language system to set up their own female discourse, but their efforts also have a profound meaning for further research. In this thesis, it mainly expatiates on the female discourse in Little Women, which can get fuller and deeper comprehension about the novel. At the same time, it is also helpful to make Luisa May Alcott be more popular and better- known.

2. Literature Review

Many critics in America and other countries have made a lot of researches and comments on Luisa May Alcott and her works in terms of her biography, the feminism views, the education philosophy and the critical effect of her works.

The researches on her and her works at home and abroad never stopped from the publication of her works. As soon as the publication of Little Women, Luisa May Alcott reached a peak in her writing career. Little Women was interpreted into dozens of languages and became a popular children’s and girls’ novel in the world. For one hundred years, the academia still focused their attention on Luisa May Alcott’s works, mainly in Little Women and its sequels, Little Men and Jo’s boys. It has gone deeply researches on different angles such as the method of education, the thoughts of Puritanism or transcendentalism, the feminine consciousness, the feminism view and so on.

Feminist movement was separated into three waves. Early feminism and feminist before 1960s was “the first-wave feminism”. Luisa May Alcott was one of the representatives in the nineteenth century. As soon as the publication of Little Women, Alcott and her works attracted great attentions. Gamaliel Bradford and Odell Shepard both made comments on Alcott in the early twentieth century. The former essay is Portrait of Louisa May Alcott, and the latter essay is The Mother of Little Women. In recent years, many foreign literates have made researches on this book and the author. Ruth·M·MacDonald wrote a book about Louisa May Alcott. He argued that “Louisa May Alcott stands as one of the great American practitioners of the girls’ novel and the family story” (MacDonald, 1983: 95). Anne·E·Boyd made his research on Writing for Immortality: Women Writers and the Emergence of High Literary Culture in America. He wrote that “Alcott particularly battled the conventional marriage plot in writing Little Women” (Boyd, 2004: 72). Sarah Elbert paid his attention on the American culture. His essay A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott’s Place in American Culture mentioned that “Alcott’s fiction became her ‘most important feminist contribution’—even considering all the effort Alcott made to help facilitate women’s rights”(Elbert, 1987: 193). Sicherman Barbara wrote an article in another respect. His book Well Read Lives: How Books Inspired A Generation of American Women wrote that “Little Women became ‘the paradigmatic text for young women of the era and one in which family literary culture is prominently featured’” (Barbara, 2010: 3).

Compared with the essays in abroad, there are many arguments and researches in domestic. Liu Lu, the professor from Nan Kai University, analyzed the Puritanism in Little Women in her essay On the Birth of American Puritanism and the Puritanism Life Model: The Puritan Sentiments in Little Women. On the education field, Sun Liping made a comparison on Pride and Prejudice and Little Women. Geng Jingbei, from Su Qian College, analyzed the pragmatism education philosophy in Little Women. Scholars paid more attention to feminine consciousness and transcendentalism. For example, Wang Chunxia and Fan Libin, from Changchun University of Technology, made an interpretation of feminist consciousness in Little Women from perspective of absence of father. Diao Weiyang, from Northeast Normal University, made an analysis about Alcott’s feminism in Little Women in the light of Marxist-feminism in his master degree dissertation. Wang Pin and Wang Ruixue respectively analyzed the transcendentalism in Little Women in their master degree dissertation. There was a distinct aspect to analyze Little Women. Li Qiaoling, from Liaoning University, pointed out the most important outstanding feature of Little Women was the absence of male characters.

Virginia Woolf is a prominent feminist and novelist. Many of her works represent strong female consciousness, such as To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, Mrs. Dalloway. Her feminist poetic thoughts provide conditions for researching women’s language. When scholars made studies on her works, they also paid attention to other female writers’ works. For instance, Yekaterina Zimmerman, from University of Florida, made a study of female discourse in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. Liu Ying, from Xiangtan University, analyzed Doris Lessing’s feminist consciousness and female narrative. In the novel Little Women, Alcott’s feminist thoughts are deeply rooted in the descriptions of characters. These descriptions reflect many features of female discourse. Therefore, it is necessary to do some researches about female discourse in Little Women.

According to the researches above, there seems nearly no intensive study about the female discourse in Luisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Thus, an all-sided analysis of Little Women is necessary. This thesis will grope for female discourse in Little Women, which will be helpful to have a better understanding of the story and Alcott.

3. Analysis of the Female Discourse in Little Women

3.1Semiotics in Little Women

3.1.1 Colors and the Construction of Self-identity

In traditional sense, the content of colors is inane, namely, it is empty of meaning. According to Sally Wehmeier, Oxford Advanced Learners’ English-Chinese Dictionary defines “color” as “the appearance that things have, resulting from the way in which they reflect” (Wehmeier, 2009: 382). Another instance is that “color” reflects “moods.” For instance, “blue” indicates “depression”; “white” shows “chastity and innocence”; “red” represents “life and vigor”. In this way, colors can be perceived and they are meaningful. Julia Kristeva considers color is short of “the unique or ultimate signified”. Color’s content is ambiguous and equivocal because of its unconsciousness. However, Kristeva points out that color can lead to the suspicion of oneself. Meanwhile, the challenge of the individual about colors manifests the attempt to establish the self-identity concept (Zhao Yifan, 2006: 378). Jacques Lacan’s theory of mirror image is the demonstration of this.

At the first chapter of the novel, the appearance descriptions of the four sisters have showed something. Margaret has “plenty of soft brown hair” and “white hands”; Beth is a “bright-eyed girl”; “Jo was tall, thin, and brown”; Amy has “blue eyes and yellow hair” (Alcott, 2012: 6) Readers can easily picture them through these descriptions. “Brown” is often called the color of the earth. Earth is maternal and indomitable. Margaret wishes to have a beatific family. However, Jo expects to be a “free woman” and has her own career. These things lead to some conflicts between them. Margaret hopes Jo to act like a lady, but Jo doesn’t like to be obedient. She has her way to do her business. It seems that a person with bright or blue eyes is pure and sincere. They are seemingly full of passion to face life and do not want to lose the nature of life. Beth is bright and benevolent; hence she falls ill when she does a favor. Amy has peacockery and she wants to get compliments from others. Fortunately, she returns to her nature to be a happy girl.

3.1.2 Onomatopoeia and Interjection

Onomatopoeia and interjection are closely related to instinct and impulse. Thus, in Saussure’s sense, they can fully exhibit the oppressed and excluded emotion in linguistic notations. In Zhao Yifan’s book, there is a chapter about female discourse, he mentions a notion of Kristeva that affections can not be conveyed by consciousness; they can only be showed by nonverbal words, such as sound, tone and rhythm (Zhao Yifan, 2006: 379).

“Dear”, “well”, “oh”, these words are widely used in the text. Firstly, take “Dear” for example. Besides using at the beginning of a letter before the name or title and expressing the love to an important person, the word of “dear” is used in expressions to show astonishment, dismay, annoyance or worry. Four sisters is discussing to buy Christmas present, Meg says “Dear me! How happy and good we"d be, if we had no worries!” (Alcott, 2102: 3). Mrs. March and Jo talk about Meg and John’s love, Jo says “Oh, dear me! Why weren"t we all boys, then there wouldn"t be any bother” (Alcott, 2012: 289). Usually, “Dear” and “me” are used together to convey a stronger tone. In fact, no matter how rich or poor people are, they do have worries. Girls prefer to pity the fate of life, but most of them do not have abilities to make changes. Meg dreams to have a nice present, but it is still a dream in consideration of their family’s poverty. Jo doesn’t want Meg to marry John, because it will lead to an absence for her own family. What’s more, “Well” mostly has no meaning. It usually expresses an attitude or greeting, or it is used before a sentence that expresses notions, ideas and thoughts. "Well, I wish I may die if it ain"t [isn’t] the queerest thing I ever see!” cried Hannah (Alcott, 2012: 88). Beth is going to say thank you to Mr. Laurence for his generosity of free using piano. Hannah and Beth’s three sisters feel so surprised because Beth is so timid. Amy told Laurence how she thinks of him; she said “Well, I despise you” (Alcott, 2012: 557).

Onomatopoeia is a vivid reflection of emotions. It performs the emotional state of a person. For example, the onomatopoeia “Murmur”. “She means vampire, not seaweed, but it doesn"t matter. It"s too warm to be particular about one"s parts of speech.” murmured Jo (Alcott, 2012: 161). Amy compares Aunt March to samphire, Jo corrects her spelling. Jo rejoices that she doesn’t need to follow Aunt March to Plumfield, so she doesn’t mind Amy’s mistake. “He"s been starved, and he shan"t be baked now he"s dead.” “[M]y Pip! For I am too bad to own one.” murmured Beth, sitting on the floor with her pet folded in her hands (Alcott, 2012:168-169). Because Beth is guilty for Pip’s death, she thinks that her carelessness should not be forgiven. Amy is sitting in the omnibus which is heading home. An awkward thing happens. Amy is too embarrassed to say that the left dinner is hers when Tudor wants to stop the old lady. “Please don"t—it"s—it"s mine,” murmured Amy, with a face nearly as red as her fish (Alcott, 2012: 365). Amy admires Laurence, so she is afraid that Laurence’s friend Tudor will tell him about this incident.

As it is mentioned above, onomatopoeia and interjection are usually used to express the emotion of instinct and impulse. Li Jing indicates, in her thesis “On the Style of Female Language”, that the females heavily use the words full of strong emotion to strengthen the meaning of the modificand as well as to express their feeling and emotion. In this way, it can be easier for speakers to get the resonance of the mind just as Jo says “dear me” to express the pity of being a woman while Beth only can murmur to lament the death of pet Pip.

3.2 Performances of Female Writing in Little Women

3.2.1 Psychological Description

In the pervasively patriarchal civilization, women always are subordinate to men in all cultural domains: family, politics, society, economy and so on. By this cultural progress, the masculine is identified as active, dominating, adventurous and creative figures; on the contrary, the feminine is identified as passive, acquiescent, timid, emotional and conventional images. Males like to show their interest in the exterior world, while females pay more attention to the interior world. Female writers like to portray personal psychological world and affectional issues. Psychological descriptions expose the protagonist’s thoughts. Therefore, it is an available way to understand the characters in studying the psychological descriptions.

In chapter four, Jo is hired to wait upon Aunt March. There are some descriptions about her ambition. “Jo"s ambition was to do something very splendid. What it was, she had no idea as yet, but left it for time to tell her.”; “A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes.”; “But the training she received at Aunt March"s was just what she needed.” From this, what we can see is that Jo is an ambitious girl. The biggest thing for her life is not marriage, but something different, different from other girls. Meanwhile, she is able to realize her shortage and adopt advantages for herself.

In chapter eight, there are many psychological descriptions when a conflict happened between Jo and Amy. Jo and Meg are going to theater with Laurie, but they don’t want to take Amy even if she weeps with unwillingness. So Amy burns Jo’s favorite book which Jo wants to finish before father goes home. Jo is so angry that she slaps Amy in the face. When she wants to cry to her mother, she feels that “tears were an unmanly weakness, and she felt so deeply injured that she really couldn"t quite forgive yet” (Alcott, 2012: 109- 110). The atmosphere among the four sisters goes down to zero. The next day, Amy follows Jo and Laurie to go skating. Laurie warns two girls to keep near the shore, but Amy doesn’t notice. “Jo stood still with a strange feeling in her heart.” When Amy falls down the ice hole, “She tried to call Laurie, but her voice was gone. She tried to rush forward, but her feet seemed to have no strength in them” (Alcott, 2012: 112). After the rescue, Jo is so treacherous. As mentioned before, a quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit are her shortage. Now she realizes that she really needs to mend this bad temper. Discordance should not be a part of a family, but harmony is.

3.2.2 Body Writing

When a woman writes, she will automatically be appropriated into the phallogocentric language. Thus, in order to establish women language in the female writing, Cixous posits that women “must write her self” (Cixous and Cohen, 1976: 880). By writing her self, woman must return to the body, censor the body and hear the body. “Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth”; “a woman without a body, dumb, blind, can’t possibly be a good fighter” (Cixous and Cohen, 1976: 880). What’s more, Luce Irigaray posits a “woman’s writing” to evade the male monopoly. She analyzes that there is a female language which embraces the diversity, fluidity and multiple possibilities inherent in the structure and erotic functioning of the female sexual organs and in the distinctive nature of female sexual experiences. By establishing this kind of female language’s generative principle, it makes woman’s writing evade the risk of appropriation into the existing male language system (Abrams, 2009: 186).

Zhang Lianyi, from Shan Dong Normal University, pointed out in his essay The Construction Strategies on Body Writing and Female Discourse that there is a misunderstanding in female’s body writing. Female’s body writing not only writes “body” itself, but also writes all the females’ life experiences and emotional desire. Among the four sisters, except the deceased Beth, Meg and Amy both have their love and family, however, Jo still keeps bachelordom at twenty-five. But there is something to show, she thinks. “Don"t laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns” (Alcott, 2012: 598). Perhaps this is what Jo learns from her life, even if she is a so called maiden, she still waits for surprises for the future.

3.3 Features of Linguistic Behavior in Little Women

Some theorists summarized that males and females have different features in linguistic behavior. Males, for example, are in a dominated role in conversation. They enjoy using flowery, exaggerated words to show their erudition. However, females are subordinated to males who are gingerly, uncomplicatedly to write their sensibilities.

A distinct feature of linguistic behavior between males and females exists in the choice of topics. Topics chosen by the female are related to family, marriage, love, clothes. In Little Women, family and marriage are the main subjects. For example, in chapter nine, Meg goes to a big party and has a good time, but she is also dissatisfied with the comments about her and Laurie. Meg confesses to her mother, and tells her the experiences. Mrs. March’s advices about love and marriage to the four sisters are meaningful.

My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world, marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I"d rather see you poor men"s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace. (Alcott, 2012: 140)

All mothers have expectations to their children. It is easy to understand Mrs. March’s instruction which contains deep connotation for girls. A loved and beloved family is the priority. In a word, mothers expect their children to be healthy and happy which is the exquisite performance of the interior world of women.

4. Conclusion

As one of the most outstanding representatives of feminist writers, Luisa May Alcott was a best known writer for her writing of the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo’s Boys. The feminism consciousness is her chief thought in her works. The novel Little Women embodies many features of female discourse which make the book be more easily understood.

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