Are all the feminist messages 1990s-added anachronisms, or from the book

I'm pretty sure those feminist ideals were not fully present in the book. The book has been accused of being very anti-feminist, because it's actually inspiring women to be with men. Even the suffragettes in the 1920s spoke very poorly of men.

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They are very true to the book. Louisa May Alcott's politics and philosophies, like those of her father Bronson Alcott, were way ahead of their time. She was a suffragette, an abolitionist (the part where they say her father's school was closed because he allowed a black child to attend actually happened), and railed against corsets and the physical limitations of women in many of her novels. All well documented. Read her novels, they are worth it!

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I'm curious, because if they were in the source material, that was remarkably progressive for its time.

Though it wasn't recognized at the time, the basic plot is itself progressive in a feminist way. It is a household of women who are able to care for themselves, living by their own wits and hard work, even though there is no man around to lead them.

The main character turns down a marriage that most young women at the time would leap at, and any extra income or protection for the family comes from another woman (Aunt March)...in that she provides a safe haven for Amy in a time of sickness, later takes her to Europe, and leaves her home to Jo, with which she builds her future. I think she also gives Mrs. March some money to go to Washington when the dad is ill.

Basically, there's no knight in shining armor who rides in to "save" these women. They primarily get through hard times by their own devices.

I don't think Alcott even wanted to end the story with Jo getting married; I believe that was something her publisher pressured her into.


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The "views" of the Marches stemmed from their commitment to Transcendentalism. That might seem odd, given the father's vocation as a minister, but the philosophy's pursuit of utopian social change actually sinks quite neatly with the Christian gospel.

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A lot of the mini-sermons seem to be taken from Alcott's life. She WAS remarkably progressive for her time. Some of the things are from her works and some aren't, but they seem to be indicative of her beliefs.

In *Jo's Boys* and *Eight Cousins*, the main characters spout about the evils of wearing corsets. So Marmee may not have said anything to John in the book, but since Jo says something similar to others later on, we can assume that Jo and Marmee had like thoughts on the matter (and that Alcott felt the same way).

Mr. March didn't have to close a school because he had admitted an African American boy. But Alcott's father did, so we can assume that Meg's opinion on race is similar to how Alcott felt. Meg's comment to the Gardiners about working conditions in the weaving mills is absent in the book (at least in that scene), but again, is probably similar to Alcott's beliefs.

And Alcott was a Transcendentalist. I don't remember from the book if the Marches specifically state if they are or not, but it would have made sense if they were, so Jo's conversation with Freidrich wouldn't have been out of place.

When the book was first published, it was considered scandalously progressive. It was challenged and banned and censored because of how progressive it was. (Now, of course, it's challenged and banned and censored because people don't think Alcott went far enough.)

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