American Feminism in Formation: Margaret Fuller's Women in the Nineteenth Century and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women

Abstract

In the last one hundred years or so, the theory and praxis of feminism have almost touched the zenith although, even in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, feminism was only a neglected theoretical perspective, due perhaps to the fact that it liberally as well as radically challenged the mainstream patriarchal conventions. Debates and discussions were there, stray demands for rights of women were also raised here and there, a limited number of women in different countries of the world might also have risen to very high positions of power and authority, but till the last decade of the eighteenth century there was no consistent and dedicated writing to provide support to the women’s causes. My intention in this paper is to examine and evaluate the contribution of Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Louisa May Alcott in giving the necessary philosophical-theoretical support and literary justification to feminism during its formative period in America through a close study of Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845) and Little Women (1868). An exploration of the philosophical-literary back-ups which ignited the flourishing of feminism in America, even before the term ‘feminism’ was coined, is both interesting and insightful.