Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s

Treasure Island (1883) are a pair of novels written in the nineteenth century.
Each is both a product and/or reflection of the complex sociocultural
attitudes of their times. Stevenson is clearly influenced by the high
adventure of the penny dreadfuls that were extremely popular in this period,
although castigated for being sensationalist and unsophisticated. While
Alcott was ushered into writing a story for children, in the hope that a
market of young female readers could be forged. Given that each text was
written for a gender specific, child audience they can both be said to concern
the development of children and their relationships with the adults within
their lives. Little Women is a realist, semi-autobiographical story of the
March sisters and their growth into womanhood; it is set against the
backdrop of the American Civil War, which Fetterley argues is a ‘metaphor
for internal conflict’ (Reader 2, 2009, p.19), a key theme throughout. While
Treasure Island tells the story of Jim Hawkins in the form of a conventional
boy’s adventure tale about greed, treachery and evil. It is set in the
eighteenth century when Britain was still riding high on the tides of her
Empire. The representations of adults in the books that are discussed within
this essay are dissimilar, although both Mrs March and Long John Silver are
complex characters. This essay will focus upon the relationships between
Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver and Alcott’s Jo March and
her mother. This essay will explore how the relationships between the
book’s adults and children are represented and their interaction; the
suitability of the role models; and how each text contributed to the maturing
and improvement of its readership.
The story of Treasure Island is documented by the adult Jim Hawkins, who
retells the story through his younger self. We therefore know that nothing
too disastrous is to become of his younger self, the novel’s main focaliser
who is perhaps easily identifiable with young male readers of the latter
nineteenth century. This is perhaps best achieved by Stevenson’s use of first
person narration which lends the text an immediacy, ‘I leaped to my feet and
hailed the riders’ (p.32). Moreover, Jim represents the home and what
Parkes (Reader 2, 2009, p.75) calls the ‘notions of respectability’; it is only
when Billy Bones arrives at the Admiral Benbow that the equilibrium is
corrupted. From here, Jim stumbles into a high adventure in search of
buried treasure.
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The naive, vulnerable Jim, still mourning his recently deceased father
becomes fascinated by the one-legged sea-cook Long John Silver, ‘he made
himself the most interesting companion’ (p.49). Initially, Silver is portrayed as
a ‘man of substance’ (p.43) who will be of great use in the hunt for Billy
Bones’ buried treasure. Interestingly, Silver shares his occupation with Jim’s
late father. Perhaps this familiar profession, coupled with Silver’s
respectable front allows Jim to strike up his relationship with Silver. Be that
as it may, Silver shares the characteristic of physical mutilation with other
characters that have already proven to be a dangerous challenge to the
tranquil of the Admiral Benbow, Silver has a wooden leg. In spite of this
marker, he is able to ‘infiltrate the middle-class world’ (Parkes, p.75) and hold
back his criminality. Even when Silver’s conspiracy is overheard by Jim, the
boy still finds the man fascinating. There is therefore ambiguity over
whether Silver is a villain or a quasi father to Jim, or both.
The question of Silver’s suitability as a role model is more complex than it
may appear. Indeed, Silver is on one hand an imposter and violent murderer.
Although on the other, it is possible to read Silver as resolute and
resourceful, perhaps even heroic. It is notable that Stevenson’s Silver is akin
to Shakespeare’s Othello in so much as he certainly talks the talk, ‘I’m cap’n
here by ‘lection. I’m cap’n here because I’m the best man by a long sea-
mile’ (p.149). It is no wonder that Jim finds the captain both ‘attractive and
repellent’ (Study Guide, p.98). Furthermore, Silver finds himself drawn to
Jim, ‘I like that boy […] He’s more a man than any pair of rats of you’ (p.149).
This scene is indicative of Silver’s relationship to Jim and displays Silver as a
gentleman pirate who seeks to care for and nurture young Jim. There is a
mutual admiration between the two. Indeed, Jim’s relationship to Silver
which is conceivably effected by the recent loss of his father and his
abandonment of the relative safety of home (in exchange for the exotic,
unknown high seas). And Silver’s relationship to Jim is in the least two-fold,
he both sees some of himself in the spunky cabin-boy and understands that
he will depend upon Jim to return home safely ‘I says to myself: You stand by
Hawkins, John, and Hawkins ‘ll stand by you. You’re his last card, and, […] he’s
yours’ (p.150). However it is important to understand Silver as the naive Jim
does, outside of the lawful and controllable home. Christopher Parkes
(2009, p.76) argues that Silver and his band of pirates, are perhaps a by
product of a society with a ‘lack of public assistance’. Parkes continues,
claiming that if there was a public welfare system there would be ‘no pirates’.
So, is Silver inherently bad? Certainly when back in the motherland, he has a
reputable profession and if his bank account ‘which has never been
overdrawn’ (p.43) is any measure of character he is a decent sort. How far
does Silver pull the wool over the eyes of the novel’s middle-class Brits? Is it
simply his being back at sea that provokes his actions and behaviour?
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In contrast, Alcott’s character Marmee is one who leans, along with her
mostly absent/retiring husband, upon Christian teachings to mould each of
the March sisters into little women. While J
im effectively goes in search of a masculine and heroic role model, the March
sisters are fortunate to have dear Marmee close by. Indeed, Mrs March
leads by example, encapsulating what it is to be a good wife and mother.
Alcott presents Mrs March as both a loving mother and principled woman
and this is no more evident than when she encourages her daughters to
think of the Hummel family on Christmas morning, ‘My girls, will you give
them your breakfast as a Christmas present?’ (p.17). Mrs March represents
to her daughters, as well as the intended readership, the value of familial
relations and the home, ‘To be loved and chosen by a good man is the best
and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman’ (p.95). At the story’s
beginning Marmee sets the course for the events that follow, in so much
that she coaxes the girls into the serious enterprise of self-improvement,
‘not in play, but in earnest’ (p.13) in a task that mirrors John Bunyan’s
Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). What is more, according to
Judith Fetterley (2009, p.20), Marmee’s girls must ‘learn to control the self
[…] to ensure that the self does […] renounce the self’. In other words, the
girls must learn to ‘deny their own spirit’ (Study Guide, p.84). Alcott,
according to Fetterly, is enforcing this particular model of womanhood and
Christianity upon her daughters and therefore upon her young, female
readership.
Following this further, in spite of their obvious differences, both Treasure
Island and Little Women can be said to ‘deal with the business of growing up’
(Study Guide, p.73). While Stevenson’s text adopted a tone of moral
ambiguity compared to the overt didactism of Alcott’s work, each book in
some way worked to construct both the child and their specific gender roles.
With that in mind, it serves to consider the suitability of the role models on
offer for the young characters in each book. Jo March is an example of a
strong, pre-feminist protagonist. That is to say that Jo provides a challenge
to what is sometimes referred to as the ‘Cult of Domesticity’ (National
Humanities Center, 2011), ‘It’s bad enough to be a girl anyway’ (p.7). This
being so, Marmee represents for Jo the patriarchal systems of Christianity
(furthered by the novel’s interconnection with Bunyan’s text) and the
institutions of family, home and marriage. Mrs March then, endeavours to
bend Jo to a conventional, contemporary gender role. This is in spite of Mrs
March’s internal struggle. Alcott bestows upon Marmee some of the
frustrations that women in North America at that time may have been
feeling; that their passage in to womanhood was a ‘constant struggle to learn
the social paradigms constructed and re-enforced by figures of masculine
domestic authority’ (Berube, 2009). This is perhaps best expressed by Mrs
March when she informs Jo that she has ‘been trying to cure’ her anger ‘for
forty years’ (p.78). This admission from Marmee is telling, by deliberately
allowing her mask to slip she shows Jo and more widely the book’s
readership that she has the capacity to change. Perhaps this is part of the
reason why Marmee, who by and large acts as a single mother to her
daughters, is so successful in her influencing of Jo. For come the end of the
novel her daughter remarks that she does ‘think that families are the most
beautiful things in all the world’ (p.467). Indeed, the March sisters come to
measure what they have achieved in womanhood under the tutelage of
Marmee and to a lesser extent other characters against their personal,
adolescent ambitions or castles. Therefore, Jo learns the lesson of pleasing
others over pleasing oneself, ‘I’ll try and be what he loves to call me, “a little
woman” and not be rough and wild’ (p. 12). This is one of the ways in which
the book can be said to contribute to the maturing and advancement of its
readers.
Interestingly, Alcott makes reference to the reading preferences of
contemporary children and the cross gender habits of many girls at the time
of her when she writes that Beth was ‘feeling glad she had read one of the
boys’ books in which Jo had delighted’ (p.133). We must not forget that she
herself was effectively employed to write Little Women for commercial
reasons and that being so, some of her authorial reservations permeate the
text. Jo for example finds work as a writer of sensationalist stories but is
discouraged from the business of writing such ‘trash’ (p.342) by Professor
Bhaer, who can be said to shame Jo to his will. This is important, for Jo must
forsake her burgeoning writing career in order to become a proper woman,
in her mother’s mould and in line with the novel’s moral code. Moreover, Jo
is Marmee’s ‘problem child’ (Kent, 2003 p.49) and is need of additional
consideration. It is fair to say that Jo is in need of and desires strong
maternal guidance, which Marmee is willing to distribute freely. For example,
when Jo is enraged by Amy’s burning of her ‘little book’ (p.73) Marmee
advises her daughter who possesses little ‘self-control’ and a ‘fiery spirit’ (p.
72) that she ought not to ‘let the sun go down’ on her anger (p.75). This
furthers the earlier point that the sisters must learn to control the self, in the
way that their mother has suppressed her anger ‘nearly every day’ of her life
(p.78).
Kim Reynolds (The Open University, AV1, No.5, 2015) tells us that ‘In the
19th century […] fiction was used quite consciously as a form of social
control’. This is true of both Alcott’s and Stevenson’s books. Although, in the
case of Treasure Island this is most obviously challenged by the complex
Long John Silver who sits across the moral divide. Such characterisation has
undoubtedly contributed to the novel’s lasting appeal. However, it is perhaps
Jim’s ‘journey from innocence to maturity’ (Study Guide, p.101) that has
helped the book to contribute to the advancement of its early readership.
Jim’s undertaking of adult responsibilities comes as a result of him choosing
to please himself, to go in search of the hidden treasure. However, once
away from the safety of home, Jim is forced to assume some severe tasks
not fit for a child, like his fight to the death with Israel Hands in order to save
the Hispanolia. And so, Jim displays a courage and resourcefulness that the
book and others like it at that time, wanted to encourage in their young male
readership. Christopher Parkes (2009) makes the point that Jim’s verifiable,
new-found masculinity and manhood would contribute greatly to the
development of boys into men who could take on the ‘burden of
empire’ (Study Guide, p.102).
In conclusion, this essay finds that within the myriad layers of Stevenson’s
and Alcott’s work positive values can be learned from both the adult role
models and child protagonists discussed. This essay agrees with Reynolds’
claim that nineteenth century literature was used as a form of social control,
while work authored in the time since has moved further from moral
instruction towards delight.
Word Count: 2173

References

Alcott, L. M. (2008 [1868]) Little Women. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Berube, R. (2009) Fictions of Escape and the Economy of Gender in
Victorian Children’s Literature [Online]. Available at https://
discoverarchive.vanderbilt.edu/bitstream/handle/1803/2975/
Thesis4-17.pdf?sequence=1 (Accessed 27 November 2015).

EA300 Study Guide: Children’s Literature (2009) Milton Keynes, The Open
University, pp.73-108

Fetterley, J. (2009) ‘Alcott’s Civil War’, in Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J.

(eds) Children’s Literature: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends.
Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.18-38.

Kent, K.R. (2003) Making Girls Into Women: American Women’s Writing
and the Rise of Lesbian Identity, United States of America, Duke University
Press.

National Humanities Centre (2011) America in Class [Online]. Available at

http://americainclass.org/the-cult-of-domesticity/ (Accessed 27 November
2015).

Parkes, C. (2009) ‘Treasure Island and the Romance of the British Civil
Service’, n Montgomery, H. and Watson, N. J. (eds) Children’s Literature:
Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan,
pp. 69-80

Stevenson, R. L. (2008 [1883]) Treasure Island. Oxford, Oxford University

Press.
The Open University, (2015) ‘Boys’ and girls’ reading in the 19th
century’ [Video], EA300 Children’s Literature. Available at https://
learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=684866&section=5
(Accessed 20 November 2015).