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Little Women is the story of one year in the lives of four sisters, their mother and Hannah, the faithful family servant. It is a story of pride and poverty, of sorority and survival. How the loving, sororal atmosphere of the March household is created and preserved is what I will discuss in this essay.

Little Women gives the perfect picture of the perfect home. The narrator lets us as readers take part in a world in which the ideal mother-woman, in the shape of Mrs March, is the undisputed ruler. Life in the March family evolves around the mother and I intend to show how Mrs March is like a spider in the web who is continually present to guide and help her daughters on their way to mature into women, ready to take on the responsibility of their own homes, seeking strenght in their love for each other and in their faith in God.

The men of the story are absent, either off to fight in the war like the father, Mr March, or living somewhere else, like Mr Lawrence and Laurie. The women are left to create order in their world in their own way and they are evidently present. This difference between present women and absent men is striking in the novel. Although Mrs March does tend to leave her daughters from time to time, she is always coming back. Even when in Washington to take care of her sick husband she is present, not directly, but through the letters that are sent to her from home (chapter 16). Never once in the book are Mr March's letters, which he is said to write from the war, read out aloud for the narratee to partake of, nor are any of the replies sent back to him.

Like a thread throughout the story runs the desire to be useful and to help other people. After the girls have tried to enjoy a weeks vacation with no duties at all (chapter 11) the experiment ends with a mutual resolution not to be idle but to work and help with the duties of the household. In a rhetorical question put to hãer daughters, Mrs March states that "it is better to have a few duties and live a little for others" (p 110) than to be idle and let other people do everything for you. Since it is agreed upon that "the comfort of all depends on each doing her share faithfully" (p 110), all girls promise to spend the rest of their summer days dividing their time between work and play.

Mrs March is, as I stated in the beginning of this essay, the ideal mother-woman, very evidently present in the story even when she goes away to visit her husband at the Washington hospital. She is introduced to the reader as "a tall, motherly lady with a 'can-I-help-you' look about her which was truly delightful" (p 8). If we compare Mrs March of Little Women to Edna Pontellier of Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Mrs March is everything that Edna is not. Mrs March sees it as her utmost duty and happiness in life to be a guide to her children and to be helpful to anyone who might need it. What she wants to teach her girls is that "to be loved and chosen by a good man is the best and sweetest thing which can happen to a woman" (p 92). Many times Mrs March tells her daughters that being loved and chosen by their father is her greatest joy and the source of all her happiness. This is the kind of happiness she wishes for them all to find.

To Mrs March, love and faithful service comes first. As in all other aspects of life, Mrs March herself is in this the main example to her daughters. She is a woman who would not give up any of her beloved girls for adoption by an elderly relative, Aunt March, when poverty struck the family, even though it might have been a relief to have one less mouth to feed. Many hours of her days are spent knitting and sewing clothes for the men who are fighting the war far away from home. Mrs March gives her own daughters' christmas breakfast to an even poorer family, the Hummels, living nearby (chapter 2). When she goes away to be by her sick husband's side, she has a word of encouragement to give to each of her daughters respectively. She tells them to be prudent, patient, faithful and obedient (p154-155). These are qualities that, along with self-denial and self-control, are pointed out as desireable in a woman throughout the book. If they learn to be humble and find happiness in creating a nice home for their family, the March girls are taught that the loving spirit of their childhood home will reign also in their adult lives.

Religion plays an important part in creating the specific atmosphere in which the March family lives. Often alludes are made to Charles Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress‚ and this is a text which the girls have grown up reading and considering. Throughout Little Women, we are invited to follow the four March girls on their way to find their individual Celestial Cities. Mrs March encourages her daughters to follow the road which will make them both faithful in their belief in God and quiet, homely women. This is very obvious in the way Mrs March tries to teach Jo, her second eldest daughter, to control her temper and be a more silent person. In chapter 8, the mother confesses to have had , when younger, the same need to exort her feelings that Jo does but that faith and the loving guidance of her husband has helped her to win control of her own emotions. Mrs March sets herself as an example to her daugêhter in how she should seek help from God; "If I don't seem to need help" she says, "it is because I have a better friend, even than Father, to comfort and sustain me" (p 77). The friend she is refering to is, of course, God. Through this lesson, Jo learns to be a more humble and silent woman, qualities that are highly regarded in the March house; A Oin that sad yet happy hour, she [Jo] had learned not only the bitterness of remorse and despair, but the sweetness of self-denial and seÉlf-controlA O (p 77). 

Once the father, Mr March, comes home injured from the war, his role is that of the examinator. He comes when no one is expecting him and is warmly welcomed by the six women of the house. He spends his days resting and assessing the progress of his daughters. When asked, he tells them what he sees in each of them (end of chapter 22); Meg has got used to working hard not considering how household duties might harm her sensible hands; during her father  s absence, Jo has become a young woman who is more gentle and calm than before and she also shows a new motherly side of herself in the way she takes care of Beth; Beth, on the other hand, has lost some of her childish shyness; finally, Amy has learned not to think of her looks first but to consider the comfort of others instead.

Little Women emanates from the ideal mother-woman, Mrs March. She sets the example for her daughters to follow, and it is the road of self-denial and self-control which will lead them to the Celestial City. Mrs March is rewarded for her patience and faithfulness, and so will her daughters be. Giving away the familyA Os food, a fresh and even richer meal is presented by the neighbour, Mr Lawrence. Love for her family, along with prayer, gives her comfort while waiting for her husband to come back from the war. Mrs March is the heart of the body in which her daughters are parts. She is the source of the atmosphere in which they live, and which they all love and care for. The mother-woman creates and sustñains the domestic and sororal world of these women's culture.
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