{"id":20,"date":"2007-02-18T19:35:27","date_gmt":"2007-02-19T00:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/2007\/02\/18\/might-little-women-be-a-deconstructionist-work\/"},"modified":"2007-02-18T19:35:27","modified_gmt":"2007-02-19T00:35:27","slug":"might-little-women-be-a-deconstructionist-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/2007\/02\/18\/might-little-women-be-a-deconstructionist-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Might “Little Women” be a Deconstructionist Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have finally finished the novel but did not read all of the afterword.\u00c2\u00a0 Towards the latter third of the book, it struck me that “Little Women<\/em>” might be a deconstructionist work.\u00c2\u00a0 This idea caused me to pull out “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms<\/em>,” Second Edition by Ross Murfin and Supriyia M. Ray to either confirm or disproved my idea.\u00c2\u00a0 On p. 91, Murfin and Ray quote J. Hillis Miller (quoted as being the preeminent American deconstructor) in an essay called “Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure<\/em>” (1976) as stating that “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has alread dismantled itself.”\u00c2\u00a0 It goes on to state that deconstruction involves contradictory ideas standing next to each other.\u00c2\u00a0 So might not LW be a sort of tension-laden juxtaposition of text?\u00c2\u00a0 It is my understanding after reading the entry for deconstruction that Western cultures express themleves by means of binary opposition.\u00c2\u00a0 Examples include, but are not limited to, light\/dark; presence\/abscence; black\/white and on an on ad nauseum.\u00c2\u00a0 In understanding this system of binary opposition, something (concept, noun, adjective, etc…) may be defined by what it is not.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, darkness is the absence of light.\u00c2\u00a0 In thinking about this concept, for lack of a prettier word, I remembered Dr. Campbell talking about how the sisters in LW yearn for family and the bonds it provides, as well as the yearning for independence and love and a life of their own.\u00c2\u00a0 When I apply a deconstructionist viewpoint to LW I see that perhaps it may just fit the definition.\u00c2\u00a0 They are women, not men, and so therefore not perceived as being readily able to attain the same rewards in life as men.\u00c2\u00a0 Yet somehow, they attain everything they want.\u00c2\u00a0 Even poor, pitiful Beth attains her sainthood in the end.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Father has gone off to war so they have only a mother who manages to effectively transport her\u00c2\u00a0charges through what is perhaps the most precarious and\u00c2\u00a0troubling\u00c2\u00a0times of their lives.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Further, they are not rich so they must be\u00c2\u00a0poor.\u00c2\u00a0 Poverty imbibes in them a grace of spirit and charity of heart\u00c2\u00a0not be felt by their wealthy peers.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a final matter, I just want to mention the tension aspect of the text.\u00c2\u00a0 It appears as if all of these binary juxtapositions infuse\u00c2\u00a0the text with tension.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems inevitable that if an entity is one thing and therefore not another, then tension must ensue.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel that this is a very surface-level discussion of deconstructionism and\u00c2\u00a0by no means do I mean to suggest that I am an expert in the field.\u00c2\u00a0 However, I feel strongly, that every\u00c2\u00a0worthwhile text contains deconstructionist elements.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have finally finished the novel but did not read all of the afterword.\u00c2\u00a0 Towards the latter third of the book, it struck me that “Little Women” might be a deconstructionist work.\u00c2\u00a0 This idea caused me to pull out “The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms,” Second Edition by Ross Murfin and Supriyia M. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.elsweb.org\/carmenc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}