Little Women Re-read: Identifying with Jo March in a Cultural Transition

I have been routinely reading through three or four books at a time, this year. My husband encouraged me to do this rather than sticking to one book at a time, and now I can see why. The biggest advantage of this method is that I always have a book that fits my mood to turn to, no matter what mood I'm in.  

This month, the books were Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman (2020), Little Women (Louisa May Alcott, 1868-1869), and Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier (2020). Themes of concurrent reads don't often line up as closely as they did, so this was a fascinating experience.

Book Summaries

Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

I would like to summarize the books from longest to shortest. At 400+ pages, Rise and Triumph has first place in this category. It is actually a middle-length historical synthesis of several thinkers including Phillip Rieff and Alasdair MacIntyre. Although this book is highly accessible in terms of writing style to someone able to read at a 12th-ish grade level, it is still very long for the busy pastor or interested lay person. If you'd like a shorter, 8th-10th grade level summary, I recommend Trueman's Strange New World, with chapters written in parallel, and even including study/discussion questions.

A great summary (aimed at pastors and priests) of Rise and Triumph is over at 9marks. This book compares modern-day Christians to Rip Van Winkle--unaware that they are part of the culture around them and are not actually the anticulture. The book's historical threads bring them up to speed; because of cultural change, although most Christians have absorbed many aspects of the culture, they as a group are thought of as harmful. So, what history is relevant? Over the last 3-4 centuries, certain key thinkers have influenced and marked a "death of God" in the larger Western culture.

Central concepts and theories that link the key thinkers' ideas together are (1) mimesis versus poiesis and (2) Rieff's three-worlds concept. Mimesis refers to imitating an existing order extra nos (outside of us)--whatever the source of that order. Poiesis, by contrast, refers to humans creating their own order or reality. The three "worlds" of Phillip Rieff refer to three attitudes or worldviews. The first "world" is that of a pagan, whose morality is based on widely accepted myths. The second "world" is that of a believer, whose morality is based on faith in God. The third "world" is actually an anticulture, because it is essentially secular and based on rejecting the notion of a god.

Now, we get to the path of the concept of the "self." Rosseau, in the 1700s, explained the concept of the "psychological self" which led to expressive individualism (i.e., the individual's self-exaltation and self-fulfillment is the most important). Next, the poets Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake, in the late 1700s-1800s, popularized Rousseau's ideas into the "romantic self" and the idea of a therapeutic culture (i.e., an individual's surroundings should focus on supporting his or her mental world which is more important than a potentially contradictory physical reality). 

Nietsche, Marx, and Darwin, in the 1800s, built on these same ideas to produce the idea of the "plastic self" (i.e., each person can remake his or her own identity at will). Finally, Freud, in the early 1900s, put forth the idea of the "sexual self" (i.e., each human is fundamentally a sexual/sexualized being from infancy onward). Based on this train of historical thought, Marcuse, in the mid-1900s, developed the "sexually politicized self" (i.e., sexuality is used politically, and nothing less than active support of a person's sexual identity is tolerable).

Little Women

This is actually a pair of novels, the first published in 1868 and the next in 1869. The story traces the lives of four March girls, Meg, Jo (Josephine), Amy, and Beth in decreasing age order. Meg's marriage marks the beginning of the second novel (Part 2). Meg has a "proper" personality, Jo a "boyish," Amy an "artistic," and Beth a "mousy" temperament, if I had to pick a single adjective for each. Part 1 sees the girls in early- to mid-adolescence (12-16 years old), and all are adults (with the exception of the late Beth) by the end of Part 2. Through varied adventures, each girl grows into a woman and marries with children.

Irreversible Damage

I am not all the way through this book, but do know enough to say that the Wikipedia article about it currently misrepresents the theme. As someone with a decent amount of research training, including a PhD in health sciences, I can say that she has done due diligence to investigate multiple angles and interpret the extant literature (or lack thereof) on the phenomenon of what Lisa Littman's 2018 article in PLoS One (a prominent general science journal) called Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). (Side note: a conference on that topic is documented here.) 

Shrier correctly notes that the recent surge in cases of adolescent girls suddenly declaring themselves trans and insisting on hormone/Lupron administration is distinct from cases of classically defined, life-long gender dysphoria in both presentation and clinical course.

Common Themes

Perhaps not surprisingly from the summaries above, common themes of the three books encompass gender manifestations and gender identity in a given cultural and historical context. Little Women portrays the dominant United States and western European cultures of the late 1800s, where most women married young, raised their children or other's children (as governesses or school teachers), and ruled peaceful homes so that their husbands could pursue fulfilling careers in ministry, business, or service. Traditional Christian morality pervaded the culture, reinforcing standards of conduct and traditional virtues of "prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice . . . faith, hope, and love." Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self traces how this type of culture became displaced by Rieff's "third world" anticulture, and Irreversible Damage shows the tail end of a manifestation of this anticulture.

Additional Reflections on Rise and Triumph

The 9marks summary highlights salient questions for Christians and others to consider:

• How is it possible (logically and/or practically) possible, if at all, to have the inner (psychological) self actually be more real than the biological self?
• What is the source of dignity and authenticity--God or the self?
• Should Christians use the world's categories for sexuality in their own thinking, writing, and reasoning? "To concede the categories can concede the argument."
• Given the history leading up to the psychological, sexually politicized self, is there any logical barrier to concluding (from the anticulture's rhetoric and documents) that pedophilia, polygamy, and incest are okay?

More points and quotes from the summary:

• According to the anticulture, "who you think you are is your real identity . . . However, for one's identity to flourish, it must be acknowledged by others. The technical term for that identity is dialogical; in other words, it relies on language which is only developed through interaction with others."
• "The Bible draws lines where current secular ideology wants no lines."
• Interestingly, as a consequence of the history summarized in the background above, even the legal system reasons based on aesthetic appearance and emotional supremacy. Additionally, pornography is widely accepted because of the changed societal view of sex.
• Highly recommend reading Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue after this.
• The LGBTQ+ alliance is by exclusion of cis/hetero norms. No two categories "fit" together naturally.

Concluding Personal Reflections

I started this post referring to re-reading Little Women. For readers who haven't read that book in a while or at all, here is a summary of Jo's character development. As an early adolescent (15 years old), she did things that were not "proper" for girls in her era to do, such as lie on the rug at home and persist in boyish habits and mannerisms. She was not happy at the prospect of growing up into a young lady, and was disappointed in being born a girl. Perpetually outspoken and frank, in the awkward phase of adolescence, she spent years learning how to control her tongue and temper. Her mother allowed or encouraged her to develop practical "non-girl" skills including carpentry.

Her early training was in serving her Aunt March, which worked on her rough edges. As a girl and young lady, she had a short, hot temper and excess self-efficacy in her cooking skills. Her friendship with Laurie (Theodore Laurence, around her age) was always platonic--she was sure she could never love him romantically, though he grew into infatuation over time. Most of her friends and relatives were girls, so she especially treasured the friendship with Laurie. 

Through adolescence, she worked hard to master her temper and imitate good character models, although she was at times taken up in secular philosophy and money-making by writing "trash" below her level of morality. She learned when to speak and when to hold her tongue from several personal mistakes, and continued to be frank with Laurie and others. Once married to the older Professor Bhaer, she singlehandedly developed a boarding school for boys in her late aunt's estate. She matured, yet always preferred the chaos of being surrounded by boys and young men whose character she and the Professor shaped.

As a tomboy, I always identified with Jo March. A Millennial child of Gen X parents (and without social media by choice until I went to college), I had only brothers growing up and, while I preferred spending time with female friends more, I don't know what I would have done with a sister in the family. Also, I enjoyed writing and coming up with improbable/dramatic stories, as Jo did. My favorite forms of physical activity were/are walking, tree climbing, ice skating, and otherwise outdoorsy, level-surface activities. 

Also, like Jo, I didn't particularly enjoy being a girl or woman, at times well into my twenties. This was due to the privilege I saw afforded to my brothers by my parents, and after puberty the facts of cyclical soreness and other changes. Connecting this to Irreversible Damage, I can see that I was spared the mental health issues so prevalent among teenage girls today, due to my peer group selection and my late, practical entrance into social media.

What do you think of these books? Feel free to engage with their ideas in the comments!