CONTEXT

Little Women was written in a period of great change for the United States. The Civil War had just ended only a few years prior, the industrial revolution in motion, and the women’s rights movement was in full swing. The book Little Women put the reader right into that time period. Within the book the reader finds a mother raising four daughters by herself because her husband is working in the military, a daughter determined to make her own life, to live by her own hand, not having to depend on a man, and a family dealing with poverty. There is also an undertone of good Christian values and morals which was popular at the time. This book provides a window in to the life of a good moral family of the nineteenth century.