The Western Humanism Implied In Little Women

Little Women is the masterpiece of American female writer --- Louisa May Alcott. Since its publication, it has been translated into more than ten languages, become one of the world classics. This novel detailedly depicts the four March sisters’growing experiences and their love and marriage. The story touches the depth of numerous readers with its exquisite and exhaustive narration as well as its sincere feelings,which also endows it eternal life and international power, enables it to be a resplendent pearl in American literary history.It seems that this novel just narrates the trivial things in life, but actually it gets involved in many significant topics of life, implies profound thought. Therefore, many scholars take this novel as their study object, interpreting it from different perspectives, such as transcendentalism, realism, feminism, children growth and family education etc. Most of these studies just select one side of this novel to study while the author of this thesis, based on those previous and precious studies, will unscramble this novel from a innovative and comprehensive perspective. That is western humanism.Centering on this ideology, the author of this thesis will first state the background, significance, purpose and the organization of this thesis. Then, the author will briefly introduce the study object and the theoretical basis, respectively including the writer, the main plots, the literary position of Little Women; the interpretation of western humanism and its core thought. Next, the author will elaborately analyze the western humanism implied in Little Women, such as ideology of education, ideology of religion, ideology of human-orientation. Through the arguments in these three aspect, the author finally clarifies that in this novel, no matter what ideologies, they all tend to promote the improvement and perfection of human nature without any compelling or enforcing. In the concluding part, the author will frankly list the possible drawbacks of this study and the relevant possible studies she will conduct in the future.Through this study, the author aims to highlight the viewpoint---humanism is not a theory that the common people can’t reach, instead, it can be shining on the ordinary people like the characters in Little Women. Meanwhile, the author expects the new and overall interpretation on Little Women can be accepted by those ordinary people. Hopefully, they can advance and enrich those valueless thoughts in the western humanism.