TY  - JOUR
TI  - A Heterotopia Divided: Spaces of Labor in Louisa May Alcott’s 'Little Women'
AB  - In the second half of the nineteenth century, the development of industrialization and the surging waves of immigration had drastic effects on the condition of the American working class. Coinciding with the Civil War and the following Reconstruction era, this period saw a stronger and more determined labor movement in organizing trade unions and resolving several work-related problems. Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women (1868) in such a social and economic climate. This essay will explore the novel’s spatial configuration of the existing labor conditions as two different heterotopias by turning to how Louisa May Alcott organized characters and space in Little Women. Drawing from Foucault and Harvey’s approaches to space, the essay will argue that the March family home functions as a labor heterotopia, and Jo March founds a counter-heterotopia against it. In other words, while the March house depicts, confronts and reverses the conditions of American labor in the Civil War era, Jo March attempts to follow the same procedure so as to counteract the order in her family home. Jo’s counteraction is determined by her act of writing, which gives her an individual and independent voice. Yet, more importantly, her authorship that lets her develop her own working conditions has effects beyond the garret she uses for writing. The purpose of this essay is to re-read Jo March’s character in terms of her function in both heterotopias, and to show that she constantly negotiates between these domestic and intellectual labor heterotopias in an attempt to empower her sisters.
AU  - Yazıcıoğlu, Sinem
DO  - 10.32600/huefd.920078
PY  - 2022
JO  - Hacettepe Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi
VL  - 39
IS  - 1
SN  - 1301-5737
SP  - 227
EP  - 236
DB  - TRDizin
UR  - http://search/yayin/detay/1133580
ER  -