《小妇人》中的家庭教育问题

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摘要《小妇人》的出版使美国19世纪女作家露易莎·梅·奥尔科特一举成名，《小妇人》形式上是一部家庭日志,取材自作者真实的家庭生活的经历，生动地讲述了马奇家四姐妹的成长故事。由于当时复杂的社会背景以及作者本人的文化背景，一个多世纪以来《小妇人》被分别从超验zhuyi、女性zhuyi、清教zhuyi等视角进行了解读。小说中马奇夫妇对四姐妹的教育方式一直被奉为美国式家庭教育的典范，对现代美国家庭教育产生了不可忽略的影响。本文结合家庭教育社会学的理论知识，分析19世纪新英格兰地区传播的新思想对小说中教育方式产生的影响以及小说中的教育方式如何逐步实现对四姐妹人格的改善，从而达到客观全面地理解小说中教育方式的目的。这也为理解现代美国家庭教育提供了参考和基础。67139

毕业论文关键词: 露易莎·梅·奥尔科特《小妇人》家庭教育

Title On the Problem of Family Education in Little Women

Abstract:

Louisa May Alcott, an American writer in the 19th century won her overnight fame by the publication of Little Women. This book was written in the form of a family journal, vividly representing a story of the March girls’ upbringing based on Louisa’s own life experiences. Considering the complex social background of the 19th century and her own cultural background, Little Women has been interpreted respectively from the perspectives of transcendentalism, feminism and puritanism for more than one century. The way Mr. and Mrs. March educated the four sisters is always regarded as the model of American family education, which has a non-ignorable impact on the modern American family education. Based on the theories of sociology of family education, this paper analyzes the influence of various new philosophies spread in the New England of the 19th century on the family education methods and how such family education gradually improved personalities of the four sisters, so as to have a comprehensive and objective understanding of the family education methods in the book. This also provides reference and basis for the interpretation of modern American family education.

Keywords: Louisa May Alcott Little Women family education

Table of Contents

1 Introduction..5

1.1 Family Education Received by Louisa May Alcott..5

1.2 Louisa May Alcott and Little Women.6

1.3 Sociology of Family Education..6

2 Family education in Little Women7

2.1 Parents’ Roles of Family Education in Little Women.7

2.2 Transcendentalism and Family Education in Little Women8

2.3 Puritanism and Family Education in Little Women..10

2.4 Feminism and Family Education in Little Women.12

3 Improvement of the March Sisters’ Personalities13

4 Modern American Family education.15

Conclusion..17

Acknowledgements18

Bibliography..19

1 Introduction

1.1 Family Education Received by Louisa May Alcott

Little Women is actually a vivid reflection of the real domestic life of the Alcott’s and the special family education the Alcott girls received. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She was the second girl, with her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and May. Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts neighboring Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Louisa’s father, Bronson Alcott was an educator who was devoted to putting the transcendentalism into educational practice. For all his life, he adhered to the view of holistic education and spirituality in education constantly. As J.P. Miller said, Bronson believed in the practice of Socratic dialogue to “stimulate the conscience and the intellect so as to draw forth the children’s inner wisdom”(Miller, 2010: 137). On one hand, Bronson’s a series of experiments on his educational philosophy such as the Concord school, the Temple school in Boston and Alcott House ended up with failures, which even led to his withdrawal and depression. On the other hand, Bronson was the most unusual father in that particular age when fathers took little responsibility to educate their own children. He was extraordinarily interested in the development of his own four daughters. Guided by such passion, he, with his wife, “prudentially controlled their environment to exclude all disadvantageous influence and tried hard to offer their children an ideal, highly scrutinized upbringing, exhorting them to resist every selfish impulse and indulge every creative one”(Matteson, 2009: 12). Also he kept comprehensive journals for her three eldest daughters to record every event during their early growth.