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Louisa’s mother, Abigail was born in a prominent Boston family，thirsty for education and engaged by the social topics of her times including abolition and women’s rights. Although trapped in a troubled marriage to a Utopian philosopher, Bronson Alcott, she kept her strength of character and took joy in educating her daughters in face of family economic difficulty.
1.2 Louisa May Alcott and Little Women
Bronson Alcott was so indulged in the pursuit of his ideal that he barely could shoulder the burden of family life. Therefore, this burden fell on first his wife, then his aggressive second daughter, Louisa. She had taught in the school, worked as a seamstress and a nurse and done laundry for other families. At the age of 15, she went out to be a maid. By doing these jobs, she managed to supplement family expense and in some sense accumulated abundant materials for her future writing. Most of her early works focused on enthusiastic and drastic stories and novels. In 1868, Thomas Niles, an editor at the publishing house of Roberts Brothers, suggested Louisa to write him a smart, lively novel for girls to fill a yawning gap in the juvenile market. At the beginning, Louisa disliked this idea and thought she was completely unqualified for such a book, for she was an irrepressible tomboy in her youth and never had a good impression of girls. However, she brought out her artistic potential to work on it.
After the unexpected success of the first volume of Little Women in 1868, the second volume was published in 1869. Little Women, in the form of a domestic diary, tells about the growing-up experiences of the four March sisters in a small town of New England, setting in the background of American civil war. Alcott's mother and sisters are all boldly transformed into enduring characters, whereas Mr. March, the novel's patriarch who shares many traits with Bronson, is barely visible in the book. However, lots of trails of philosophies the transcendentalist such as Emerson, Thoreau and Bronson communicated can be found between the lines and even considered as the spiritual core of the novel.
1.3 Sociology of Family Education
Little Women is regarded as a model for family educational art, with lasting influence on the modern family education. This paper analyses methods of family education from the perspective of sociology of family education. As a subdiscipline of the sociology of education, sociology of family education has its own particular research objects. From the microcosmic point of view, it concerns about social phenomenons of education in the function of family. It aims at abstracting regular recognition from sorted and unearthed educational factors interwoven in the complex social phenomenons such as the parent-child relationship, family interaction, family culture, and family ecosystem. From the macroscopic perspective, sociology of family education looks at the phenomenons of family education in the process of social development and researches influences on family education resulting from social changes, social stratification and other factors.(Miao Jiandong, 1999: 1) Based on the existing research achievement, a kind of positive parent-child pattern is put forward. This pattern includes seven elements: appropriate parenting attitudes, positive parenting beliefs and behaviors, knowing about children’s temperament types, emphasis on function of important related people, improving of personal literacy, sound physical and mental development and health marriage. This pattern offers a reference template for the comprehensive analysis of family education of the March family in Little Women.
2 Family Education in Little Women
2.1 Parents’ Roles of Family Education in Little Women
In spite of the attractive and sparkling images of four sisters in the novel, their mother, “Mrs. March should never be ignored as an extremely successful mother and female character in her writing”(Huang Yan, 2011: 105). In the first part of Little Women, Mr. March served as a chaplain to care for injured soldiers. Mrs. March not only had the courage to take the burden of family, but also persistently took good care of her children and taught them by personal examples as well as verbal instruction. In her efforts, the March sisters made progress and grew mature in life’s trials and hardships.