52 pages • 1 hour read
Geraldine BrooksMarch
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Meaning of Bravery
Mr. March considers the meanings of courage and cowardice. He thinks:
The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads. And yet I do not think it heroic to march into fields of fire, whipped on one’s way only by fear of being called craven. Sometimes, true courage requires inaction; that one sit at home while war rages, if by doing so one satisfies the quiet voice of honorable conscience (168).
In Mr. March’s view, if one is fighting in the war without “honorable conscience,” then their fight is not a brave one. One is not courageous because they fight to avoid the label of coward. Rather, bravery is achieved when one faces their greatest fears to attain moral ends. Mr. March doesn’t think of himself as a brave person; however, there are reasons to consider him brave. He committed himself to abolitionism through risks both legal (funding Brown) and physical (joining the war effort). Also, when Canning was about to be executed, Mr. March leapt from the bushes to come to his defense.
By his definition of bravery, one can see some underlying factors that cause him to self-identify as a coward. His support of Brown was not primarily driven by a moral alignment with Brown’s work; rather, he wanted to impress his wife, who he thought deeply admired Brown. When he jumped to Canning’s rescue, his action was not entirely driven by a desire to save Canning’s life. In actuality, after he hid while Canning was shot and Ptolemy was beheaded, he knew he would be labeled a coward unless he took decisive action to show he wasn’t. In these instances, his motives weren’t moral, and thus, his actions weren’t brave.
Whitewashing
A common criticism of Little Women is that it overlooks the brutalities of war and slavery. A similar concern arises in Mr. March’s letters to Marmee; because he doesn’t want her to worry, he euphemistically conveys his experiences and, at times, even depicts them in a rosy light. When penning his first letter to Marmee, he writes from a ravaged battlefield, watching burial parties retrieve corpses. However, this is not the scene he paints for her. Instead, he depicts the beautiful sky, noting that “the colors swirled across the heavens in just such a happy profusion” (3). He is aware that he is whitewashing the tragedy of war, but in the interest of preventing Marmee from worrying, he does it anyway. Throughout the novel, he does this repeatedly in his letters.
Later in the novel, in a letter to her daughters, Marmee realizes that she too is whitewashing. She had been critical of Mr. March’s tendency in his letters to intentionally overlook difficult truths. Now that she finds herself in a similar situation, she understands why he did this. They both feel uneasy about whitewashing but do it anyway. This internal conflict arises because they feel a compulsion to tell a more complete truth but don’t believe that the truth is worth its consequences. In Mr. March’s case, he sends along the whitewashed letters; in Marmee’s case, she scraps the letter. In both cases, they choose not to present the painful truths.
Marital Jealousy
Over the course of the novel, both Mr. March and Marmee feel marital jealousy. Marmee’s jealousy, however, is well-founded. Upon confronting Grace, she learns that Mr. March has a lengthy history with her. Though she doesn’t find out with certainty if Mr. March and Grace were lovers, she does have reason to believe that Mr. March strayed, at least emotionally. When Brown came to Concord to deliver a lecture, Mr. March perceived that Marmee was charmed by him. He became jealous of how she looked at him and wanted to be similarly admired by his wife. Thus, he invested—and lost—his fortune by funding Brown’s abolitionist projects. While away at war, Mr. March still wonders if at some point Brown has seduced his wife. When the narration switches to Marmee’s perspective, it becomes clear that she never had such feelings for Brown. Mr. March and Marmee’s marital jealousy is indicative of poor communication and emotional distancing. In the novel’s closing scene, they are physically together but remain emotionally apart.
Related Titles
By Geraldine Brooks
