“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.” (Louisa May Alcott, Little Women). It's a quote from the character Amy March in Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women. I fell in love with Little Women for the first time when I read it with my mom in elementary school. Then I had to reread it for a high school assignment, and I recently reread the novel before the latest film adaptation in December. Little Women is one of my favorite books of all time, and I hope this talk will give you a greater understanding of what has allowed this story to stand the test of time. It was published in 1868 and 150 years later this book continues to be a cultural phenomenon. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Little Women was revered and gained extraordinary popularity as it appealed to the masses by following the lives of four young sisters through a realistic and loosely biographical lens. Unlike many of the wild and sensationalist stories circulating these days, Little Women follows fairly ordinary events, but delves into recognizable and timeless themes. The book begins with the four sisters, Meg, Jo, Amy, and Beth, in their adolescence and follows them into adulthood. While some say the book is slow and unspectacular, as a reader you will quickly fall in love with the sometimes tense, but deeply honest relationships between the sisters. The book explores the trials that many teenagers face such as love, jealousy, conforming to society and the search for one's identity. Maybe the reason Little Women doesn't feel like another silly story is because it's based on the real life of Louisa May Alcott. Each of the sisters in the novel is based on one of Alcott's sisters, and the character Jo is actually based on Alcott herself. One of the themes that I thought made the book so realistic was the fact that at the end of the story each girl's life turned out to be very different than you would have expected. Many of them had to sacrifice some of their childhood ideals or dreams, but each of them eventually found a sense of fulfillment in their lives. As a reader, I always sympathized with the character of Jo, who felt limited by the expectations placed on her and felt an overwhelming sense of desire to make something of herself. Knowing that the book was based on Alcott's feelings about his life allowed me to relate to the character even more. Little Women was revolutionary because it reflected the daily struggles of growing up and Louisa May Alcott allowed her personal experiences to be experienced by every reader. This book was not only striking for its realistic style, but is notable for its early feminist themes. Little Women was a revolutionary novel that began to tell and reveal the expectations placed on women and gave them an honest voice that they had often not possessed. within literature. Little Women was ahead of its time in the way it challenged common notions and ideals of what a woman should be. Little Women was one of the first widely popular novels to focus exclusively on the lives of girls. In September 2018, Alice George of Smithsonian Magazine quoted Louisa May Alcott herself as saying that the idea of ​​writing a book for girls "suffocated" her, as she never got along with many girls. Little Women was popularized not just as a story for girls, but as a classic for the whole family. I think it's interesting that even today many men are reluctant to read a novel following four.