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Romance in Little Women and The Handmaid’s Tale: An Investigation of Alcott and Atwood’s Subversive Use of the Romance Plot

Alessi, Camilla
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Abstract
This thesis investigates the subversive potential of the romance plot by critically comparing both the domestic coming-of-age novel Little Women with the dystopic novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Though pertaining to very different genres, Alcott and Atwood’s heroines are made to deal simultaneously with their respective love interests and their main storyline. Both authors play with the romantic plot and idealized tropes to utilize its familiarity in their favor. For Jo, her marriage to the unconventional Professor Bhaer is more intellectually fulfilling, but ultimately is representative of the compromise that Alcott had to make to satisfy her publishers and readers alike. While for Offred, the addition of a romantic storyline undermines the novel’s critique of the patriarchy. In each case, Alcott and Atwood both use a familiar narrative plot precisely to disrupt normative narrative expectations. The heroines of Little Women and The Handmaid’s Tale are, in this way, not dissimilar to Trojan horses: outfitted by their authors as relatively unassuming women on the outside, yet ultimately disruptive to the status quo of the plot on the inside.
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Thesis (B.A. in English Literature)--John Cabot University, Spring 2021.
Date
2021
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Little women (Louisa May Alcott ), Handmaid's tale (Margaret Atwood)
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Alessi, Camilla. "Romance in Little Women and The Handmaid’s Tale: An Investigation of Alcott and Atwood’s Subversive Use of the Romance Plot". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2021.
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