Jo Marsh’s school and its pluralistic imagination

“We are expected to be as wise as men who have had entire generations of help and support behind them, whilst we have had none. Give us the same opportunities and in a few generations we shall see what the outcome will be.” Alice Heath utters—or rather shouts—these words at the boarding school founded by Jo March. She is one of the pupils looking forward, at least in her imagination, to university and professional careers, in a spirit of emancipatory feminism dear to the author, Louisa May Alcott, in the final novel—the fourth—of her tetralogy, Jo’s Boys (1886, translated here by Monica Ricci). The existence of a tradition that provides ‘help and support’ to those who study it is clearly identified as an indispensable prerequisite that young men and women need for an education grounded in ideals of justice and fairness. To deny it, to dismiss it, or to misrepresent it, on the other hand, means clipping the wings of those who will be unable to recognise themselves in it and draw inspiration for their own future.

140 years have passed, but today’s Alice Heaths – the little girls and teenagers – might well shout those very same words with the same indignation: where is the tradition of women in education, in teaching, and in the educational resources that shape the collective imagination? What price must they pay, and what gaps must they overlook, those few who manage to establish themselves in top positions? Are ‘equal opportunities’ – which generations of female thinkers around the world have been demanding for centuries – fully guaranteed?

There is no denying that, since the late nineteenth century, things have changed, even though it was precisely during that period that the establishment of various national canons imposed, in school curricula across Europe and its colonies, closed and oppressive moral models linked to a view of womanhood and ‘race’ deeply influenced by the prevailing schools of thought in psychiatry and anthropology: the nature of Woman was said to be characterised by repetitive actions, a practical bent rather than an ability for abstraction, an eye for detail, and, in the worst cases, by hysteria and unbridled sexuality.

Schools were therefore called upon to channel these inclinations into acceptable behaviour, shaping young women’s expectations of the submissive destiny of good wives and good mothers – even if they were semi-illiterate – that lay in store for them. Sons and daughters grew up in a climate of submission against which it was blasphemous to rebel, on pain of violence, expulsion or confinement in mental asylums. Studying female authors, scientists, philosophers, queens, goddesses and heroines who had made independence, freedom of choice and autonomy from the dominant male world the central focus of their lives risked encouraging inappropriate behaviour.

Partly to counter this policy, Jo March’s imaginary school welcomed girls in difficulty, allowing each girl’s natural aptitudes to emerge and nurturing them in the Montessori tradition, within an atmosphere of sharing with their male peers. Indeed, because women’s history should not be studied solely by female pupils in separate classes: a pluralistic imagination and a tradition of equality are forged together; only in this way will they become a lasting legacy, not something to be rediscovered time and again through some chance miracle. Only in this way can we say that we – and those who come after us – belong to the generation longed for by Alice Heath and, with her, by Louisa May Alcott.

Johnny L. Bertolio, a lecturer, is the author of “L’ha scitto lei, ma… Perché a scuola non si studiano le autrici” (Tlon, 2026). During the Babel Festival in Bellinzona, he will moderate the discussion “Feminist translation and fluid literature. Is it possible?” with Noémie Grunenwald and Carla Demierre on 19 September at 5:30 pm.