COGNITIVE MAPPING AND SPACE IN LOUISA MAY ALCOTT’S LITTLE WOMEN: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF BETH AND JO MARCH

Abstract

This paper explores how cognitive mapping and spatial consciousness shape character development in Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” (1868). Focusing on Beth March and Jo March, the study analyzes how they mentally and physically map space, particularly home, external environments, and imaginative landscapes. Drawing from cognitive literary theory (Freeman, 2002), spatial narrative theory (Tally, 2013), and feminist spatial studies (Massey, 1994), the paper argues that Beth’s inward, home-centered mapping reflects a moral and relational worldview anchored in domestic stability, while Jo’s expansive and mobile cognitive maps illustrate ambition, independence, and imaginative self-construction. Through close reading and theoretical engagement, the study demonstrates how the sisters’ contrasting spatial orientations reveal broader 19th-century tensions surrounding gender, agency, space, and female authorship. Ultimately, Alcott uses space not merely as setting but as psychological architecture, mapping divergent pathways of womanhood.