A Senior Capstone Experience by Grace Hogsten ’25

Submitted to the Department of English

Advised by Dr. Katie Charles

Contributor Biography: During her time at Washington College, Grace Hogsten worked at Washington College Review, The Elm, Collegian, the Miller Library, and the writing center. After graduation, she began working in elementary education and plans to pursue a career in teaching. In her free time, she enjoys reading classic literature and watching trashy television.

Description: My thesis argues that Louisa May Alcott’s Work: A Story of Experience refigures the family unit by arguing that women can live independently without the oversight of fathers or husbands. The novel prioritizes female relationships, centering them in every plotline and returning to them as the story unfolds. My analysis uses a feminist lens, specifically pertaining to feminist theory emerging before or around the novel’s publication, with Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as the main feminist text. The thesis also utilizes scholarship on the concept of the New Woman, which I first encountered in the Feminist Modernisms class, to discuss this portrayal of a woman prioritizing self-sufficiency and emotional fulfillment rather than the familiarity of gender norms.