A Senior Capstone Experience by Riley Dauber ’25

Submitted to Department of English

Advised by Dr. Elizabeth Foley O’Connor

Contributor Biography: After graduating in May, Riley interned with the American Scholar magazine, fact-checking articles for their Autumn issue. She also spent a few grueling weeks scooping ice cream before landing a reporting job at the Southern Maryland News, where she covers local politics and events. She watches too many movies and writes a Substack about the Best Actress Oscar winners.

Description: When I started junior seminar with Dr. O’Connor, I knew I wanted to defend Amy March, the bratty and selfish youngest March sister from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Whenever I saw conversations about the novel or its film adaptations online, there were always comments hating on Amy, specifically the scene where she burns Jo’s manuscript, and saying Laurie should have married Jo instead. I saw a bit more appreciation after the 2019 movie came out, and I loved how Florence Pugh portrayed Amy. Once I reread the novel and started looking at other scholarship — most, of course, focused on Jo and her subversion of societal, feminine expectations — I knew there was a gap in the research with Amy and her own abilities to both meet and subvert these expectations. She is feminine yet selfish and understands what she was must do to survive in her society. I also looked at the novel through a narratological lens; even though it is told in the third person, many of the scenes favor Jo and her emotions, not Amy’s. This choice led to many readers identifying with Jo and viewing Amy through her eyes. I concluded that Amy deserves a place in the Little Women scholarly conversation because of her understanding of feminine expectations and her ability to have both a marriage built on love and a self-serving artistic career at the end of the novel.

Read Riley’s SCE below: