摘  要

本文重点介绍了与南北战争相关的新思想，如超验主义，实用主义，个人主义等思想对美国女性社会、心理及思维方式的影响。同时也以《小妇人》中的五位女性为例子，说明了新思想在女性中的体现。
本文分为四个部分。文章的第一部分介绍了全文的研究重点及意义，第二部分解释了南北战争对美国带来的影响以及新思想的产生，第三章的重点在于介绍南北战争新思想在《小妇人》中女性角色的具体体现，最后一章在阐述了研究的结论以及新思想对后来美国社会的影响。

关键词：南北战争, 新思想, 女性体现, 小妇人

ABSTRACT

This paper focused on how the concepts of Civil War as Transcendentalism, Pragmatism and Individualism had affected both on the American female society, psychology and the way of thinking. The author gave the examples of five female characters from the novel Little Women, which well represented the spirits mentioned above.
There are four chapters in this thesis. The first chapter of this thesis introduces the important sense of researching this subject. The second chapter expresses the effects of the American Civil War. In the third chapter, the author focuses on the female demonstrations of the specific characters which described relatively in the novel Little Women. The forth chapter, the final one, gives a conclusion of the research and presents how the Civil War new concept affect later American society.

Key Words:    Civil War;    new concepts;    female demonstrations;     little women

1.    Introduction
Transcendentalism, Pragmatism and Individualism played a very important role in the course of this research，because they not only had an important impact on the entire 19th century American society and literature. It contributed to the national women’s independence of the United States. The Little women was considered to be the American literature classics of 19th century，Luisa May Alcott created a self-reliant, independent，optimistic woman image under the influence of the Transcendentalism, Pragmatism and Individualism，which embodies the values and outlook of her life.
During the nineteenth century, the South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation system, while the North represented the better advanced economy founded on the Capitalism. Both of the two components are struggling for their own interests, which causes fierce competition and finally solved by launching war. Under the background of the war, lifestyles and thinking ways of the population had been changed greatly. The novel Little Women, adopted realism with the form of autobiography, express how four Northern girls chase of independence, confidence, liberation and affection to the family.