Little Women: girl-book, boy-book, or neither?

My research and findings:
I was very interested in the nineteenth-century idea of the “girl-book” and “boy-book.” The first thing that I looked at (briefly) was the book The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich (the boy-book of the day). Google has actually digitized the entire book, so I was able to read a little and examine the images. (The book that is displayed is the original version from 1870, and I was immediately struck by the illustrations. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you look at them). I found Aldrich’s writing style to be quite humorous. Here’s a little snippet from the first chapter:
"Lest the title should mislead the reader, I hasten to assure him here that I have no dark confessions to make. I call my story the story of a bad boy, partly to distinguish myself from those faultless young gentlemen who generally figure in narratives of this kind, and partly because I really was not a cherub. "
While I was reading the first few pages of The Story of a Bad Boy, I found myself wondering how Little Women came to be considered the “girl-book” when the main character (Jo) is a such a tomboy. I found an article from the New England Quarterly by John W. Crowley which discusses this exact conundrum.

My Interpretation:
Crowley discusses the idea of the boy-book and the manner in which it was introduced to the reading public, stressing the point that it “depicts a child’s world that is antagonistic to the world of adults”. He goes on to examine the world of Alcott’s Little Women and its qualification as a girl-book. He claims that it cannot be considered a girl-book because
"Aldrich, Mark Twain, Howells, and other writers of the boy-book imagine a boy-world distinct from both the adult spheres (or at least from the woman’s sphere) [while] Alcott shows the girl-world to by circumscribed by the woman’s sphere and governed by its civilizing codes. "
In my opinion, the way that the woman’s world informs that of the girl could be the main difference between the “boy-book” and the “girl-book”; however, I don’t disagree with everything that Crowley discusses in this essay. The majority of his essay is spent discussing Jo’s character and her boyishness and aggressive nature. While Jo is still a young, nurturing woman with a tendency to be dramatic and emotional, she does not fret over her appearance (cutting her hair for money to support her family) and works very hard to be a writer. She wishes that she and her sisters were boys so that “’then there wouldn’t be any bother!’” and “submits herself to a reforming self-discipline: ‘I’ll try to be what he loves to call me, a little woman, and not be rough and wild’”. This reformation and acceptance of the role which one must play in the adult world is another aspect of the boy-book which can be applied to Little Women, and therefore increases its ambiguity as a girl-book.

What I think it adds to our class discussion:
In children’s literature today, the line between girl-book/boy-book has become increasingly blurred. Sure, there are some: The Babysitters’ Club, Sweet Valley High, Hardy Boys. But the most recent and popular books like Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events contain characters which cross the traditional gender boundaries. I feel that in examining books of other time periods, it is helpful to view them through a more critical lens than that to which we might be accustomed. Little Women may be called a girl-book because its main characters are all female; however, we must examine it closely to determine whether the distinction between boy-book and girl-book has always been as clear as we have assumed.