Abigail Alcott, Practical Philosopher

A little more money, fewer wants, or better economy would free us from dependence or obligation. Abigail May Alcott

Abigail Alcott was the wife of Bronson Alcott and the mother of the well-known author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. It was her Concord neighbor, Henry David Thoreau, who said that “a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” Abigail, however, could not let it alone. Married to the benignly philosophical and totally impractical Bronson Alcott, she had to provide for herself and their four daughters – and often for him as well.

In the months before they were married, Abigail saw in Bronson the ideal person, whose contrasting qualities would contribute to their life together.

 I do think him in every respect qualified to make me happy. He is moderate, I am impetuous. He is prudent and humble, I am forward and arbitrary. He is poor, but we are both industrious. Why may we not be happy?

Still, she finishes the thought with, “We talk little of heaven, but are already busy in schemes for our future independence and comfort.” Raised in comfortable circumstances herself, she hoped for comfort, but that was never Bronson’s goal. Abigail reminds me Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, marrying her idealistic vision in haste. Abigail then repented, not in leisure, but in grinding hard work for more years than Dorothea had to endure.

In My Heart Is Boundless, Eva LaPlante has brought together the writings of Abigail Alcott – the letters and journal entries which were scattered in various collections. A journal keeper all her life, many of Abigail’s entries were destroyed or truncated after her death. From what remains, one can see why.

 I wish all philosophers could consent to admit in their domestic arrangements a financier. They require this agent more than any people in the world. They are often (for lack of this) reduced to the most humiliating dependence. Wisdom must be fed and clothed, and neither the butcher [n]or tailor will take pay in aphorisms or hypotheses.

Abigail, the four Alcott daughters and, to a considerable extent, Abigail’s relatives served as financiers to Bronson Alcott’s impecunious household. Some of the most moving letters in the collection are from Abigail to her loyal brother Samuel. After the birth of a stillborn son, she wrote,

 Our plans are all undefined. We seem to be floating along, sometimes rough, then smooth, then becalmed, sometimes high and dry, then engulfed in an ocean of difficulties. But I am getting hardened, toughened, indifferent. I care less for this world than ever….

In the end, she could not turn away from the man she still termed her “excellent husband” and her four needy children. She understood clearly by then what Bronson was.

 Wife, children, and friends are less to him than the great idea he is seeking to realize. How naturally man’s sphere seems to be in the region of the head, and woman’s in the heart and affections.

And somewhat more bitterly,

 He [brother Sam] seems quite at a loss himself, and feels dissatisfied that Mr. A[lcott] finds no means of supporting his family independent of his friends. They have to labour, why should not he? It is a difficult question to answer.

Many of Abigail’s entries in My Heart Is Boundless are concerned with the intellectual and moral development of her daughters. She taught them not to depend on their father, but to act for themselves. To aspiring writer Louisa, she said,

 Your temperament is a peculiar one, and there are few or none who can intelligently help you. Set about the work of formation of character, reformation of habits, and believe me you are capable of ranking among the best….

This advice sounds very like that offered by the Marmee depicted in the pages of Little Women.

Abigail at times sees her problems in relation to the position of women in the society she knows.

 I had a curious speculation on the condition of woman the other day. Told Mr. Alcott I thought there was some mistake when she was created. It was an afterthought, indeed Adam’s fancy for a companion first suggested it to the Almighty power, and she was called in to being after all other animals were made and pronounced good, but no such benediction was pronounced on her, but a tacit curse.

In her last years, Abigail was able to live in greater comfort and security, due to the success of Little Women and the books which followed. Ironically, even Bronson began to produce some income. Conversation audiences were now willing to hear his stories about his author daughter and other Concord neighbors, wrapped in a little philosophy, of course.

Abigail respected Bronson for his interest in the issues engaged her: “The great questions of right and wrong, of expedient right and necessary wrong, have always puzzled me.” Her final judgment of herself was mixed:

 I fear little, I hope much, for malice finds no place as an element in the composition of my character. I am impulsive but not vindictive. I love long, love much and hope to be forgiven. My education was defective. My married life has been filled with trials. I was not prepared for [it], and hardships I resisted rather than accepted or mitigated. I writhed under the injustice of society, and mourned my incompetency to live above it.

What is it that the spiritual sings? Keep your hand on the plough, hold on! Abigail’s married life was “filled with trials” and she never answered the great questions, but she held on, held on. It was the best practical philosophy she could command.

Louisa May Alcott and the Wise Woman

This is my second contribution to this month’s discussion of Little Women at the Year of Feminist Classics.

One issue which is seldom discussed when appraising feminist themes in literature is the role of women in old age. Too often older women are invisible, just as Doris Lessing observed in her novel The Summer before the Dark.

Nice picture, but not yet a “wise woman.”

Last year, when we discussed Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at A Year of Feminist Classics, I was impressed by Gilman’s description of an all-female society where older women are both honored for the lives they have led and employed for their wisdom and self-control. Here the male visitors are greeted:

“If they were only younger,” he muttered between his teeth. “What on earth is a fellow to say to a regiment of old Colonels like this?”

In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy.

“Woman” in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother.

Although Louisa May Alcott is writing about a real 19^th-century world – not a fantasy like Herland – she also recognizes the powerful role older women can take in understanding and counseling the young as they try to make their way in life. Marmee in Little Women is a clear example. Her opinions are usually conservative.

“Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty, Meg.”

Also,

“I’m not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. If rank and money come with love and virtue, also, I would accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune; but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures.”

At the same time, Marmee unites with Mr. March in not accepting poverty passively. When the girls propose to find work,

“Believing they could not begin too early to cultivate energy, industry, and independence, their parents consented, and both fell to work with the hearty good-will which in spite of all obstacles is sure to succeed at last.”

What is most striking to a modern parent is not that the girls’ mother gives advice – all mothers do that – but that the girls take the advice so seriously.

Alcott’s next successful children’s book after Little Women was An Old Fashioned Girl. In it, Alcott continues to show the strong role an older woman can take in a sometimes dysfunctional household. Young Polly – pretty, gifted and poor – comes to stay in the Shaw household. The Shaw children are friendly but spoiled. Polly receives understanding and support not from their mother, but from their grandmother. When they meet, unsophisticated country Polly is praised by Grandmother Shaw because she is still a child:

“Well, dear, I’ll tell you. In my day, children of fourteen and fifteen did n’t dress in the height of the fashion; go to parties, as nearly like those of grown people as it’s possible to make them; lead idle, giddy, unhealthy lives, and get blas, at twenty. We were little folks till eighteen or so; worked and studied, dressed and played, like children; honored our parents; and our days were much longer in the land than now, it seems to, me.”

But children were not idle at all:

“Yes, and we all learned to make bread, and cook, and wore little chintz gowns, and were as gay and hearty as kittens. All lived to be grandmothers and fathers; and I’m the last, seventy, next birthday, my dear, and not worn out yet; though daughter Shaw is an invalid at forty.”

“That’s the way I was brought up, and that’s why Fan calls me old-fashioned, I suppose,” said Polly.

This function of advice giver and reinforcer of conservative family values is given to Uncle Alec in another successful children’s book, Eight Cousins. But still, the many aunts in the story sometimes get a word in and the elderly great aunts, Peace and Plenty, stand firmly for the good old days and good old values.

Even in her adult novel, Moods, Alcott finds a place for a wise woman. When Sylvia is grieving over the unfortunate marital choice, she has a “sudden memory”:

“If ever you need help that Geoffrey cannot give, remember cousin Faith.”

This was the hour Faith foresaw; Moor had gone to her in his trouble, why not follow, and let this woman, wise, discreet, and gentle, show her what should come next.

Faith diagnoses that Sylvia has two spirits contending in one body, and “…each rules by turns, and each helps or hinders as moods and circumstances lead.” Advice and comfort are then given and gratefully received.

Louisa May Alcott wrote two sequels to Little Women. In Little Men and Jo’s Boys Marmee does not completely disappear, but Jo is now clearly in charge of the family destiny. Whereas she was once the harum scarum tomboy who wanted independence of action, now she follows the fortunes of others and guides them on their various ways. Jo is now the wise woman.

Little Women – Feminist Novel?

During the month of July I am hosting the discussion of Little Women at A Year of Feminist Classics. Here is my initial contribution.

I would like to open the discussion of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel for girls, with a proposition. Some readers find in the book a feminist message of independence and self-expression, while others find a message of social conformity. So which is it – a liberating view of female possibilities or an imposition of community expectations? My proposition is that Little Women delivers both messages. The tension between them is what makes the book so real and so memorable.

Let’s start with the conformity message. In Little Women, Mr. March is the absent father, leaving the four sisters and their mother to fend for themselves while he serves as a military chaplain in the Civil War. His presence is strongly felt, however, as he presses for the girls to grow up in accordance with his ideals.

 “I know they will remember all I said to them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully, that when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of my little women.”

The March sisters receive a letter from their father in which he expresses his ideals for his “little women.”

If they must fight their bosom enemies and conquer themselves, then they must suppress their true natures in favor of a standard set by him, the father. This is reinforced when, near the end of part one of the book, Mr. March comes back from the war and proclaims:

“I see a young lady [Jo] who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. Her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety; but I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower; she doesn’t bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl; but if I get a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied.”

A “strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman” is no bad ideal, but it is Mr. March’s ideal, not Jo’s. Alcott realistically shows that when a girl is as energetic and ambitious as Jo, she can expect loving parents will try to get her to conform. Most books for girls at that time would leave it there, with Jo seeing the error of her ways and finding happiness in meeting family expectations. Alcott is a better writer than that. She depicts a Jo who is fully appreciative of love and support; she is not rebelling against her family but against the role of a girl:

“It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys’ games and work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with papa and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman!”

After she publishes her first story, Jo does not reject her family role, but desires to be independent within it, to support those she loves as – dare we say it! – a boy would have been expected to do.

 Jo’s breath gave out here; and, wrapping her head in the paper, she dedewed her little story with a few natural tears; for to be independent, and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.

By the time she wrote Little Women in 1868, Louisa May Alcott was establishing herself as a professional writer. Like Jo, she wanted to support her chronically-needy family, by any honest means. She did, in fact, try various jobs including teaching, sewing and serving as a paid companion. Writing paid best, besides being satisfying in other ways. She wrote plays, poetry, short stories, thrillers, and an account of her nursing experiences in a Civil War hospital – whatever would sell. Her greatest affection was for her “adult” novels, such as Moods, with their emphasis of emotional states and high romance. She wrote Little Women on assignment so, rather than trying to move the reader as in Moods, she told the story, as in Hospital Sketches. When the story is told – drawing on her own experiences growing up with three sisters in the poor but worthy Alcott family – her true values are expressed in the story itself and the choices she made in telling it.

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

People talk like that. These are real girls, not models of perfection. Whatever your concept of feminism may be, for me it is the belief that women define their own natures; they are not defined for them by the male half of humanity. If women are entirely noble and good or entirely evil and dangerous, that is a patriarchal construct which separates females from the rest of the human race where everyone is a mixture of good and bad characteristics.

Jo does want to make money for her family, but she also knows that with money comes power, and she wants that too.

 …Jo was satisfied with the investment of her prize money, and fell to work with a cheery spirit, bent on earning more of those delightful checks. She did earn several that year, and began to feel herself a power in the house….

Jo enjoyed a taste of this satisfaction, and ceased to envy richer girls, taking great comfort in the knowledge that she could supply her own wants, and need ask no one for a penny.

She also has ambition for herself, for her own sake.

“I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, — something heroic or wonderful, that won’t be forgotten when I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous: that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream.”

This is important because so often, in stories about girls or biographies of women, their accomplishments are portrayed as done entirely for the sake of others, to fulfill a helper role. Jo does not reject being a helper, but she also wants her own satisfactions and achievements. Within the realities of 19^th-century life, Jo gets them. She rejects the suitor she does not love, she leaves home to support herself, she sells her stories, she writes a good book, and, finally, she does marry, but it is an unconventional union which enables her to become the manager of a school.

1. Which is the stronger message within Little Women – conformity or independence?
2. What other messages to you find there?
3. What are the roles of Marmee and of Jo’s sisters?  Do they support or deny feminist values?

For more information about Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, and the interesting town of Concord, visit my blog page: http://silverseason.wordpress.com/courses-and-presentations/little-women-by-louisa-may-alcott/

What I Read in April 2012

Mary Renault, The Nature of Alexander. I have long been a fan of Renault’s historical novels set in ancient Greece — The Last of the Wine, The King Must Die, Fire from Heaven among others — but this is the first biography I have read. It is a measured account of an extraordinary life, with careful attention to the contemporary accounts.

Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen. This novel is the middle book of Waugh’s trilogy about the adventures of Guy Crouchback during World War II. I read the first book, Men at Arms, but too long ago, so I had trouble keeping the many characters straight. Vintage Waugh, in which the capers of the officers come up against the realities of the evacuation of Crete.

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic. Their voices rise in a chorus together, yet each separate voice can also be distinguished. The speakers are the “picture brides”, the women who came to the United States from Japan to marry men they had seen only in pictures.

Susan Cheever, Treetops: A Family Memoir. The daughter of writer John Cheever tells the story of three talented and complicated families. Treetops is the summer place in New Hampshire where they gathered to love and to fight and to remember.

Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder. A short, sweet novel about the relationship between a mathematics professor, his housekeeper and her young son. Due to a brain injury, the professor’s memory is limited to 80 minutes and all new experiences must fall within that time frame.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women. This is my first complete reread of the 1868 classic after many years. I am preparing a course on Louisa May Alcott and will be posting extensively on this, her most popular book in July, as I participate in A Year of Feminist Classics.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick. I finished rereading Melville’s great classic about the struggle between mad Captain Ahab and the White Whale. This time around, my sympathies are with the whale and all of his persecuted companions. Some read the novel as the struggle between good and evil. I read it as the insanity of man, abusing this world which provide so much if we take its gifts in moderation.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Men. This is the sequel to Little Women, written three years after it. It continues the story of Jo March, no Josephine Bhaer. With her husband she runs Plumfield, a school for boys. It continues the spirit of fun of Little Women, but we now find Jo in a warm maturity, reminiscent of Marmee.

Caroline Stoessinger, A Century of Wisdom. Subtitle: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor. A pianist, Alice Herz-Sommer survived Theresienstadt to create a new life for herself and her son in Israel and England. This book is a tribute to survival, but also to a cheerful old age and, most of all, to the power of music.

Feminist Classics

Last year I enjoyed joining in the discussions at the Year of Feminist Classics blog. Among others we discussed John Stuart Mills’ The Subjection of Women, Mary Wollstonecrafts’ A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ Herland.

Now, a new year, and a new list.

• February – Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks (Amy)
• March – The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine De Pizan (Jean)
• April – Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano (Cass)
• May – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë read alongside Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Iris)
• June – Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (Emily)
• July – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Nancy)
• August – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Lauren)
• September – Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua (Melissa)
• October – The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (Jodie)
• November – Beyond the Veil by Fatema Mernissi (Ana)
• December – Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis (Emily Jane)
• January – Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Eva)

This time around, each book will have a discussion leader. In July I will lead the discussion of Louisa May Alcott’s well-known novel for girls, Little Women. Fellow feminist Jean Ping will be helping me with this.

There’s nothing to join, no entrance fees, and no commitment. Please stop by as often as you like to enjoy the discussions and bring your own point of view to the party.

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

I am preparing a course devoted to 19th-century writer Louisa May Alcott, her life and times. Her best-known book is, of course, Little Women. This story of the four March sisters– Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy–was published in 1868 and is still in print today.

Any book which can hold reader interest for almost 150 years must speak to universal values and concerns. One of the sessions of my course will be devoted to the story of this book. I have summarized my Little Women discoveries in a slide show which you can access here.

I’ll be adding more Louisa May Alcott material to the Pages section of this blog.

Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”

This rather awkward title for Gloria Delamar’s book – Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women” plus a long subtitle — is accurate, as Delamar brings together a brief biography of Alcott with commentary about her best known work and samples of her lesser-known efforts, such as poetry and song lyrics. Her documentation of the sources for the characters in Little Women is both interesting and convincing. The four March girls are, of course, based on Louisa May and her three sisters.

Additional characters had to be invented. She created them, however, from among the familiar circle of friends and relatives. The personality of the boy next door came to her as she remembered two boys, both of whom she had called “my boy.” Ladislas Wisniewski, the sparkling Polish boy she had met in Europe was combined with Alf Whitman, the dependable friend. Even the name was manufactured out of a combination. She had called Ladislas “Laurie.” Alf was from Lawrence, Kansas. Therefore, Theodore “Laurie” Laurence was the perfect name for her young hero.

Another enjoyable section of the book presents many of the songs for which Alcott wrote the lyrics. Who knew that, to the melody of John Brown’s Body, you could sing Alcott’s words?

Sing ye children, ye children of the North!
Freedom’s banner shall lead your army forth,
Victory’s coming to meet the marching North!
And Liberty shall come!
Glory, glory, etc.

We also have careful accounts of contemporary reviews, literary studies, dramatic adaptions, and what Delamar calls “The Relevance Today.” It is striking how many of today’s commentators are complaining that Alcott did not write a late 20th century novel, but instead wrote from and about the growing up of young women in the second half of the 19th century.

The four personalities of Alcott’s women, the Beth of hearth and home. Jo the activist, Amy who cared about opinions of others and fought her own demons of selfishness, and Meg with her preoccupation with appearance, all were separated and put in the bodies of four women. Rereading Little Women is similar to digging up the bones of some prehistoric animal. Only Jo encompasses more. Only Jo is on her way to become today’s woman.

Am I missing something here? I judge Little Women by two standards. First, how well does it present the situations, attitudes and struggles of four young women growing up in that place at that time? Second, does it still speak to girls today, growing up in a very different era? Prehistoric? No more than Dickens or Tolstoy or Shakespeare are prehistoric. Let literature take young readers to another time and place and give them a sympathetic understanding of the people they meet there. That is what all classic literature does. It sells today’s young readers short to suggest they just can’t get it.

The Little Women Letters

Somehow Susan Bailey at her Louisa May Alcott Is My Passion blog and I got our reading integrated and finished this book together. Click here for her very informative description and review of the book. I will second two of her observations. First, the dialog is excellent and strongly conveys the nature of the various characters. Second, the three Atwater sisters echo many of the qualities of the three surviving March sisters (Meg, Jo, Amy) but they are not modern-day knockoffs. They stand clearly on their own, while reminding us of their predecessors (and presumed ancestors).

I have been accumulating a collection of novels based on the real-life Alcotts and the fictional Marches. First, the Alcotts. In The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott Kelly O’Connor McNees has Louisa find romance in the hills of New Hampshire. In Louisa and the Missing Heiress Louisa plays detective as a young woman in Boston. I haven’t read this one yet.

The Marches and their descendants are portrayed in London in The Little Women Letters. Their spiritual descendants (also three sisters) in New York and New Haven appear in Katharine Weber’s The Little Women. What both of these novels have in common are spirited girls and eccentric but loving parents.

The life of the father of the four sisters in Little Women is the subject of Geraldine Brooks’ novel, March. Many critics have pointed out that he is mostly missing from Alcott’s novel, but he tells his own story here. Brooks won a Pulitzer Prize for the book in 2005.

Louisa May Alcott, Moods

Moods was Louisa May Alcott’s first novel, written and published before Little Women. Alcott had published stories and sketches by that time and wanted to make her mark as a novelist. She was never happy with the version published in 1864 and reissued it, heavily revised, in 1882. My comments here are based on the first version, and my edition of the novel also includes an Introduction by Sarah Elbert which is very helpful in understanding what Alcott was trying to accomplish and why she was so frustrated with the published result.

I was frustrated also, feeling that Alcott could do much better than this somewhat confused novel. She appears to be combining two stories: a romantic tale similar to the Gothic “blood and thunder” productions that had put food on the Alcott table during some very lean years and a proto-feminist account of the development of a willful and impulsive young woman. This young woman, Sylvia, meets and loses the one man she could have truly loved. The author is discrete, but I think their mutual attraction was sexual because the otherwise eminently satisfactory man Sylvia does marry never measures up: she finally tells him he must be a friend rather than a lover. One loses patience with this, as Henry James did in his review which is also included in the American Women Writers edition:

The two most striking facts with regard to “Moods” are the author’s ignorance of human nature, and her self-confidence in spite of of this ignorance. Miss Alcott doubtless knows men and women well enough to deal successfully with their every-day virtues and temptations, but not well enough to handle great dramatic passions.

These are cruel words, but there is something is what he says. The opening chapter especially, with its evocation of the beautiful tropical beauty whose character does not measure up to the hero’s demands is full of improbable posturing.

For once in your life you shall hear the truth as plain as words can make it. You shall see me at my best as at my worst; you shall know what I have learned to find in you; shall look back into the life behind us, forward into the life before us, and if there be any candor in you I will wring from you an acknowledgement that you have led me into an unrighteousness compact. Unrighteous because you have deceived me in yourself, appealed to the baser, not the nobler instincts in me, and on such a foundation there can be no abiding happiness.

No woman should marry a man who talks like that.

As I read, I was able to look past the love triangle to find something much more interesting: this book heavily prefigures the themes of Little Women. We have a girl entering into womanhood with little idea of what she wants to do with herself. The family is wealthy (unlike the struggling Marches) so she has no need to work. She has a practical older sister and a shallow rival (the tropical beauty). It is terribly important for her to grow up.

“I am so young, you know; when I am a woman grown I can give you a woman’s love; now it is a girl’s, you say. Wait for me, Geoffrey, a little longer, for indeed ti do my best to be all you would have me.”

For lack of proper guidance, she agrees to her mistaken marriage.

A wise and tender mother would have divined her nameless needs, answered her vague desires, and through the medium of the most omnipotent affection given to humanity, have made her what she might have been. But Sylvia had never known mother-love, for her life came through death; and the only legacy bequeathed her was a slight hold upon existence, a ceaseless craving for affections….

Since Sylvia’s mother died at birth, her older sister is entirely conventional and her father is damaged goods emotionally (he married for money), she is a victim of her moods. She needs a Marmee and does, in fact, find one late in the book, too late to save her.

The long dialog in which cousin Faith Dane lays out the right course of action to Sylvia, her husband and her lover, is as improbable as the opening chapter of the book. Yet there are echoes. Through renunciation and suffering, we develop character. The hero renounces the beautiful fiancee who did not measure up, Sylvia renounces her husband, the lovers renounce each other. It is all very noble and also subject to rather inflated writing.

It is fascinating how these same themes are transformed into a believable story only four years later in Little Women. Again, we have a family with divergent personalities who manage to pull together, without the fantasy of great wealth. Jo is moody and impulsive but her rebellion is guided by a wise mother. She renounces the man who would not be right for her and directs her energies to her need for self expression and to the economic struggle. The high-flown language (“the most omnipotent affection given to humanity”) and inverted sentences are smoothed out in favor of shorter, more direct expression. Although Alcott objected to writing a book for girls, the publisher did her a favor, focusing her attention away from demon lovers and onto the real-life problems of growing up female.

John Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts

I am reading books by and about Louisa May Alcott in preparation for a course next year. This joint biography, subtitled “The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father,” gave me a new appreciation of Bronson Alcott. His daughter, the author of Little Women, I already admired, but I previously had a different view of Bronson. I saw him as a light-weight, a failed philosopher who ducked out of the responsibilities of life.

Bronson was a true original, a self-taught educator and idealist who pursued the development of his own character above all other demands.

More often than not, Bronson Alcott tended to live more in his ideas than in his skin. At many of the moments when others are likely to feel most alive to the world of sense, Bronson seems to have been only contingently present, like an accidental, gossamer visitor to a ponderously material world.

The aesthetic and sometimes irresponsible Bronson set high ideals for his children, but put no bread on the table. He didn’t think it was important. Louisa admired her father, but did not emulate him. She was very much alive to  the world’s possibilities and determined to make her mark in it, as well as to provide her family with a stable income. As a young girl,

Louisa’s life was already assuming the contours that were to characterize it for the next twenty-five years or more: an almost impossible dissonant combination of superior intellectual opportunities and frightful worldly deprivation.

Her response to childhood poverty and family debt was years of determined hard work, but that is not the entire story of the relationship as Matteson develops it. As they aged and Louisa succeeded as a popular author, Bronson admired her accomplishments and even had some modest success himself with his late books, his conversations tours, and Concord School of Philosophy. He outlived Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and represented them to a world that was rapidly moving on to other concepts, different goals.