American author, known for her children' books, especially LITTLE WOMEN (1868). Alcott draws her material from her own family and from the New England milieu where she had grown up. Originally she begun writing 'rubbish novels', sometimes anonymously, sometimes as 'A.N. Barnard', to contribute to the family income.
Above man's aims his nature rose.
The wisdom of a just content
Made one small spot a continent,
And tuned to poetry Life's prose.
(from Louisa May Alcott, Her Life Letters, and Journals, 1889)
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown (now part of Philadelphia). During her childhood her family moved to Boston. She spent most of her life in the Boston-Concord area, and received almost all her early education from her father Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), who was member of the New England Transcendentalists. He was an idealistic, if impractical person, who believed in the spiritual life, as contrasted with the material life. When a visiting English author criticized her father's teaching methods, the schoolmaster Alcott moved with his family to Concord. Among the family friends were Theodore Parker, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott began to keep diary at the age of seven. Her first book, FLOWER FABLES (1854), a collection of tales, was originally written for Emerson's daughter Ellen. After the failure of her father's utopian community Fruitlands, she took care with her mother of the welfare of the family. Her mother, who had not been so enthusiastic about the New Eden plan of her husband, took in boarder, when the family moved into Boston again. In WORK: A STORY OF EXPERIENCE (1873) Alcott later recorded her unhappy experiences as a domestic servant, but also demonstrated through her character alternative values, such as equality and self-fulfillment, for women.
"No, dear; the dress is proper and becoming as it is, and the old fashion of simplicity the best for all of us. I don't want my Polly to be loved for her clothes, but for herself; so wear the plain frocks mother took such pleasure in making for you, and let the panniers go. The least of us have some influence in this big world; and perhaps my little girl can do some good by showing others that a contended heart and a happy face are better ornaments than any Paris can give her." (from An Old-fashioned Girl)
By 1860 Alcott's short stories and poems began to appear in the Atlantic Monthly (now The Atlantic). As an ardent abolitionist she volunteered in the American Civil War as a nurse. "Go nurse the soldiers," had her neighbor said, when she had stated: "I want something to do." Alcott served in 1862-1863 at the Union Hospital in Georgetown, D.C. During this time she contracted typhoid from which she never completely recovered. In 1863 Alcott published her letters in book form under the title HOSPITAL SKETCHES. The work was well received although some of her readers objected "the tone of levity." The book encouraged Alcott to continue with her writing aspirations. However, A LONG FATAL LOVE CHASE, a tale about obsession, which she wrote in 1866 for magazine serialization, was not published in book until 1995. The story was considered by Alcott's publisher "too sensational." The heroine, Rosamond, is pursued across Europe by the diabolic Philip Tempest, who first nearly manages to get her under his spell. "I like danger," she tells Tempest, before he has revealed his true nature.
Alcott's first novel, MOODS, was published in 1867. In the same year she became editor of a children's magazine, Merry Museum. When a publishing friend asked her to write a book for girls she agreed, but wrote in her journal: "I plod away. though I don't really enjoy this sort of thing. Never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters, but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it." With the publication of Little Women, which started under the pressure of financial need, Alcott gained enormous fame as a writer. As a model for the character Amy she took May Alcott Nieriker, her sister, who later died in Paris. Alcott's sister Anna was the model for Meg.
Little Women - published in two parts in 1868 and 1869. The story starts from the years of the American Civil War and is set in a quiet Massachusetts town. Meg, Jo, Bert, and Amy March are raised in genteel poverty by their loving mother Marmee. Their father serves as a Civil War preacher. The girls entertain themselves by producing plays and a weekly newspaper. Soon they befriend Theodore Lawrence, who is the grandson of a rich old man. Some years pass. Meg marries Laurie's tutor John Brooke, Beth's health deteriorates and eventually dies from scarlet fever. Laurie falls in love with Jo, but he is turned down and flees with his grandfather to Europe. Amy and Laurie became engaged abroad. Jo's choices are crucial for the development of the events. Jo vows never to marry. She wants to be a journalist, but she is frustrated with her role and tight Christian values. She goes to New York and continues to write. Finally Jo marries Professor Bhaer, an older scholar from Germany, although he has discouraged her writing. Together they set up a school for boys. Later Alcott wrote to a friend about Jo's marriage: "Jo should have remained a literary spinster but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously demanding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn't dare to refuse and out of perversity went and made a funny match for her." - Clive Bloom sees Little Women as a perfect example of the evolution of the novel from its early days in Walter Scott. The writing is self-conscious and aware of the importance of the novel both as entertainment, art and moral instrument. It was also produced for the new audience - young people. (See: Cult Fiction by Clive Bloom, 1996). The book has been filmed several times. The screenwriters Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman received an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for the 1933 version, directed by George Cukor and starring Katherine Hepburn. Mervyn LeRoy's adaptation from 1949 is considered mediocre. It also softens Jo's beliefs in an autonomous life. Gillian Armstrong's version (1994), adapted by Robin Swicord, dealt with feminist issues. "In writing the screenplay, Swicord views this story as a tale of strong women, and she ideally wants young girls to come away from the film with a sense of validation and feeling stronger in this male-dominated world." (from Novels into Film by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, 1999)
Little Women was followed by several other popular works, LITTLE MEN (1871), JO'S BOYS (1886), and others, in which she followed the lives of the March family girls, Meg, Beth, Amy and Jo. Alcott's last years were shadowed by the deaths of her mother and her sister May, who left behind a little daughter, Louisa May Nieriker. For her she wrote the story 'Lu Sing,' which was later published in the St. Nicholas magazine in 1902. It was the last work Alcott completed. She died in Boston on March 6, 1888. Although Alcott is labelled nowadays as a juvenile writer, she published also thrillers and melodramatic stories that appeared in weekly magazines. In thrillers she used the pseudonym "A.N. Barnard". A MODERN MEPHISTOPHELES (1877), a story of an innocent young woman and a diabolic genius, was republished posthumously with A WHISPER IN THE DARK (1889). Alcott's revengeful heroines and themes from mind control and madness, hashish experimentation and opium addiction, differ radically from the domestic atmosphere of her best-known works. |
