LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, ABOLITIONISM & LITERATURE

Louisa May Alcott

Today, The Grandma has gone to the public library to borrow Little Women, a masterpiece written by Louisa May Alcott to commemorate the birthday of the author who was born on a day like today in 1832.

Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist but she was also a voice of abolitionism and feminism, difficult ideas to defend in the US during the 19th century. Her acclamaided work, Little Women, is an autobiographical novel that addresses three major themes: domesticity, work, and true love, all of them interdependent and each necessary to the achievement of its heroine's individual identity.

Before going to the public library, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832-March 6, 1888) was an American novelist, short story writer and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).

Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults that focused on spies and revenge.

Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters, Abigail May Alcott Nieriker, Elizabeth Sewall Alcott, and Anna Alcott Pratt. The novel was well-received at the time and is still a popular children's novel today. It has been adapted to film several times.

Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She died from a stroke, two days after her father died, in Boston on March 6, 1888.

Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832, in Germantown, which is now part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on her father's 33rd birthday. Alcott's early education included lessons from the naturalist Henry David Thoreau who inspired her to write Thoreau's Flute based on her time at Walden's Pond.

Poverty made it necessary for Alcott to go to work at an early age as a teacher, seamstress, governess, domestic helper, and writer. Her sisters also supported the family, working as seamstresses, while their mother took on social work among the Irish immigrants.

Only the youngest, May, was able to attend public school. Due to all of these pressures, writing became a creative and emotional outlet for Alcott. Her first book was Flower Fables (1849), a selection of tales originally written for Ellen Emerson, daughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott is quoted as saying I wish I was rich, I was good, and we were all a happy family this day and was driven in life not to be poor.

More information: Literary Hub

In 1847, she and her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, when they housed a fugitive slave for one week and had discussions with Frederick Douglass.

Alcott read and admired the Declaration of Sentiments, published by the Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights, advocating for women's suffrage and became the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts in a school board election.

The 1850s were hard times for the Alcotts, and in 1854 Louisa found solace at the Boston Theatre where she wrote The Rival Prima Donnas, which she later burned due to a quarrel between the actresses on who would play what role.

In 1858, her younger sister Elizabeth died, and her older sister Anna married a man named John Pratt. This felt, to Alcott, to be a breaking up of their sisterhood.

As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly. When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, DC, for six weeks in 1862–1863. Her novel Moods (1864), based on her own experience, was also promising.

After her service as a nurse, Alcott's father wrote her a heartfelt poem titled To Louisa May Alcott. From her father.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The poem describes how proud her father is of her for working as a nurse and helping injured soldiers as well as bringing cheer and love into their home. He ends the poem by telling her she's in his heart for being a selfless faithful daughter.

This poem was featured in the book Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889). This poem is also featured in the book Louisa May Alcott, the Children's Friend that talks about her childhood and close relationship with her father.

Alcott became even more successful with the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts, published by the Roberts Brothers.

Alcott originally delayed writing the novel, seeing herself incapable of writing a story for girls, despite her publisher, Thomas Niles' urges for her to do so. Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives (1869), followed the March sisters into adulthood and marriage. Little Men (1871) detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. Jo's Boys (1886) completed the March Family Saga.

More information: Mental Floss

In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine Jo on herself. Little Women was well received, with critics and audiences finding it suitable for many age groups. A reviewer of Eclectic Magazine called it the very best of books to reach the hearts of the young of any age from six to sixty. It was a fresh, natural representation of daily life. With the success of Little Women, Alcott shied away from the attention and would sometimes act as a servant when fans would come to her house.

In 1877 Alcott was one of the founders of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston.

After her youngest sister May died in 1879, Louisa took over for the care of niece, Lulu, who was named after Louisa. Alcott suffered chronic health problems in her later years, including vertigo. She and her earliest biographers attributed her illness and death to mercury poisoning.

During her American Civil War service, Alcott contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Recent analysis of Alcott's illness, however, suggests that her chronic health problems may have been associated with an autoimmune disease, not mercury exposure. Moreover, a late portrait of Alcott shows a rash on her cheeks, which is a characteristic of lupus.

More information: PBS

Alcott died of a stroke at age 55 in Boston, on March 6, 1888, two days after her father's death. Lulu, her niece was only 8 years old when Louisa died. Louisa's last known words were Is it not meningitis? She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as Authors' Ridge.

Louisa frequently wrote in her journals about going on runs up until she died. She challenged the social norms regarding gender by encouraging her young female readers to run as well.

Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Her childhood home Orchard House is now a museum that pays homage to Louisa May Alcott and her family that focuses on education.

In 1996 Alcott was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

More information: Orchard House

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen;

the more select, the more enjoyable.

Louisa May Alcott