Louisa Alcott: Little Women

—from an unsigned article in the Nation (October 14, 1875)

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

The career of Miss Alcott has not only given pleasure to many readers, and real benefit to not a few, but it has afforded an example of what may be accomplished by talent and industry in the way of worldly success, and this of rather a high kind. She fulfilled that which is to-day the dearest dream of so many young women. Earning her living first by domestic service, she soon passed beyond that; by her own unaided pen she lifted an exceedingly impecunious household into lifelong independence and comfort; and she nursed, in what was for him luxury, the extreme old age of a father whose ideal and unworldly nature had made it very hard for him to afford ordinary comforts and advantages to her youth. This she did without tricks or meanness or self-puffing; without feeling jealousy, or inspiring antagonism. She had the delight of sending sunshine into a myriad of scattered homes, and of teaching many young girls, doubtless, the way to a more generous and noble life.

—from Short Studies of American

Authors(1888)

LUCY C. LILLIE

The story of Louisa Alcott’s life has been, to a certain extent, told by herself in “Little Women.” At least, the character of Jo was drawn from her own experiences and full of her own individuality, but hers throughout was a more notable history than the world knew. A girl, whose earliest teacher was Margaret Fuller; who, at ten years of age, learned to know the seasons in their varied dress and nature in its deepest meanings under Thoreau’s guidance; to whom, men like Emerson, Channing, Ripley, and Hawthorne were every-day company, yet who was brought up almost in poverty, and with the necessity of work at home if not abroad; who had a fund of downright common sense and keen humor underlying all transcendental influence,—is one who, as a woman, might be expected to have made her mark, and she did it by the simplest, kindliest, cheeriest of writing, and the sweetest of companionship and kindness toward others.

—Cosmopolitan (May 1888)

1. Is it possible to formulate just what it is that has made Little Women so popular for so long—or does the answer lie in intangibles?

2. Do you feel Alcott pressuring the reader, no matter how obliquely, to take Jo as a role model?

3. Which of the sisters do you find most congenial? Why? Which of the sisters do you find most admirable? Why? Is this difference significant?

4. What might a man find to interest or move him in Little Women?

Alcott, Louisa May. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott . Edited by Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, and Madeleine B. Stern. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.

—. The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, and Madeleine B. Stern. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987.

Bedell, Madelon. The Alcotts: Biography of a Family . New York: Clarkson Potter, 1980.

Cheney, Ednah Dow, ed. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters and Journals . Boston: Little, Brown, 1928.

Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984.

Saxton, Martha. Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Stern, Madeleine B. Louisa May Alcott: A Biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999. A new edition of the standard Alcott biography.

—. Louisa May Alcott: From Blood & Thunder to Hearth & Home. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998.

Eiselein, Gregory, and Anne K. Phillips, eds. The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Payne, Alma J. Louisa May Alcott: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980.

Alternative Alcott. Edited and with an introduction by Elaine Showalter. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988. Includes selections from Hospital Sketches, An Old-Fashioned Girl, Work, and many others.

The Feminist Alcott: Stories of a Woman’s Power . Edited and with an introduction by Madeleine B. Stem. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1996. Includes “Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,” “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” “Behind a Mask: or, A Woman’s Power,” and “Taming a Tartar.”

The Inheritance. Edited by Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. New York: Penguin, 1998. Alcott’s first novel, written when she was seventeen years old.

A Long Fatal Love Chase . Edited by Kent Bicknell. New York: Dell, 1995. Unpublished as too sensational during Alcott’s lifetime.

A Marble Woman: Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott. Edited by Madeleine B. Stern. New York: Avon, 1976. Includes letters between Alcott and her publisher, “V.V.: or, Plots and Counterplots,” “A Marble Woman: or, The Mysterious Model,” “The Skeleton in the Closet,” “A Whisper in the Dark,” and “Perilous Play.”

Alberghene, Janice M. and Beverly Lyon Clark, eds. Little Women and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy, Personal Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. Collected essays and commentary by scholars.

Delamar, Gloria T. Louisa May Alcott and “Little Women”: Biography, Critique, Publications, Poems, Songs and Contemporary Relevance. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990. Includes excerpts from reviews, polls, and commentary.

Keyser, Elizabeth Lennox. Little Women: A Family Romance. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1999. Part of the Twayne’s Masterwork Studies series. A psychological reading.

—. Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993. Examines Alcott’s sensational stories, children’s literature, and adult novels to reveal her subversion of conventional women’s values.

MacDonald, Ruth K. Louisa May Alcott . Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1983. Part of Twayne’s United States Authors series. Establishes Alcott’s pragmatism in contrast to her father’s idealism; discusses the March family stories at length.

Stern, Madeleine B., ed. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott . Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984.

Strickland, Charles. Victorian Domesticity: Families in the Life and Art of Louisa May Alcott . Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985.

Auerbach, Nina . Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. Includes studies of Little Women, as well as of Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Henry James’s The Bostonians, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss lean Brodie.

Baym, Nina. Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-1870. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979. Comprehensive study; includes information on two of Jo’s favorite novelists, E.D.E.N. Southworth and Susan Warner.

Foster, Shirley. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-readings of “Classic” Stories for Girls. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. Chapter on Little Women, as well as on Susan Warner’s The Wide, Wide World (mentioned in Little Women), Charlotte Yonge’s The Daisy Chain, L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, among others.