At a young age, Alcott felt a pressure and responsibility to help provide for her family. She used her writing as a way to do this (Durbin). Much of Alcott’s writing career surrounded writing for newspapers and fugitive magazines. Before she gained recognition, it has been stated that “For fifteen years she was as near a complete failure as any writer could be.” Alcott was finally recognized by the nation as an author with the publication of Hospital Sketches in 1863. She volunteered as a military nurse during the Civil War. Hospital Sketches was created from the letters she wrote home from the military hospital in Georgetown (H.W. Wilson). By the time Alcott wrote Little Women in 1868, she was already an established writer, and had been published several times previously. Little Women was written quickly, and was the book that brought Alcott her fortune and recognition (Rollyson).
Little Women was a book based on a fictionalized version of the life of Alcott and her sisters. The main character, Jo, was reflective of Alcott herself. The struggles that Jo faced with her writing in Little Women imitated the struggles that Alcott faced herself in the profession (H.W. Wilson). The book was written in a very choppy fashion, dedicating at least one chapter to each of the sisters in the story. The story follows the characters through their lives, and focuses on the girls overcoming their personal flaws, Meg’s vanity, Jo’s temper, Amy’s spoiled nature, and Beth’s shyness. Little Women was popular across all audiences. So popular in fact, that Alcott wrote a sequel, called Little Women 2, or Good Wives a year later. Later on the two volumes were published as one book.
Alcott’s approach to writing Little Women was very pessimistic. Only with the constant encouragement and pressure from her publisher, Thomas Nile, was Alcott able to force herself to write a book in such a style. She made her distaste for this type of writing apparent in her journal. From her journal she was quoted about working on the book for Niles saying that she did not “enjoy this sort of thing,” due to the fact that she had never “liked girls or knew many, except my sisters; but our queer plays and experiences may prove interesting, though I doubt it.” In a letter to Mary E. Channing after the book was released and had received praise, Alcott wrote “I had many doubts about the success of my first attempt at a girl’s book.” When faced with writing the sequel to the book, Alcott was not sure she had the stamina to write “another girl book (Myerson).” Alcott’s attitude was very similar to that of the character Jo. They were both writers, and both feminist by nature. You see this in the desire both Jo and Alcott had to provide for their families. You also see Alcott’s stubborn and feminist nature in her journal entry when she complains about the young girl writing her to ask about who will be married in the book, stating “as if that was the only end and aim of a woman’s life.” She went on to state “I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please anyone (Myerson).”
Alcott went on to write several more books. Many were offshoots of Little Women. These books included titles such as Little Men in 1871 and Jo’s Boys in 1886. Other unrelated titles written by Alcott included Lulu’s Library, Eight Cousins, Perilous Play, Rose in Bloom, and Under the Lilacs. “Most of Alcott's later books capitalized on the success of Little Women: they are stories about and for young people, tracing their development toward maturity and contrasting good, enlightened ways of child rearing with worldly, unnecessarily restrictive, insufficiently moral ones (Rogers).”
Despite Alcott’s successful career as an author, she lives a rather uneventful life. She died in Boston, on the day her father was buried, March 6, 1888.
Louisa May Alcott
No comments:
Post a Comment