Louisa may alcott gay
The Radical Acceptance Behind Little Women
I traveled all the way to Concord, Massachusetts, to read what survives of Louisa May Alcott’s original manuscript for Little Women: a dozen pages the tint of corroded gold, so fragile they would crumble into pieces on contact with my 21st-century fingertips.
The chapter I held, sheathed in protective plastic, is the best in the book: Laurie asks Jo to marry him, Jo rejects him, and both poor kids drive themselves savage with despair in their tries to persuade the other. Jo, at last, wins the argument. She’ll never marry, she says, not ever. In the first manuscript, Alcott’s next line of graphite-pencil chicken scratch reads:
“I comprehend better!” broke in Laurie. “You think so now but there’ll come a time when you will care for somebody and you’ll love him tremendously,”
I’ve spent much of the pandemic poring over Alcott’s letters, her journals, her better- and her lesser-known work. I’m writing a novel for Penguin Teen, a contemporary interpretation of Little Women. Though my book diverges from Alcott’s in important ways—
Julian Hawthorne once speculated about Louisa May Alcott: “Did she ever have a love affair? We never knew; yet how could such a nature so imaginative, romantic, and ardent escape it?”
Choosing the existence of a spinster
Louisa made the conscious decision to remain single, preferring to “paddle my own canoe.” Much has been made of her parents’ marriage, at times tumultuous, and how her mother was so burdened with her father’s inability to make a living (a topic for another day). It was just that burden that Louisa assumed soon as evidenced in her first journal writings which coincidentally concurred with the darkest years of Abba and Bronson’s marriage. She became the man of the house.
Yet Louisa was &#;married &#;&#;
It would sound that the care of her family would prohibit Louisa from marrying but there was more to it than that. In essence, Louisa was married to her creative self, to her writing. She had a habit of referring to her books as her children, calling both Flower Fables and Moods her “first-born;” the former placed in her mother’s Christmas stocking while th
A Conversation with Harriet Reisen
Q: Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s most famous work, has had a worldwide influence over generations of women since its first publication years ago. What impact has Alcott and her writing had on your life?
A: Like millions of girls, I saw myself as Jo March, Louisa Alcott’s literary alter ego and the heroine of Little Women. Jo was emotional and brave, and like me had a tendency to get lost in thought. My mother had presented me with Little Women, ceremoniously, as if bestowing the key to a magic kingdom. The prudent and funny authorial voice of Louisa May Alcott spoke like another mother to me, giving permission to be flawed, license to dream, and encouragement to do wonderful.
Soon after I moved to Boston in the s I visited Orchard House in Concord, the Alcott family home for twenty years. In Louisa’s bedroom, between two windows, was the semi-circular writing table Bronson Alcott had built her. From this surface, with space for no more than a piece of manuscript and an inkwell, Louisa
This comment from Diana regarding a previous post prompted a discussion on whether or not Louisa May Alcott was gay:
“What is your opinion of the evidence that she may have had some suppressed passion, such as crushes, on girls? Remember she said in an interview that she had been in love with so many girls in her life. This may acquire been an almost unconscious part of her complicated character; but it would need to be considered in examining her sexual energy. At any rate, if that energy was channeled into her writing, this aspect of it may have been an added component to the human richness of her genius, giving her an extra sensitive intuition into both sexes.”
It is tricky addressing this subject because the mentality of the nineteenth century was so different from our offer day.
Study of female relationships
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, a leading historian on women, undertook a study of relationships between women, studying the personal letters of thirty-five families between the s and the s. Her sample covers a wide spectrum from poor to middle class to well-to-do, and f