The interesting lives of the Alcotts
Friday, April 4, 2008
“Eden’s Outcasts,” by John Matteson, W.W. Norton & Co., 2007, $29.95
It may not be true today, but there was a time when almost no girl left childhood without reading “Little Women.” Louisa May Alcott’s novel about the March family of Massachusetts made the March sisters — Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth — as familiar as school friends, next-door neighbors and fellow Girl Scouts.
The March girls grew up poor but loved, watched over by their beloved Marmee. Their father, also beloved, was a distant figure, fighting in the Civil War, absent for most of the novel. However, his presence was always there, even though he missed much of the girls’ growing-up years.
When the book was published, its popularity turned Louisa May Alcott into something of a 19th-century rock star. She grew weary as she answered fans’ adoring letters and she grew accustomed to their knocks at the door of her Concord home. Even today, that house is a popular tourist site.
In the mid-1800s, the Alcott name was first attached to Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father, a contemporary of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, a proponent of the Trancendentalist movement that flourished in New England. A teacher, Bronson Alcott was also involved in educational experiments that no longer seem as radical as they did in his time.
In “Eden’s Outcasts,” biographer John Matteson chronicles the story of the Alcotts, focusing on the father and the daughter who would eclipse his fame. He also provides a well-drawn picture of the remaining members of the Alcott family, especially Anna, the model for Meg; Elizabeth, called “Lizzie” and memorialized as Beth; and May, whose name was transposed to Amy by her novelist sister. (Louisa, of course, was Jo.)
Louisa, born on her father’s birthday, was the rebellious daughter, chafing at her father’s rules. He was a strict vegetarian, whose beliefs affected his family’s actions, down to clothing: no leather, no cotton because of its dependence on slavery. The family moved two dozen times, including several ventures into utopian communal living. He insisted that each Alcott keep a diary and urged family members to read the others’ diaries and write comments.
When Louisa wrote, she entered a “vortex,” scribbling furiously for days before collapsing in exhaustion. Her short stories and essays sold consistently, but she never knew real success before “Little Women.”
Life was perhaps hardest on Abigail May Alcott (May is a family surname, not a handed-down proper name), known as Abba. The model for Marmee, she was truly long-suffering, tolerating her husband’s dreams, working to support the family, raising her girls to be self-sufficient. She longed to vote, but died decades before that right was allocated to women. Sadly, Louisa burned many of her letters and diaries, Matteson notes, depriving scholars of insight into a remarkable woman.
As they shared a birthdate, Louisa and Bronson Alcott shared their lives’ end. He was buried on the morning of her death; she never knew that he was gone.
Matteson has united these inseparable individuals, often at odds, in a grand biography that may not bring about a revival of transcendentalism, but may send readers in search of their tattered copies of “Little Women.”
F Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”