A Week to Remember: Louisa May Alcott

Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832. Alcott was a writer of novels and short stories whose most enduring work is Little Women, the story of the four March sisters and their journey from childhood to adulthood.

Alcott did not attend public school as a child. She was educated at home by her father, Bronson Alcott. He was a transcendentalist philosopher and teacher; his educational philosophy was strict, with an emphasis on striving for perfection and on self-denial. Bronson Alcott was part of the literary circle centered on Concord, Massachusetts, so Louisa May’s education also included lessons from family friends Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julia Ward Howe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Susan Cheever writes about this literary circle in American Bloomsbury (e-book | e-audio | print).

Alcott published her first book in 1849, while she was still a teenager; it was a collection of short stories called Flower Fables (e-book | e-audio).

As a young woman, Alcott was politically active. She was an abolitionist and a suffragist, and was the first woman to register to vote when Concord allowed women to vote in a local school board election. In the early years of the Civil War, she spent six weeks as a nurse in a Union hospital in Washington, DC; she had planned to work for three months, but her time there was cut short when she contracted typhoid fever. Her letters home from the hospital were later published as Hospital Sketches (e-book), the work that earned Alcott her first notice from literary critics.

In 1868, her publisher, Thomas Niles, asked her to write a novel for and about girls. She was not enthusiastic about the request; she had finished several short stories, and wanted to publish a collection. But her father joined in Niles’ encouragement, and Alcott reluctantly began work on Little Women (e-book | e-audio | print | audio). She sent the first chapters to Niles in June 1868, and both Alcott and Niles found them somewhat dull. But Niles gave them to his niece to read, and she enjoyed them very much, as did several of her friends, so Alcott kept working on the book.

The writing went quickly, and the first half of Little Women was published in October 1868. It was an instant success, both with the critics and with readers, and Alcott delivered the manuscript for the second half of the novel on New Year’s Day1869. Part Two was originally published under the title Good Wives; the two halves are now usually published in a single volume under the title Little Women.

The novel begins during the Civil War, when the March sisters’ father is away from home, serving as a pastor to Union troops. The two oldest sisters, Meg and Jo, have to work to help support the family. By the end of the novel, several years have passed, and three of the sisters are now married, with young children of their own.

By modern standards, it would be an overstatement to call Little Women a work of feminist literature, but Alcott’s young women were quite modern in the late 19th century. They wanted to be wives and mothers, but they had other ambitions as well; Jo is a writer and Amy an artist. Jo is an independent enough woman to turn down one marriage proposal, later marrying a man who seems less suited to her, but who she loves. And Jo’s marriage is shown to be a marriage of equals, in which she has a say in making family decisions. Alcott was a strong believer that “democratic marriage” was an important precursor to winning women’s rights in the larger society.

Alcott wrote two sequels to Little Women. In Little Men (e-book | e-audio), Jo and her husband have opened a school, at which the second generation of March children are among the students; Jo’s Boys (e-book | e-audio), written about fifteen years later, follows Jo’s children and some of their classmates into adulthood.

Alcott had a variety of chronic health problems in her final years, which she attributed to mercury poisoning from the treatment she had received for typhoid fever during the Civil War. More recent scholars have suggested that she may have had lupus, or some other autoimmune disorder. Alcott died from a stroke on March 6, 1888, only two days after the death of her father.

Little Women has been adapted for film and television many times. Two silent films from the 1910s are lost. Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett star in George Cukor’s 1933 film, which won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. That screenplay was so good that director Mervyn LeRoy left it almost intact for his 1949 film, which starred June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor; it also used large chunks of Max Steiner’s 1933 score.

Gillian Armstrong directed the 1994 adaptation, starring Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, and Claire Danes; the cast of Clare Niederpruem’s 2018 version, which moved the story to the present day, was headed by Lea Thompson as the March girls’ mother. And a new version is due in theaters in December; Greta Gerwig directs, and Saoirse Ronan and Emma Watson star.

As American a story as Little Women is, it has been popular around the world. The BBC has made four different miniseries for British television; we have their 1970 version on DVD. And there have been two different animated series adaptations made in Japan; 1987’s Tales of Little Women is available for streaming at Hoopla.

There have been several musical adaptations. Richard Adler was the composer for a 1958 television musical starring Florence Henderson and Risë Stevens. Mark Adamo’s 1998 operatic version has been more successful than most contemporary operas, receiving more than 30 productions around the world. Jason Howland and Mindi Dickstein wrote the songs for a 2005 Broadway musical, starring Sutton Foster and Maureen McGovern.

Alcott has been the subject of multiple biographies. Susan Cheever (e-book | e-audio | print) and Harriet Reisen (e-audio | print) are the authors of books called Louisa May Alcott. Eve LaPlante focuses on the relationship between Alcott and her mother in Marmee and Louisa (e-book | e-audio | print), and John Matteson on her relationship with her father in Eden’s Outcasts (e-book | print).

Anne Boyd Rioux focuses specifically on the history of Little Women in Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy (e-book | e-audio | print); and a group of four writers—Kate Bolick, Jenny Zhang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jane Smiley—offer essays on their favorite sister in March Sisters (e-book | e-audio).

Also This Week

November 30, 1924

Shirley Chisholm was born. In 1968, Chisholm became the first African-American woman elected to Congress; she served in the House of Representative for 14 years, representing parts of New York City. Chisholm ran for President in 1972, the first woman to run for the Democratic nomination, and the first African-American major-party candidate. Her campaign was viewed by many as merely symbolic, and she struggled to be taken seriously. Still, she managed to finish fourth in a large field at the Democratic convention, winning about 5% of the delegates. The documentary Chisholm ’72 follows her history-making campaign.

November 30, 1929

Joan Ganz Cooney was born. Cooney is a television producer, and one of the founders of the Children’s Television Workshop (now known as the Sesame Workshop). She led the CTW team that created Sesame Street in 1969. Sesame Street’s combination of short songs and sketches, live-action scenes on a facsimile of an urban street, and puppet-human interaction was an innovative approach to education television. Michael Davis tells the story of Sesame Street’s creation in Street Gang (e-book | e-audio | print).

November 30, 1959

Cherie Currie was born. Currie was a member of the late 1970s rock band The Runaways. The all-female band was more successful internationally than in the United States, and was particularly popular in Japan. Their influence was greater than their short life would suggest, though; Joan Jett and Lita Ford went on to successful solo careers, and Michael Steel became a member of The Bangles. Currie’s post-Runaways career included some solo work and a duo album with her sister, Marie. Some of Currie’s music—with The Runaways, solo, and with her sister—is available for streaming at Hoopla.

November 27, 1979

Hilary Hahn was born. Hahn is one of the most successful violinists of her generation, and is particularly known for her advocacy for contemporary composers. She has commissioned several pieces, including concertos by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, a set of partitas for solo violin by Antón García Abril, and a collection of 27 encores by different composers. More of her music is available for streaming at Hoopla and Freegal.