To introduce the author, I will use the Newbery award winning biography Invincible Louisa by Cornelia Meigs. Because it is an older book (1968) and the language may be stilted, the teacher could read it with the class or use it as a reference book. There are other biographies about Louisa May Alcott that are suitable for children, including The Story of Louisa May Alcott, determined writer by Marci Ridlon McGill. It has illustrations, big print and the paperback version is only 89 pages long. It is written on a 3.5 grade level and simply tells the story of the author’s life. Older students can use Amy Ruth’s Louisa May Alcott by Lerner Publications. It is written for a higher reading level and goes into more depth with biographical details.
Louisa May Alcott was the product of two remarkable parents. They were such strong influences on her writing that they need to be discussed. In order to better instruct the students, teachers using this unit should know something about where Louisa May Alcott came from and how she “came to be.” Her family was a major part of her life: both parents encouraged her to write and her fictional characters are often based on her family.
Bronson Alcott, her father, was eventually to become the first Superintendent of Public Schools in Boston and to be acknowledged as an educational visionary, but this fame came only after he had wandered down several career paths. He was a thinker, a philosopher and an eccentric – but he had trouble bringing home the bacon, so to speak. He lost many teaching jobs because he advocated well-lit, heated and comfortable classrooms as well as recess and sex-education. He also purchased textbooks for his poorer students. On the grounds of The Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts stands the school that he eventually founded, where for a time Louisa May Alcott taught. He often came home empty handed from lecture tours, because he hated to charge people.
Abba Bronson believed in her husband and often picked up the slack. She protected her daughters from the hard realities of life when they all lived at Fruitlands, a Transcendental commune that was a miserable failure. The family was allowed to eat only what the land provided – no meat, milk or eggs. They could wear only linen, as the cotton industry exploited the slaves in the South. Louisa and her sisters were encouraged to spend their time at the commune playing, picnicking and roaming the fields. Louisa later wrote a gentle satire about this time in her life, called Transcendental Wild Oats. At one point when her husband was unable to produce an income, Abba went to work in Boston as one of the country’s first social workers, at thirty dollars a month. She also was in charge of an employment agency for women in domestic service and once ran a boarding house. She did these things at a time when genteel women did not work.
Both parents encouraged their daughters’ intellectual development and provided whatever stimulation they could. Abba established a post office in her home so that family members could communicate with each other every day. Bronson kept a day by day diary recording the growth and development of each his four daughters from the day they were born. They encouraged their children to write in their own journals every day and would then critique them or answer any written concerns for them. Her father also built the desk on which Louisa May wrote Little Women (in her room at the Orchard House).
Louisa May Alcott;s Louisa May Alcott’s first and biggest success was based on her experience with her sisters and was written in response to a publisher who asked her to write a story for girls. It took her two and a half months to write and was an immediate success, selling 2000 copies. In 1868, this was a great sum. Little Women was originally published as two volumes. Part Two, Good Wives, came out in 1869. Nowadays, both volumes are published together and in every language.
Ironically, she did not want to write this story and only did it for the money. She preferred to write for boys and is often quoted as saying “never liked girls or knew many, except my sisters.” Borrowing from life, she used her former home, Hillside, as the setting for her novel and patterned the March girls after her sisters.
Jo, the tomboy, is most definitely Louisa. Louisa and Jo are both spirited souls who love to read and write. Like Jo, Louisa wasn’t interested in marriage. Writing was her biggest passion, as was Jo’s. Like Jo and her sisters, the Alcott girls used their vivid imaginations to write and produce adventure plays. In fact, visitors to The Orchard House in Concord today can still see the trunk of clothing the Alcott girls used when acting out their plays. Like Beth, Elizabeth Alcott died young. Anna, the oldest sister, married and became a teacher, as does Meg, the oldest March girl. And May Alcott, who achieved her own fame as an artist, is the model for Amy March. In fact, May even illustrated the first edition of Little Women.
Marmee and Abba Alcott are basically the same person – the Alcott girls even called their mother “Marmee.” Marmee is patient and kind, strong and supportive. While father March is away at war, she takes care of the family. Bronson Alcott, the model for Mr. March, traveled throughout the country on lecture tours. Louisa’s Great-Aunt Hancock, widow of the famous John Hancock, served as the inspiration for Aunt March.
When she described the poverty in Little Women, Alcott was speaking from experience. Once, when family finances were low, Louisa almost sold her hair, just as Jo March later did to send Marmee to visit her wounded husband. Eventually, Louisa supported her family with her writings.
Her other children’s novels include: An Old-Fashioned Girl, Little Men (based on a school her widowed sister ran), Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill, Jo’s Boys and A Garland for Girls. Her books portray nineteenth century domestic middle class life realistically, since so much of her work is based on her own family life, which was however sometimes unconventional. Common themes include self-reliance, duty, charity, self-sacrifice and patience. She incorporated some of her father’s educational theories into Little Men and Eight Cousins.
Louisa, like Jo March, was a versatile author and wrote plays, poetry, reviews, short stories and novels. Her first novel was The Inheritance, but this was unpublished until 1997, when it was first discovered at Harvard. Her first poem, Sunlight, was published in “Peterson’s Magazine” in 1852 under the pen name “Flora Fairfield.” Under another pseudonym, “A. M. Barnard”, she wrote gothic thrillers or, as they were also called, the “Blood and Thunder” tales. It would have been unladylike and too embarrassing for a woman of good breeding to be published as a writer of these gory stories, so she assumed pen names to write such titles as Doctor Dorn’s Revenge or Revenge of the Buckle. Other pen names that she used to publish her works included “Aunt Weedy,” “Oranthy Bluggage” and “Minerva Moody.”
Louisa ventured into several other careers besides writing. She was a seamstress, a companion, a teacher, and even a Civil War nurse. In 1862, wanting to do her part, she went to Washington, D.C. to serve in the war effort. Unfortunately, she contracted typhoid fever and almost died. She left Washington to recuperate at home in Massachusetts, but not before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. At that time typhoid was treated with calomel, which gave her mercury poisoning. It was an illness that was to affect her health for the rest of her life. Though her nursing career was short, she wrote a book called Hospital Sketches, based on her experiences. Her pen name for this work, was appropriately enough, “Tribulation Periwinkle.”
Unlike Jo March, Louisa never married, although she did once receive a marriage proposal. But her sister May did marry and later died, leaving express wishes that her daughter Lulu be raised by her Aunt Louisa.
Though she lived with her parents for the bulk of her life, she also at times lived alone in Boston so she could write undisturbed. She wanted to be a dutiful daughter but sometimes needed to be by herself.
Among her other accomplishments, Louisa was involved with the suffragette movement. In 1879, she became the first woman to register to vote in Concord in a school committee election. She wrote for the “Woman’s Journal” and was known to go from door to door encouraging women to vote.
In 1888, on March 4th, Bronson Alcott died. Two days later, Louisa succumbed to the mercury poisoning that had affected her since the Civil War. Abba had died several years earlier.