Name: Louisa May Alcott
ISBN: 9781416569923

Susan Cheever

A revisionist profile of the author of "Little Women" and other classics draws on extensive research using Alcott's journals and correspondence to cover such topics as her embrace of untraditional roles and her early death.

A Personal Biography

Louisa May Alcott

Jaclyn Graybill

Louisa is just as fierce, loving, and imperfect as the characters she illustrates. She not only saw the faults in man but delighted in them, considering them universal truths to be acknowledged. This sentiment started out as an inkling of a feeling I had while reading her works in the world of Little Women, and it is more than justified by reading Cheever's biography of this magnificent modern woman.

I had to sit with the magic of this one for a while. Is my reaction largely due to the way we romance the past and the people we admire? Absolutely. Yet, there is something about how simply ordinary Louisa was, juxtaposed with her zest for like and its characters, that makes her feel wholly of any time. Her stories could stay in the 19th century or evolve into the 21st, and I truly believe they would be just as poignant and true because they care for the person more than the context. Her tales are love stories to the human struggle for purpose and love, and it is so comforting to feel so seen in works that have stood the test of time.
It is no wonder that she was able to so elegantly describe these struggles, now understanding the life experience that paved the way for her literary ideas. When you grow up in an ever evolving community of zealots, your own father being the shepherd of them all, I can understand the sense of stability that she sought her entire life. Whether in her work or in her career, Louisa was constantly attempting to make greatness happen and be the foundation of her family that they never truly had. From my forays into Transcendentalism, I always knew Bronson was a bit of an interesting character, but I never thought that a man so beloved by his family and friends, and relatively established in his practice of philosophy (emphasis on relatively) would genuinely be so naively chaotic. Cheever calls Bronson The Hoper and Louisa The Realist. With her mother a bit of a loving pushover, her eldest sister married off, one sister passed on, and the last still fairly young, Louisa quickly took on the burden of her family. She didn't just write for passion, she wrote for survival. I love how Cheever speculates that perhaps that is why The March family seems so ideal- The strong and adoring Marmee, smart and doting Meg, headstrong and talented Jo, kind and humble Beth, artistic and dreamy Amy, and finally, heroic and wise Father. Obviously, these are tableaus of her existing family, but it is almost as if she is painting the Alcotts in a preferable life. One in which the Father is a hero, away most of the story but doing good. Marmee is a dutiful leader and teacher. Her sisters are caring, competent, and work purposefully. While Louisa obviously adored her family, it was very interesting to see the parallels from real life to fiction, as well as the details that she evolved from.

When one of the sole providers of your family is Ralph Waldo Emerson, your next door neighbors consist of Henry David Thoreau and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and you seem to have the entire Transcendentalist community in your backyard, it is hard for a fan like me not to idealize this life that Louisa led. As I said before, I think one of the side effects of time is the romanticism of the past. While I am thankful for modern medicine, and the ability to have all music, books, and movies at my fingertips I cannot help but wish I had just a taste of what living in Boston or Concord in that time was like. Cheever paints a wonderful picture.

There are parts of being a successful public figure, however, that I do not envy. Cheever talks a lot about how Louisa was a woman of privacy. While she enjoyed her success and fame, even in the late 1800s, fans would flock to her home just to get a glimpse of her. She was practically mobbed, probed and kissed by fans at an engagement for woman's rights. She was fiercely defensive of her work and fought hard to be taken seriously by publishers and readers alike. If we thought public criticism was bad in our digital age, I can only imagine how it felt to receive a nasty letter someone had to take the time to write, sign, seal, and send off. 
There is another point about public figures that Cheever brings up early on in the biography that I found myself grappling with for the rest of the book. Should we read literature as a "self-contained dream" and take it as it is on paper, or should we dissect the story along with the life of the author to better understand where it came from? Cheever puts it this way: "To begin to deconstruct it into the elements of the writer's life was to destroy its power and reduce it to gossip. . . .Yet this conflation of art and life is not thought to be an important aspect of studying any work of fiction. . . .Have we gone too far in trying to bring great works of imagination down to the detective work we have done on the lives of great writers? Are we robbing ourselves of the knockout experience of reading a great work of literature as if it were a given and not the creation of just another struggling human being?". Even as I did my own speculating- echoing that of Cheever's- earlier in this review, I still don't quite have an answer to this. In school we were taught to analyze not just the bones of the story, but the context, the life lived outside and around the story, to get a deeper understanding of where the art was coming from. It does feel like second nature at this point. Yet, after reading this biography and getting a better understanding for how great writers still have the right to be private individuals, I am not sure where I stand.
The second part of this conundrum is then what right do we have as readers and fans to the author's personal life? Many of Louisa's personal papers are archived in museums and libraries across the country. In a journal kept by her mother Abigail, there is an inscription that reads "Do not loan this book or allow any use of it for publication. Keep in the family always or destroy". Yet, here those journals are, on display and at the liberty of anyone that chooses to see them. My first instinct was what an invasion of privacy! Yet, then it evolved into a literary and philosophical question: Do we deserve to pry into history? What is the moral and ethical defense, other than great time has passed? Just because these people are no longer around to be hurt or offended by these transgressions, does that mean we no longer have to abide by their wishes? Even if you want to argue that public persons lose the right to anonymity and privacy the moment they become a Public Person, Abigail did nothing more than be the wife of Bronson and mother of Louisa. Why do we deserve to know her private thoughts and feelings? Again, like the previous question, I have no true answer, but I found it amazingly interesting and important that a biographer, who's job it is to do this research and gain access to these private things, was begging her readers to consider the dilemma.

Overall, I was immensely satisfied and entertained with this chance to learn more about one of my favorite authors. Cheever did a marvelous job at letting us into not only Louisa's life, but her mind, and I am so grateful to get even a glimpse of where some of my favorite stories came to life. Louisa May Alcott is a writer after my own heart, who took a look at the world and understood what it needed for its mind and soul. Even when she may not have wanted to write Little Women (what a shock to me when I found that out), she poured her heart into stories. That passion truly transcends time and space, and I love her all the more for it.

Louisa May Alcott never intended to write Little Women. She had dismissed her publisher’s pleas for such a novel. Written out of necessity to support her family, the book had an astounding success that changed her life, a life which turned out very differently from that of her beloved heroine Jo March. In Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever, the acclaimed author of American Bloomsbury, returns to Concord, Massachusetts, to explore the life of one of its most iconic residents. Based on extensive research, journals, and correspondence, Cheever’s biography chronicles all aspects of Alcott’s life, from the fateful meeting of her parents to her death, just two days after that of her father. She details Bronson Alcott’s stalwart educational vision, which led the Alcotts to relocate each time his progressive teaching went sour; her unsuccessful early attempts at serious literature, including Moods, which Henry James panned; her time as a Civil War nurse, when she contracted pneumonia and was treated with mercury-laden calomel, which would affect her health for the rest of her life; and her vibrant intellectual circle of writers and reformers, idealists who led the charge in support of antislavery, temperance, and women’s rights. Alcott’s independence defied the conventional wisdom, and her personal choices and literary legacy continue to inspire generations of women. A fan of Little Women from the age of twelve, and a distinguished author in her own right, Cheever brings a unique perspective to Louisa May Alcott’s life as a woman, a daughter, and a working writer.

Louisa May Alcott A Personal Biography

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