| by Karen Sands-O'Connor I enjoy romancing to suit myself ... I hope it is good drill for fancy and language, for I can do it fast, and Mr. [Frank] L[eslie] says my tales are so `dramatic, vivid, and full of plot,' they are just what he wants. (Louisa May Alcott, Journals 109). Louisa May Alcott is now well-known for "romancing" in the blood-and-thunder thrillers that she wrote before the monetary success of Little Women (1868) made such work unnecessary. Her ability to plot and vividly dramatize so quickly was certainly aided by her voracious reading throughout her life; Madeleine Stem suggests that Alcott worked deftly to "combine threads of her own experience with the threads of the books she had read and interweave them into a fabric of her own creating" (The Hidden Louisa xiv-xv). But even critics who discuss at length Alcott's credit to previous literature in her thrillers fall silent when it comes to Alcott's best-known work, Little Women. Many seem to take Alcott at her word that she and her sisters had "really lived most of it" (Journals 166), even though this was a comment made about the first half of the novel only. In the second half of the novel, Alcott wrote that, "I can launch into the future, my fancy has more play" (Journals 167). In fact, her fancy had considerable play in both halves of the novel, particularly where the hero of the story, Laurie Laurence, was concerned; and as with her thrillers, Alcott turned to the novels she had read as a source for her imagination. One of these novels was Charlotte Mary Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe (1853). Almost everyone who has read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women can remember the scene, early in the book, where Meg finds Jo "eating apples and crying over the `Heir of Redclyffe,' wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa" in the garret (29). Jo's penchant for novels, and apples, and garrets is part of what made Alcott's character vividly alive to so many generations of readers, many of whom could empathize with the ability to become involved in the lives of "book-people." But the characters in Charlotte Mary Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe were not just any book-people, and Alcott's choice for Jo's reading had great significance. The title character of Yonge's book, Sir Guy Morville, is a handsome, young, wealthy, idealized hero who befriends a family with four children, eventually marrying the daughter who is popularly referred to as "silly little Amy" (HOR 13). Jo, in Alcott's book, is found reading Sir Guy's story at the beginning of the chapter titled "The Laurence Boy." This is only the first of many links between Sir Guy and Theodore (Laurie) Laurence, Jo's handsome, young, wealthy next-door neighbor; Alcott's Laurie could have been an American relative of Sir Guy. The parallels are crucial, as Alcott's choice of role-model ultimately results in one of the most memorable rejections in all of children's literature: Jo refuses Laurie's proposal of marriage, throwing him into the arms of the only remaining March sister--silly little Amy. This theory is, of course, a radical viewpoint that Alcott's own writings reject. In fact, in 1868 she devoted a whole essay (titled variously "My Polish Boy" in The Youth's Companion and "My Boys" in Aunt Jo's Scrap-bag) to the subject of Ladislas Wisniewski, a young Polish man she had met abroad. The essay ends with the words, "Laddie was the original of Laurie, as far as a pale pen-and-ink sketch could embody a living, loving boy" ("My Boys" 342). A couple of months later, Alcott added in a letter to Alfred Whitman, "I put you into my story as one of the best & dearest lads I ever knew! `Laurie' is you & my Polish boy `jintly'" (Letters of LMA 120). Most of the critics have since taken Alcott's words at face value(2) although Sheryl Englund warns against "an unquestioned focus on Alcott's historical identity and its relationship to her writing" ("Reading the Author" 202); and Ann Douglas, in her 1980 "Introduction" to the reissue of Ednah D. Cheney's 1889 Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals does note in passing that "Alcott settled for sprightly, careless, slangy children's versions of the domestic fiction of ... Yonge" (xxv). However, Douglas draws no specific comparisons, and I have found nothing else in the body of critical literature which takes this notion any further. Overall, the weight of opinion is decidedly on Ladislas Wisniewski's side. Certainly, there are reasons to trust Alcott's prescribed vision of Ladislas-as-Laurie. Alcott never seriously described anyone other than Wisniewski as a "romance" (Journals of LMA 145). In addition, Wisniewski had Laurie's musical talent ("My Boys" 330) and love of practical jokes ("My Boys" 337). But there are not enough details in any of Alcott's accounts or in extant materials to bring the parallel between Laurie and Ladislas fully to life, and it should be noted that "My Boys" was written after the publication of Little Women; Alcott's journals and letters written during the time of their friendship reveal far less detail about Wisniewski. The two could be "one-in-the-same," but the Ladislas myth could be just that--a myth, created by Alcott out of a partial truth for a reading public who sent, "Letter after letter ... inquiring about Laurie" (Stern 186). Was Alcott trustworthy enough on the subject of her most famous hero to be believed? Up until this point, the answer would appear to be an unquestionable yes. But there are a number of problems with blind acceptance of Alcott's version. First, there is the lack of evidence, as noted above. Second, most of the models for the other characters existed as a part of Louisa's childhood, at least in part, and not her adult years; Alcott was thirty-two when she met Wisniewski. Third, even those critics who subscribe to the Ladislas-as-Laurie theory generally agree that Alcott tended to be circumspect about her relationships, particularly those with males. Cornelia Meigs, in Invincible Louisa (1933), wrote that "Louisa Alcott had lovers during her varied life" but "who they were and just what she thought of them are secrets of her own which prying eyes have no right to investigate, not even in the name of her cherished fame" (136). Martha Saxton, eschewing commentary on the morality of "spying," wrote simply, "Sexuality--indeed, most physical expression--went unexpressed in the Alcott family" (LMA: A Modern Biography 165). In the final analysis, it is doubtful that any "living, loving boy" suited her tastes enough to become the model for the hero of her book. Despite her self-professed fondness for boys in general (Letters 120), she never became close enough to any one of them to marry (or even have a long-term relationship). Although some suggest that her identification with boys indicates her cross-gendered tendencies (see Octavia Cowan, in her "Introduction" to Alcott's A Modern Mephistopheles, or Elizabeth Keyser in Whispers in the Dark 125), I would argue that there is a different (or at least an additional) reason, having to do with Alcott's tastes in reading--including (perhaps especially) her reading of Yonge's Heir of Redclyffe. In novels, not in life, Alcott found her heroes. In The Heir of Redclyffe, Alcott found her Laurie. Little Women was written at a time when Alcott had already been disillusioned about her ability to write her own ideas freely, without subjection to market forces. Her first major work, Moods, was published in 1865 to shocked reviews from the critics. Apparently, Alcott's view that marital separation should be condoned when love no longer existed grated on Victorian sensibilities. As Sarah Elbert points out in her Introduction to Moods, "Conventional fiction in the nineteenth century reflected the commonplace belief in a married woman's exclusive dedication to family life and service to her loved ones" (xvi). Henry James's review in the North American underlines this view when he writes that Sylvia, the main character, "might have lived along happily enough, we conceive, masquerading with her gentle husband in the fashion of old days, if Warwick had not come back" (Moods 222). Alcott raged in her journal, "My next book shall have no ideas in it, only facts, and the people shall be as ordinary as possible, then critics will say its [sic] all right" (Journals 140). Alcott wanted to be, not just a writer, but a respected writer, one that the critics would approve. She also wanted to be a published writer, at all costs, and she found that often what she valued was not considered saleable by her editors. Moods, for example, went quickly out of print. When it was finally reprinted, in 1882, Alcott changed the ending so that Sylvia and her husband reconciled, and reference to a biracial relationship was removed. This kind of editing had already been accomplished when converting her Hospital Sketches to book form in 1868; the publisher requested she remove references to rebel soldiers. Alcott did this in order to see her book in print, adding the sarcastic comment in her journal, "Anything to suit customers" (Journals 164). Her publisher at the time was the firm of Roberts Brothers, who would soon ask her to write a girls' book. By the time Alcott began work on Little Women, she knew what the critics wanted, she knew what the editors wanted, and she knew what she wanted: "to realize my dream of supporting the family and being perfectly independent" (162). The one characteristic all parties had in common was the desire for a successful novel, one which conformed with Victorian values. Alcott had written Moods with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in mind (Elbert, "Introduction to Moods" xxviii-xxix), creating an equally moody heroine but giving her the power to reject her unhappy circumstances. She would achieve greater success in Little Women, partly because she linked her characters with another novel, the morally and financially successful The Heir of Redclyffe. Although none of Alcott's journals or letters refers directly to any of Yonge's novels, there is little doubt that she read The Heir of Redclyffe. In addition to the evidence provided by Jo March's own reading of the novel, other proofs exist as well. Alcott's stories provide at least two other clues. In the 1887 story "Pansies," first published in St. Nicholas Magazine, one of the three main characters mentions the novels of Charlotte Yonge: "I love dear Miss Yonge, with her nice, large families, and their trials, and their pious ways, and Pleasant homes full of brothers and sisters, and good fathers and mothers. I'm never tired of them" (A Garland for Girls 81- 82). This character, a girl named Eva, is offering another novel by Yonge, The Daisy Chain (1856), to her friend, but she speaks of Yonge's novels in the plural. Certainly The Heir of Redclyffe fits the description given by Eva; the novel tells the story of the Edmonstone family, primarily that of the four children and their two cousins. All the characters struggle with various trials, and often turn successfully to religion to find solutions. In addition to the fact that the novel fits Alcott's given framework, The Heir of Redclyffe was "immensely popular" according to Foster and Simons and had an "extraordinarily wide-ranging contemporary audience" (What Katy Read 62; see also Mare and Percival, The World of Charlotte Mary Yonge 136). Thus it seems unlikely that Alcott, an avid reader, would have passed the novel over. Neither would she have failed to notice the book's popularity--a possible factor in her decision to use The Heir of Redclyffe as a model for her own book. But a second, less direct, piece of evidence also exists that Alcott had read Heir of Redclyffe prior to writing Little Women. It is well-established that Alcott read widely in the area of German romantic literature (Krummacher, Goethe, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Bremer, and Eckermann are among the German authors Madeleine Stern suggests Alcott read in LMA: A Biography). One of the authors that Alcott admired was a German short-story writer named Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. Fouque was best known for "Undine," the story of a mermaid who marries a human in order to gain an immortal soul. "Undine" was the most-frequently translated of Fouque's works, and many collections of the author's stories were titled after that story alone. When Jo March ruminates over what to do with her Christmas dollar in the first chapter of Little Women, however, she mentions another of the German romantic's stories. Jo proclaims she will buy "Undine and Sintram" (2; emphasis added). Sintram is not the human that Undine marries, but in fact the title character in an entirely different tale by Fouque, "Sintram and his Companions." Alcott had certainly read this story,(3) based on an engraving by Durer ("Ritter, Tod und Teufel"--"Knight, Death and Devil"--first printed in 1513), and called it a "beautiful old story" (Jo's Boys 130). She even underlines the importance of this story to the readers of Little Women; the New Testament and Undine and Sintram are the only two specified Christmas presents which Jo receives in Little Women, both from Marmee. This is not the first time that these two books had been paired in literary circles; an earlier author thought of the story of Sintram as "a book to be put next to her Bible" (Dennis, "Introduction" xiv). In fact, this author used Sintram as a model for one of her own novel's heroes, calling the earlier story a "spiritual romance ... of purity and nobleness" and comparing Sintram with Galahad ("Introduction" xv). Alcott's fellow admirer of "Sintram and his Companions" is none other than Charlotte Yonge. Alcott's specific mention of "Sintram" as Jo's desired reading can be directly linked to Yonge's novel, since the story is a model for The Heir of Redclyffe and is mentioned frequently throughout the book. Sir Guy Morville, Yonge's hero, is consciously aware of his similarity to Sintram, a knight haunted by devils and the specter of death, and speaks of it frequently. Guy's cousin Laura comments, | |
"Nothing has affected him so much as Sintram ... I never saw anything like
it. He took it up by chance, and stood reading it while all those strange
expressions began to flit over his face, and at last he fairly cried over
it so much, that he was obliged to fly out of the room. How often he has
read it I cannot tell; I believe he has bought one for himself, and it is
as if the engraving had a fascination for him; he stands looking at it as
if he was in a dream." (68) | | "Sintram" here, both story and character, is assumed as prior knowledge. Even Durer's engraving, which is often reproduced with Fouque's story, is not specified. A reader of The Heir of Redclyffe--such as Jo March--who had not read "Sintram and his Companions" would be at a loss to understand the significance of this passage. But this passage from The Heir of Redclyffe is not the only reference to Fouque's tale. Sir Guy himself continues to make parallels to the story, particularly as he becomes more and more attracted to another of his female cousins, Amy Edmonstone. When he at last becomes engaged to her, he tells her how he thinks about her: "To feel that I had your love to keep me safe, to know that you watched for me, prayed for me, were my own, my Verena--oh, Amy!" (189). The "Verena" he refers to is Sintram's saint-like mother who lives in a convent to escape the wickedness of the court of Guy's father. Verena floats somewhere above Sintram's problems, guiding him to the right decisions and helping him avoid danger and, at last, the curse of those who haunted him. Similarly, Amy becomes a vision for Guy during a long period of separation and trial that follows. By her very image (not even her presence!), Amy guides Guy to the right decisions and helps him escape the "curse" he feels he has been under. Heaven is the reward for both Sintram and Sir Guy, as both die (Guy after only a few weeks of marriage). Foreshadowing this event, Guy tells Amy, "your words are still with me--`Sintram conquered his doom,'--and it was by following death!" (284). None of these references are ever explained completely, if they are explained at all. And because "Sintram" is such an integral part of the plot of The Heir of Redclyffe, it would make any avid reader, including Jo March, long to acquire a copy of the tale. Jo's desire to own "Sintram" is thus further proof that Alcott was intimately familiar with both the Fouque stories and Yonge's novel at the time she wrote Little Women. Because of this prior knowledge, Alcott's placement of The Heir of Redclyffe at the beginning of the chapter titled "The Laurence Boy" can scarcely be thought of as coincidental. Alcott deliberately set out to recreate Guy Morville after an American fashion, both because Sir Guy was ideologically akin to Alcott herself and because Yonge's novel had attained the popularity Alcott so desperately desired. Alcott presents the informed reader with several clues as to Laurie's true "ancestry." Such close parallels would indicate, then, Alcott's own view of her character as well as dictating the ultimate outcome of Laurie's life as described in the confines of Little Women--a point I shall return to later. The similarities between Guy and Laurie are, at times, almost too obvious for anyone who knew both books (and this would include at least some proportion of Alcott's contemporary reading audience(4)). They are particularly strong early on in Alcott's novel, when Laurie is first introduced. Both Laurie and Guy are orphans, both live(d) with their paternal grandfathers, and both have a similar tragic story regarding the relationship of their parents and paternal grandfathers. Compare the following two passages about the fathers of Guy and Laurie: | |
... He [Guy's father] was only nineteen when he made a runaway marriage
with a girl of sixteen, the sister of a violin player, who was at that time
in fashion. His father was very much offended, and there was much
dreadfully violent conduct on each side. At last, the young man was driven
to seek a reconciliation. He brought his wife to Moorworth, and rode to
Redclyffe, to have an interview with his father. Unhappily, [old] Sir Guy
... refused to see him. (HOR 8)
... Laurie's father married an Italian lady, a musician, which displeased
the old man, who is very proud. The lady was good and lovely and
accomplished, but he did not like her, and never saw his son after he
married. (LW 70) | | Although the typically feminist Alcott allows the mother to have her own career, rather than be simply the musician's sister, the two elopements could be otherwise interchanged without making a difference to either novel. Guy and Laurie not only have similar backgrounds, they have similar character attributes. From their mothers, both Guy and Laurie have inherited a talent for music, particularly piano playing, which they are encouraged to hide. Laurie's grandfather cuts off Jo's praise of his playing (LW 70); Guy's cousin Philip warns Amy against mentioning Guy's ability, saying, "I would not advise you to make much of this talent in public; it is too much a badge of his descent" (HOR 33). They also share the same major character flaw: their hot tempers, which in both cases inhibits their progress in love. Guy's explosion over an accusation made by Philip results in the forced break in his engagement to Amy (HOR 205). Jo's refusal of Laurie is approved by her mother, who suggests that their "hot tempers and strong wills" (LW 400) would ruin any partnership they might attempt. Alcott continued the parallels between Guy and Laurie in terms of Laurie's relationship with and to the March family. The Edmonstones seem to be financially better off than the Marches, but are nonetheless not wealthy. Guy is produced early on as a suitable marital match when Charles, the invalid son of the family, suggests that his sister Laura should fall head over heels in love with him, adding, "no hero ever failed to fall in love with his guardian's beautiful daughter" (HOR 14). In fact, it is Guy's money that later allows him to become engaged to Amy, while his cousin Philip's lack of it has the opposite effect on the Edmonstone's view of a match with Laura. Laurie is similarly proposed as a match for the eldest daughter of the March family. Some gossips note that, "It would be a grand thing" (LW 109) for Meg to marry money, in the form of the Laurence boy. Even though these early suggestions come to nothing, Guy and Laurie both eventually become official members of the families that guided them through their respective adolescences. Both mothers, Heir's Mrs. Edmonstone and Little Women's Marmee, act as conscious guides for the young heirs. Guy makes regular confessions to Mrs. Edmonstone, which she encourages. These confessions deal with Guy's faults in a serious but kind manner by Mrs. Edmonstone. When at one point he suggests he is "encroaching too much on your kindness to come here and trouble you with my confessions" (HOR 49), Mrs. Edmonstone replies, "Remember how we agreed that you should come to me like one of my own children" (HOR 49). Similarly, Laurie must confess his wrongs to Mrs. March and not his grandfather (LW 259; 300). Laurie seems to receive more severity from Mrs. March, who comments on one of his pranks by saying, "I shall sift the matter to the bottom, and put a stop to such pranks at once" (LW 258). In spite of Mrs. March's gravity, however, Laurie looks to her in much the same way that Guy looks to Mrs. Edmonstone. He calls Mrs. March, "Madam Mother" (LW 196), doing her favors just as Guy does for Mrs. Edmonstone. In addition, Laurie sends Mrs. March a flower every day as a token of his affection (LW 147), echoing the way in which Guy treats Mrs. Edmonstone as "his first and only love" (HOR 155). In both books, the mothers extend their maternal role outside their own family to the heroes, proud to be called "mother" by these young men even before marriage makes this title more than honorary. Similar backgrounds, similar adolescences: surely this is enough to suggest that Alcott modelled Laurie, not after any real person, but after Guy Morville? Perhaps. The real key, however, is found by looking at the love relationships of both heroes, relationships that at first glance seem very different. Guy Morville's first love except for Mrs. Edmonstone, of course is the second daughter of the Edmonstone family, Amy. Laurie's first love is Jo March--only later does he switch his affections to his Amy. It is important to note, however, that Laurie renounces his love for Jo quite completely; he tells Jo, "Amy and you change places in my heart, that's all. I think it was meant to be so ... it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it was one, Jo" (LW 530). This "mistake" was one that Alcott's readers would never forgive. It was also one that Alcott herself seems to have had some personal misgivings about. In the original manuscript version of Little Women, Alcott follows Jo's final and firm refusal speech with this surprising line: "Then he caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately" (Little Women ms). The line is emphatically crossed out. Clearly, Alcott desired for Jo to have a romantic life--but as her obliteration of the kiss indicates, a connection with the story's hero was not possible. In fact, Laurie and Amy's marriage was the correct ending for Alcott's book, not because Alcott was a feminist as many critics suggest(5) but because she was a romantic. Both she and her autobiographical character, Jo March, were raised on the sentimental and pseudo-chivalric novels of the early nineteenth century. These novels dictated that the ideal hero--whether he be Guy Morville or Ivanhoe or John of Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World--never marry the flawed heroine. Occasionally the heroine is allowed to "reform" her petty faults, such as Ellen Montgomery does in The Wide, Wide World, but only in such cases where she is the most unflawed female character in the book to begin with. In Little Women, however, there is no question that Laurie has a better option than Jo. Jo is well aware of the rules of the game, having read so many novels herself. In her rejection she tells Laurie, "you'll get over this after a while, and find some lovely, accomplished girl, who will adore you, and make a fine mistress for your fine house" (LW440). This is the proper end for the ideal hero; it is the end that Guy Morville had, and the one that Alcott cannot help but provide for her hero. In fact, Laurie receives exactly Guy Morville's reward. Amy Edmonstone and Amy March are, like Guy and Laurie, literary cousins to each other, particularly in their young womanhood and at the time of their marriage (times when Guy's and Laurie's lives also most closely parallel each other). Amy March, at one point in the story, is Brigid Brophy's definition of "the peroxided, girl-doll gold-digger" ("Sentimentality" 95)--a role which, ironically, in 1879, May Alcott herself criticized, faulting authors "who commonly represent the indiscreet, husband-hunting, title-seeking butterfly as the typical American girl abroad" ("Studying Art Abroad" 49). But Amy March actually undergoes a complete personality change in order for Alcott to bring her more in line with Amy Edmonstone's standards. Amy March, following Jo's rejection of Laurie, suddenly begins to sound more and more like Amy Edmonstone. Little Women was written in two parts, the first ending with Meg's engagement to John Brooke, and the second (originally entitled Good Wives) telling the story of three of the girls' marriages (and Beth's death). When Alcott wrote the first half, she did not intend to write a sequel; she found her own story "dull" (Journals of LMA 166) and assumed others would as well. In the original twenty-three chapters, Alcott draws a picture of Amy March as a "niminy-piminy chit" (LW 3) "too particular and prim" (4), "an affected little goose" (4), "an important person--in her own opinion at least" (5), and even, in Amy's own estimation, "a selfish girl" (10). While the other three March sisters work hard at repairing their faults, Amy changes very little during this first half. Early on in the story, she burns her sister Jo's book manuscript out of spite (LW 94). Nearer to Meg's engagement, Amy continues in this manner by throwing a tantrum when required to go to Aunt March's house to avoid catching Beth's scarlet fever. Alcott records that she "rebelled outright, and passionately declared that she had rather have the fever than go to Aunt March" (220). When finally convinced to go, she does not spend her time learning to be more like unselfish Beth. Instead, she covets her rich Aunt March's jewelry, commenting to the maid, "I wish she'd let us have them [the jewelry] now. Pro-cras-ti-nation is not agreeable" (239). Only upon discovering that good behavior might win her part of her share of the jewelry early does Amy become instantly angelic. This Amy is not at all similar to Amy Edmonstone in The Heir of Redclyffe, who, though "silly," is also sweet and generous, particularly with her invalid brother Charles. Although all three Edmonstone sisters are said to be "slaves" (14) to Charles's invalid whims, it is Amy that he singles out as "all the comfort I have left me in life" (92). In the first half of Little Women, Amy March is based on a living, loving girl--not on a book character. Alcott called the first half of her novel, "simple and true, for we really lived most of it" (Journals of LMA 166). Following the remarkable success of the first twenty-three chapters, Alcott was asked to write a sequel to Little Women, a task she looked forward to with somewhat more gusto; in her journal, she wrote, "as I can launch into the future, my fancy has more play. Girls write to ask who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a woman's life. I won't marry Jo to Laurie to please any one" (Journals of LMA 167). Critics have taken this to mean that she won't allow romance to make Jo a wife; Sarah Elbert, for example, claims that Alcott "has her heroine reject any `silliness' from the start" (A Hunger for Home 162), and even goes so far as to say that Jo's conjecture of a possible future romance is really just her way of shutting off further conversation with Laurie. But perhaps it would be more accurate to say that romance wouldn't allow Alcott to make Jo a wife, rather than the other way around. Alcott's tastes in novels--and the failure of her own first novel Moods--made her favor an ending to Little Women more in line with traditional romances. Jo refused Laurie so he could find a more suitable wife, and since the beginning of the second half of Little Women, Alcott had been creating the suitable wife in the character of Amy March. She got her direction in examining typical female characters, such as Heir's Amy Edmonstone. Throughout The Heir of Redclyffe, Amy Edmonstone is the model heroine. Although both she and her older sister are pretty--at one point, Guy declines to rank one above the other in beauty (HOR 108)--Amy has an important quality that Laura is lacking: a placidness which is generally attributed to her empty head. When Laura calls Amy spineless, brother Charles argues Amy's case by saying, "I had rather she had no bones at all, than that they stuck out and ran into me. There are plenty of angles already in the world, without sharpening hers" (HOR 13). Amy Edmonstone calls herself stupid (HOR 93), but it is her contrast to intellectual, sharp-angled Laura which makes her attractive to most of the men in the book (she is her brother's and her father's favorite, as well as Guy's of course). She has earned this place. Elizabeth Helsinger writes in The Woman Question that | |
[h]usbands, sons, and brothers should expect to find in woman an inspiring
figure of purity and selflessness--ministering within the family
sphere--and should feel toward her the reverence which her other-worldly
perfection demands. (81) | | This is Amy Edmonstone's place exactly, a woman of childlike innocence for all to admire. Although she is the first sister to marry, she is called "Little Amy" right up to the point of her engagement, and there is a sense of the childlike about her: | |
Little Amy's instinct was to believe the best, and do as she was bidden,
and there was a quietness and confidence in the tone of her mind which gave
a sort of serenity of its own even to suspense. A thankful, happy sensation
that all was well, mamma said so; and Guy was there, had taken
possession,of her, and she did not agitate herself to know how or why, for
mamma had told her to put herself to sleep ... Amabel Edmonstone was
wrapped in a sleep dreamless and tranquil as an infant's. (337-38) | | Obedience, combined with beauty and an absence of intellectual prowess, make Amy Edmonstone the heroine that Guy desires and deserves. Amy March, in Alcott's book, has changed from the spoiled brat readers originally met to become strikingly similar to Amy Edmonstone. In the first chapter of Good Wives, titled "Gossip" and designed to bring readers up to speed on the three previous years, readers learn that Amy "gave her mornings to duty" (LW 295) in the form of providing companionship to Aunt March. Amy has taken over Jo's old role as caretaker to the elderly woman because Aunt March prefers Amy's company. Later, Amy earns a trip to Europe by being "more docile" (L W 375) than Jo, who, as Amy herself puts it, goes, "through the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it independence" (318). Jo, like Laura Edmonstone, is all angles while Amy is more malleable, much to her advantage. Obedience is, as in Yonge's book, an enviable quality in a young lady--or at least one that is more greatly rewarded. Beauty is another such quality. Although most of "Gossip" concerns Meg's preparations for her upcoming marriage to John Brooke, there are two other brief mentions of Amy in the chapter. While she had been too young in the book's first half to join the older girls and Laurie on their outings, Amy has now become the most popular March girl with Laurie's college friends. She "became quite a belle among them; for her ladyship early felt and learned to use the gift of fascination with which she was endowed" (296). The final mention of her only refers to her looks: she ties "a picturesque hat over her picturesque curls" (302) on her way to picking up more flowers for the wedding day. Although Alcott does comment at a later point that Amy was "not beautiful" (308), she belies this fact by referring to Amy constantly in terms of how she appears--even when discussing Amy's artistic ability, Alcott writes, "she had resolved to be an attractive and accomplished woman, even if she never became a great artist" (316). Amy's priorities are clear: self-beauty before artistic accomplishment, or rather, self as artistic accomplishment. Amy March, unlike Amy Edmonstone, has a reasonable amount of sense; it seems that Alcott balked at portraying the youngest March as stupid. Elizabeth Helsinger, who discusses the attributes necessary for the heroine in Victorian fiction, suggests this is an acceptable departure from the traditional woman; "reviewers of heroines ... do debate what personal and intellectual qualities" (The Woman Question 81) these females should have. However, Alcott makes interesting editorial decisions that encourage an ,idea of the childlike in Amy. Despite her considerable knowledge of art and culture, Amy March nonetheless appears as innocent and naive as Amy Edmonstone. One example of this can be found in the chapter "Our Foreign Correspondent," where Amy writes to her family about her experiences in Europe. In a passage that details Amy's first view of England, Alcott writes: | |
I was in a rapture all the way. So was Flo; and we kept bouncing from one
side to the other, trying to see everything while we were whisking along at
the rate of sixty miles an hour.... This is the way we went on: Amy, flying
up, --`Oh, that must be Kenilworth, that gray place among the trees!' Flo,
darting to my window, --`How sweet! We must go there some time, won't we,
papa?' Uncle, calmly admiring his boots, --`No, my dear, not unless you
want beer; that's a brewery.' (380) | | Interestingly, this passage was added to the manuscript version; in the original, Amy follows the discussion of English countryside colors (present in the published version) with a sedate description of how, "when I caught a glimpse of Warwick castle, I felt as if my dream really was coming true" ("Our Foreign Correspondent" manuscript version). Alcott's original depiction of Amy in this chapter is much more mature; Amy speaks of flirting and going to the theater as a regular occurrence, and also has her first proposal, from the Captain Lennox who is mentioned as sending Amy flowers in the published version. It is unclear whether Alcott made the changes from manuscript to published version on her own initiative or because of publisher suggestion; however, the manner in which she changed Amy's character certainly brings her more in line with Amy Edmonstone's innocence. By the time Laurie meets Amy in Nice (Laurie having been rejected by Jo), Amy has lost more of her intellectual aplomb. Amy describes her ability to speak French prior to her foreign trip as "Pretty well, thanks to Aunt March, who lets me talk to Esther [the French maid] as often as I like" (363). When Amy meets Laurie in Nice, she uses a French phrase and Alcott as narrator adds drily, "her French ... had improved in quantity, if not in quality, since she came abroad" (457). By this point, however, Laurie is "feeling an odd sort of pleasure in having `little Amy' order him about" (465). Suddenly, Amy March has been transformed into "little Amy," an uncanny echo of The Heir of Redclyffe. Grace and Theodore Hovet write that, in this metamorphosis of Amy's character, "Alcott ... [is] stressing how reasonable it is for Amy March to consciously fake and deliberately perform the role of transparency" ("Tableaux Vivants" 337). Alcott needed Amy March to be the same sort of decorative heroine as Amy Edmonstone, so she could reward Laurie, and here the revision of Amy from demanding, spoiled child to acceptable prize is complete. Like Sir Guy, Laurie needs a time of separation from his Amy, but following this brief period, he returns to her in Vevey, Switzerland, where they become engaged and then travel on honeymoon to the Italian lakes. In Yonge's book, the couple is already married when they reach the continent, but their honeymoon trip focuses on first the Swiss and then the Italian lakes. Alcott chooses different lakes from Yonge (ones she had visited while on her own European tour in 1865), but otherwise, the marital trips coincide. Following Amy and Laurie's return from Europe, Alcott underlines their similarity to Sir Guy Morville and Lady Amy Morville in two ways. First, she indicates their status by their nicknames for each other: they call each other "my lady" (544) and "my lord" (545). But second, and more specific to a comparison with Yonge's book, Alcott gives Amy and Laurie the same mission in life as Yonge gave to Amy and Guy Morville. Sir Guy Morville has two desires; one is to spread his largess to the worthy population that depended on him, and the other is to make his cousins' road to marriage easy by providing them with the financial means to wed. In the first case, Guy determines to clean up Coombe Priory and establish a proper school on his estate (282-84) in order to raise up the working poor. Amy, upon learning his will, implemented his wishes because, "she knew it was Guy's work, and a charge he had given her--a great proof of his confidence--and she did all that was required of her very well" (497). As to the second goal of Sir Guy, providing his cousins Philip and Laura with the means to get married, he and Amy see themselves as the couple's benefactors from the first day they learn of the secret engagement: "Guy launched out into more schemes for facilitating their marriage than ever he had made for himself, and the walk ended with extensive castle building on Philip's account" (426). Although Amy is somewhat shocked at the couple's initial secrecy, this conversation makes her "become much less displeased" (426), and soon she is the couple's best advocate, arguing forgiveness of Philip and Laura to her parents. She also refuses to stand in the way of Philip becoming Sir Philip after Guy's death, rejecting the idea of trying to keep the money and property for herself. "The first thing that came into my head," Amy says, "... was, that it was just what he wished, that ... you should take care of Redclyffe" (529). Sir Guy and Lady Amy use their positions of power and wealth to benefit those around them, in a way very much befitting to their station in life. Fifteen years later and a continent away, the couple closest to Louisa May Alcott's ideal of nobility has the same two goals as Sir Guy and Lady Amy: to do good for the deserving poor, including Amy's sister Jo and her impoverished lover. Laurie comments to Amy, "I wish we could do something for that capital old Professor [Jo's husband-to-be]. Couldn't we invent a rich relation, who shall obligingly die out there in Germany, and leave him a tidy little fortune?" (LW 546). They go on to help the new couple establish a school (later, in Jo's Boys, Laurence College) by which Jo and her husband make their living. This beneficence is just the sort of work that Amy and Laurie plan for. They want to help the deserving poor. Just like Sir Guy, who refuses to leave his drunken uncle money in his will, because "it would only be a temptation" (HOR 462), Laurie wants to help the "better" sort of poor person. Stephen Nissenbaum, in his book The Battle for Christmas, writes that Laurie's and Sir Guy's attitudes were common among the wealthier people at the middle of the century. Although they wanted to continue the feudal-like relationship between rich and poor, the wealthy were concerned that "the actual poor ... were a sea of anonymous proletarian faces, and ... were as likely to respond to acts of token generosity with embarrassment or hostility as with the requisite display of hearty gratitude" (146). Thus, the creation of the category of the "deserving poor" included children and Laurie's "decayed gentlemen." Laurie tells Amy, "I must say, I like to serve a decayed gentleman better than a blarneying beggar" (547), and Amy agrees with him. Amy Laurence has now become the very soul of Amy Edmonstone, agreeing with her husband unquestioningly. The reading audience is lulled into forgetting her past nature when Alcott has the once-spoiled Amy say, in a complete turnaround of character, "How delightful it is to be able to help others, isn't it? That was always one of my dreams, to have the power of giving freely" (547). This speech comes from the same person whose fondest wish was once "to be an artist, and go to Rome, and do fine pictures, and be the best artist in the whole world" (179). From a purely selfish and ambitious nature, Amy has become completely selfless and devoted to her husband and her charity work. This change would never have been necessary if Alcott didn't need a perfect bride-prize for her ideal hero, Theodore Laurence. Louisa May Alcott wrote in an 1886 letter that she took "many heroes and heroines from real life" and that "I read no modern fiction. It seems poor stuff when one can have the best of the old writers" (Letters 296). This letter, written to a teacher (Viola Price) and her students, was one of many that, in the later years of her fame, Alcott felt compelled to write. An adoring public hung on every word, in much the same way that people today follow celebrity interviews or fan magazines. Unfortunately for critical studies of Alcott's work, her early biographers were among these adoring fans, and soon Alcott's words became gospel. But Alcott did read modern writers, including Charlotte Yonge; and when "real life heroes and heroines" had not caught up to her characters, as was the case with Little Women, Alcott borrowed heavily from other people's inventions. Having based her initial characterization of Theodore Laurence on Sir Guy Morville in The Heir of Redclyffe, Alcott continued to follow through with this idea, particularly in the second half of the book. And although generations of readers "were all so disappointed over [Jo's] not marrying Laurie" ("The Response of Nineteenth-Century Audiences" 324), Alcott could make Jo have no other response. Jo was, like Laura Edmonstone, the sharp-angled sister, and not a suitable wife. With Meg married to John Brooke and Beth slowly dying, Alcott had only one other opportunity to keep Theodore Laurence in the March family--marrying him to Amy. Knowing her readership would never accept a complete change in Jo's character--or perhaps not being able to accept it herself--she began to re-create Amy March into the image of Sir Guy's bride, Amy Edmonstone. By the end of the book, this has been accomplished. As Laurie tells Jo, when he brings Amy home as his bride, "You both got into your right places" (530): right, that is, for the structure of Alcott's novel. Amy needed to be the bride, because she represented the good-girl character and Jo the flawed one. Alcott knew from the stressful experience of Moods that only happy marriages were acceptable in women's fiction, and she had accepted that "difficult" heroines needed steady, fatherly spouses rather than "ideal" types such as Theodore Laurence. Jo March married, not her fascinating next-door neighbor, but a kindly old professor. Unlike Sylvia Yule in Moods, Jo is happy with the match. Even though Laurie wishes Professor Bhaer "was a little younger and a good deal richer" (LW496), Jo "thought poverty was a beautiful thing" (LW 498) and "couldn't help loving [Bhaer] if [he] were seventy!" (LW 520). Their wedding is not described, but the marriage of sharp-angled Laura Edmonstone to her older cousin Philip Morville is detailed in words that could apply to either nuptials: "It was not such a wedding as the last. There was ... no such air of freshness, youth, and peace" (HOR 591). Laura and Jo must leave youth and passionate matches to their younger sisters. Alcott claims at the end of Little Women that "Jo was a very happy woman" (LW 526), but the Bhaers would never have the idyllic marriage of the Laurences. Poverty and struggle would affect the couple throughout the sequels to Little Women, much as they affected Louisa May Alcott herself. Years later, when May Alcott (the supposed real-life model for Amy March) finally married a wealthy Swiss businessman, Louisa May Alcott accepted for herself and May what she had once accepted for Jo and Amy: "How different our lives are just now!--I so lonely, sad, and sick, she so happy, well and blest. She always had the cream of things, and deserved it. My time is yet to come somewhere else, when I am ready for it" (Journals 209). Alcott knew the right place for a flawed character--and in her most famous novel, Little Women, her characters got just what they deserved. Buffalo State College Buffalo, New York Notes (1) The author would like to thank the Concord Free Public Library in Concord, Massachusetts, for access to various critical, biographical, and manuscript materials.
(2) This includes Alcott scholars throughout the last century. Ednah Cheney in Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals (1889) takes Alcott's diary as her source; Katharine Susan Anthony posits two more sources, both boys from Alcott's childhood, in her biography, Louisa May Alcott (1938) but finally concludes, "Laurie was really Ladislas Wisniewski" (163); Marjorie Worthington in Miss Alcott of Concord (1958) indexes Laurie as an alternate persona for Wisniewski (330), suggesting only Louisa May Alcott herself as another Laurie source; even more "scholarly" biographers such as Madeleine Stem (in the 1950 Louisa May Alcott: A Biography) and Sarah Elbert (in the more recent--1984--A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women) seem to take the characterization of Ladislas Wisniewski as Laurie as a rhetorical point.
(3) Although the story of "Sintram and his Companions" is not detailed in Little Women, Alcott gives a thorough description of the tale in Jo's Boys, in the chapter "Last Words" (cf. 13032). Later in the book, another of Fouque's stories is mentioned, "Aslauga's Knight." Because Alcott's character specifies that "Aslauga's Knight" is the third story in the book (345), it is possible that Alcott owned the collection translated from the German by F. E. Bunnett which was entitled Undine and Other Tales. "Sintram" is the fourth story in this collection. A different edition, also translated by Bunnett, titled Undine and Sintram can be found (NY: Hurst and Publishers), but this version contains only the two stories of the book's title.
(4) The overlap in readership between Alcott's book and Yonge's is perhaps not directly traceable, but both the actual and the intended audience for both books were similar. Yonge's book, according to Foster and Simons, was "Obviously popular with those readers to whom it was most directly addressed--middle-class girls of Anglican affiliation--[but] it also drew a public from a multiplicity of sources" (What Katy Read 62) including, as they note, literary gentleman. Little Women not only reached girls, but also, as Charles Strickland notes, "those reviewers who deigned to take notice of a children's book" (70). One of those reviewers was a prominent literary gentleman, Henry James, the novelist. In addition, both books were wildly popular, going through several editions within a few years of publication. Heir had reached 17 editions by the year of Little Women's publication, according to Barbara Dennis ("Introduction" to The Heir of Redclyffe vii). Madeleine Stem points out that the first four editions of Little Women sold out in the six months following publication (LMA: A Biography 184). Some overlap in audience between the two books is thereby more than probable. (5) See Elizabeth Keyser's Whispers in the Dark, for example; Keyser writes, "Rather than abandoning a radical feminist critique for the creation of exemplary female characters, Alcott enables a critique of the exemplars themselves" (xiv). Sarah Elbert, in A Hunger for Home, agrees, writing, "Louisa never questioned the value of domesticity; instead, she challenged the price ordinarily extracted from women like herself" (150). Amy March does not seem, however, to pay the price that these critics suggest; she is re-made by Alcott into a character who wants the domestic life. For a critical viewpoint that differs from Keyser's and Elbert's, see Anne Scott MacLeod's "The Caddie Woodlawn Syndrome"; here, MacLeod writes, "While in some respects [Alcott's] views were advanced, even feminist ... in her children's books at least, Alcott generally upheld the conventional tenets of nineteenth-century womanhood. The portraits of admirable women and children are immensely (and consciously) instructive as models of conventional ideals" (108; emphasis added). Works Cited Alcott, John S. P. "The `Little Women' of Long Ago." Good Housekeeping. February 1913:182-88. Alcott, Louisa May. "Heartache." Unpublished manuscript version. Concord, MA: Concord Free Public Library. --. Jo's Boys. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1886. --. The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Eds. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1989. --. Little Women. 1868. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1880. --. "My Boys." Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag. 1873. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1929. --. Moods. 1865. Ed. Sarah Elbert. London: Rutgers UP, 1991. --. "Our Foreign Correspondent." Unpublished manuscript version. Concord, MA: Concord Free Public Library. --. "Pansies." A Garland for Girls. 1887. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1980. --. The Selected Letters of Louisa May Alcott. Eds. Joel Myerson and Daniel Shealy. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1995. Anthony, Katherine Susan. Louisa May Alcott. New York: Knopf, 1938. Auerbach, Nina. Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1978. Brophy, Brigid. "Sentimentality and Louisa May Alcott." Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott. Ed. Madeleine B. Stem. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1984. Cheney, Ednah Dow. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters and Journals. 1889. Introduction by Ann Douglas. New York: Chelsea House, 1980. Cowan, Octavia. "Introduction." A Modern Mephistopheles. Louisa May Alcott. 1877. New York: Bantam, 1987. Dennis, Barbara. "Introduction." The Heir of Redclyffe by Charlotte Yonge. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Elbert, Sarah. A Hunger for Home: Louisa May Alcott and Little Women. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1984. Englund, Sheryl A. "Reading the Author in Little Women: The Biography of a Book." ATQ (American Transcendental Quarterly) New Series 12.3 (Sept. 1998): 199-219. Foster, Shirley and Judy Simons. What Katy Read: Feminist Re-Readings of `Classic' Stories for Girls. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1995. Fouque, Friedrich de la Motte. Undine. Trans. F. E. Bunnett. Rahway, NJ: Mershon. n.d. Helsinger, Elizabeth K., Robin Lauterbach Sheets, and William Veeder. The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837-1883; Volume III, Literary Issues. New York: Garland, 1983. Hovet, Grace Ann and Theodore R. Hovet. "Tableaux Vivants: Masculine Vision and Feminine Reflections in Novels by Warner, Alcott, Stowe and Wharton." ATQ (American Transcendental Quarterly) 7.4 (Dec. 1993): 335-56. Johnston, Norma. Louisa May: The World and Works of Louisa May Alcott. New York: Beech Tree, 1995. Keyser, Elizabeth Lennox. Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1993. MacLeod, Anne Scott. "The Caddie Woodlawn Syndrome: American Girlhood in the Nineteenth Century." A Century of Childhood, 1820-1920. Eds. Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger, Karin Calvert, Barbara Finkelstein, Kathy Vandell, Anne Scott MacLeod and Harvey Green. Rochester, NY: The Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1984. 97-120. Mare, Margaret and Alicia C. Percival. Victorian Best-Seller: The World of Charlotte Mary Yonge. London: George G. Harrap, 1948. Meigs, Cornelia. Invincible Louisa. 1933. New York: Scholastic, 1975. Nieriker, May Alcott. Concord Sketches: Consisting of Twelve Photographs from Original Drawings by May Alcott. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869. --. Studying Art Abroad and How to do it Cheaply. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1879. Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday. New York: Random House, 1996. Saxton, Martha. Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995. Stern, Madeleine. Louisa May Alcott: A Biography. 1950. New York: Random House, 1996. Strickland, Charles. Victorian Domesticity: Families in the Life and Art of Louisa May Alcott. University, AL: U of Alabama P, 1985. Worthington, Marjorie. Miss Alcott of Concord. New York: Doubleday, 1958. Yonge, Charlotte. The Heir of Redclyffe. 1853. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. KAREN SANDS-O'CONNOR is an Assistant Professor of English at Buffalo State College in New York, where she teaches courses in children's literature and in critical theory. This work on Alcott is part of a larger effort to annotate Little Women for an academic audience. Other professional interests include work on science fiction and fantasy, and her recent book, Back in the Spaceship Again: Juvenile Science Fiction Series after 1945, co-authored with Marietta Frank, was published by Greenwood Press in 1999. |
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