Marmee and Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother by Eve LaPlante, and: My Heart Is Boundless: Writings of Abigail May Alcott, Louisa’s Mother ed. by Eve LaPlante (review)

Eve LaPlante’s Marmee and Louisa and My Heart Is Boundless are complementary volumes that contribute to Alcott studies rich, new material about the writer’s mother, Abigail May Alcott. Most Alcott scholars will already be familiar with the basic facts about the latter’s life: she was the last child of a prominent Boston merchant, Colonel Joseph May; through the lineage of her mother, Dorothy Sewall, she was a descendant of the only judge to recant his decisions in the Salem witch trial, Judge Samuel Sewall. When Abba, as she was called, was almost thirty years old, she married the educator and philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott. Despite several miscarriages and one stillborn child, she also gave birth to four healthy daughters—Louisa and the three sisters who are semi-autobiographically depicted in Little Women. Because of Bronson’s idealism, his most famous school, the Temple School, closed in 1839, and Bronson never again held a full-time job—although he did found in 1843 the utopian community Fruitlands, which failed after less than a year. Abba moved with her husband more than twenty times during their married life and worked tirelessly at a variety of jobs to support the family financially. Louisa modeled “Marmee” in Little Women after her loving and idealistic mother, her “closest personal relationship throughout her life” (Petrulionis 10).

In other words, Abba’s saintly and hard-working qualities have already been well-documented by almost all Alcott biographers. In Marmee and Louisa, however, LaPlante fills out the picture to provide a more balanced depiction of both Abba’s life and her relationship with her second daughter. LaPlante relies heavily on Abba’s own writing—especially her journal—to create a portrait of a woman who was educated to think for herself, who never expected to marry but was pleased to marry for love and idealism when she did, and who was nowhere near as uncomplaining in the face of her husband’s failures as she is usually depicted. When Louisa was still a baby, for example, Abba criticized her husband for being “unkind, indifferent, [and] improvident” (qtd. in LaPlante, Marmee 67). Thus, as early as 1834, Abba was questioning her husband’s impracticality. In 1841, she wrote in her journals: “Why [does he] so much take, take, [and] so little Give! Give!” (98). During Bronson’s 1842 trip to England, during which he met the cofounder of Fruitlands, Charles Lane, Abba wrote in her journal: “I am enjoying this separation from my husband” (102). LaPlante speculates that following the colossal failure of Fruitlands, “there is no evidence that Bronson and Abigail—both in their early forties—were ever again physically intimate” (128). The evidence she provides is convincing; very little exists to suggest that the early passion of the Alcotts’ marriage was renewed once Abba became the family’s sole provider.

LaPlante also astutely analyzes a frequent pattern in Abba’s married life. When Bronson was away traveling or working, he and Abba would write each other passionate and beautiful letters. And shortly after Bronson’s return home, Abba would find some reason to travel away from home herself, usually to visit a relative. “Not only was he often away, but she herself developed a habit of departing to visit relatives soon after his return” (139). LaPlante supplies numerous examples as evidence, making clear that absence often made Abba’s heart fonder of Bronson.

Another major contribution this volume makes to Alcott studies is the detailed picture of Abba’s brother, Samuel Joseph May. Samuel Joseph’s work as an early abolitionist and subsequently as an early feminist is fascinating. He was a leader in the abolitionist movement...