Recent Alcott Criticism

Five years ago, Madeleine Stern's discovery of Louisa May Alcott's "unknown thrillers" shocked many readers of Alcott's juveniles. The image that many readers had of the benevolent Miss Alcott writing lovely nostalgic stories for children of happy homes and happy childhoods was jarred by the lurid gothic thrillers, full of deceit, opium, and madness. The stories are like the "potboilers" that Jo March wrote for the newspapers in New York. Alcott published them either anonymously or under a pseudonym in newspapers in New York and Boston, and most of them before Little Womenbrought her financial success. The stories are full of strong women who use their strength for evil more often than for good; they are tricksters, liars, addicts, and lunatics, but their ultimate triumph in the stories is to destroy the men who love and admire and try to manipulate them. The population in the "potboilers" contains none of the good people found so often in Alcott's works for children. After Stern's discovery of Alcott's periodical literature, Alcott's reputation certainly deserved some reconsideration, especially when one considers the syrupy pictures of her drawn for us by many of her early biographers. Feminist critics brought about a renewed interest in Alcott's adult novels, and with the reissuing of Work, one of the more interesting adult books, the reassessment began in earnest.

But the importance of the rediscovery of Alcott's adult literature has been overemphasized, to the point of obscuring Alcott's accomplishments as a writer for children. Stern says in her article "Louisa M. Alcott in Periodicals" that Alcott's "writings in periodicals reflect far more comprehensively and incisively than her Little Womenseries her development as a writer" (p. 370). The article includes considerations not only of Alcott's "potboilers" but also of her work in monthly magazines for women and children, so perhaps the periodicals survey is more comprehensive. Stern further examines Alcott's periodical writings as a feminist in "Louisa Alcott's Feminist Letters," where her fervor as a social activist leads Stern to conclude that Alcott "emerges as a feminist indeed, but by no means a militant feminist. She was a feminist because she was a humanist . . ." (p. 429). Certainly Stern's collections and examinations of these obscure and not widely available documents are useful and helpful to Alcott scholars, including those interested in her works for children.

But some of the reconsiderations of Alcott's reputation go too far. Martha Saxton's Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcottcontinues where Stern's reassessment left off. This is a "modern biography" with a vengeance; Saxton traces the roots of Alcott's difficulties in life and in writing to her tempestuous relationship with her father, and in good psychoanalytic form she spends about half the book examining Bronson instead of Louisa. While Saxton's descriptions of Boston at various times in Alcott's life are brilliant, the analytical method employed in other parts of the book remains disturbing...