-
Louisa May Alcott's Unruly Medical Women
- Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 74, Number 4, Winter 2018
- pp. 61-86
- 10.1353/arq.2018.0022
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Abstract:
Louisa May Alcott depicts unruly women in the medical profession in her semi-autobiographical collection Hospital Sketches (1863) and the children's series novels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). This essay examines the relationship between generic constraints and representations of female unruliness, arguing that the generic inconsistency of Hospital Sketches shapes Alcott's depiction of involuntary bodily unruliness, while the rigid genre requirements of the children's series novel allow Alcott to portray a more intentional form of female unruliness. Alcott's two forms of unruliness are presented as models of resistance to traditionally feminine behaviors.