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I mentioned in my March Reading Roundup that my thoughts on Susan Cheever's biography of Louisa May Alcott and my thoughts on another reading of Alcott's Rose in Bloom had become rather lengthy. As promised, here's a post on both books, though I fear my ramblings on possible intertextuality in Rose in Bloom are long and indecisive.
Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography by Susan Cheever
As a biography I think this work could be considered a little disjointed. Months and years in Alcott's life are rushed through in a few un-detailed sentences, while narrative is sometimes interrupted for dissertations on history, genius or feminism. But maybe I'm just too curious about the things only hinted at, such as Louisa's acting “career” or her relationships with her sisters. I certainly did appreciate the historical context that the book provided as well as Cheever's value for Alcott's intelligent feminism.
The preface is a paean to Little Women as a guide through the “morass of feminine questions”, such as: “How can a woman avoid the trap of dependence and still have family satisfactions? [And] how can she enjoy the rich satisfactions of good work and earning money without missing out on a domestic life?” Since this theme in Alcott's works is one that especially makes her one of my heroines, I thoroughly appreciated the preface and the similar treatment of the novel An Old-Fashioned Girl.
I know some have been disturbed by such things as Cheever's conjecture that Bronson Alcott may have sexually abused his daughters. Certainly there is not enough evidence to make a decent argument for this, but Alcott's eroticization of the father-figure in such works as the thriller A Marble Woman or The Mysterious Model makes me more interested than incensed by the unprovable suggestion.
It was the epilogue that I found most thought-provoking. “Tell me she had a happy life!” a woman pled when she heard Cheever was writing a biography of Alcott. From the overall tone of the book, (with its accounts of numerous illnesses and conjecture that Louisa might have been bipolar,) I expected Cheever to say no. “What I think but don't say,” Cheever writes, “is that Louisa May Alcott had a happy life but that she had something even more important – a life and a body of work that are still fresh and enlightening today.”
My own Protestant upbringing has taught me that happiness isn't to be one's goal in life, but the underlying message has been that happiness will be the result of godly living. As an ambitious woman, I also understand what Cheever is saying about lasting work, rather than “happy days" spent doing ephemeral things. But according to modern or feminist ideals, isn't work - especially creative work - supposed to bring a fulfillment we automatically (but perhaps mistakenly) equate with happiness? While Alcott was undeniably a supporter of women's rights, perhaps Cheever is missing the need for domestic happiness present in some of Alcott's most independent heroines, such as Polly Milton or Phebe Moore (more on the Moore girl later).
A pathetic quote from 1874 reminds us how much more complicated real life was for the famous authoress than for her fictional heroines: “When I had the youth I had no money, now I have the money I have no time, and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life.” It was largely due to her role as financial and emotional provider for “the pathetic family” that Alcott was deprived of health and time. Yet “Alcott's life was what she made it, what she chose,” Cheever reminds us. “From the beginning she hoped to support her family; she did. From the beginning she aimed to have a voice in the world; she did.”
Rereading Rose in Bloom I was reminded of the importance of “the gift of living for others”. Certainly this was prominent among Louisa May Alcott's many gifts. Perhaps Cheever has a tendency to underestimate the joy Alcott received from serving others and the reciprocal way her family cared for her. Susan Bailey recently reported on some thoughts expressed by Jan Turnquist, executive director of Orchard House: “She pointed out that Louisa’s family was always there for her and knew exactly how to take care of her when she needed them most. Whether it was nursing her back to health after her stint as a Civil War nurse, or respecting her moods and needs to be alone to write (as evidenced by Louisa’s use of the 'mood pillow'), Louisa received as much as she gave.” In conclusion, while I'm glad I read this book, I can't wait to read more biographies of Louisa May Alcott, so I can get various perspectives and form my own portrait of one of my heroines.
A Favorite Quote: “They [the Alcotts] might starve, but they would starve as gentlewomen and as intellectuals, as farmers who revered the land or teachers who understood Plato, not as illiterate millworkers or factory girls.”
Thoughts on Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott (May Contain Spoilers)
I was eight years old when I was first given a copy of Rose in Bloom. It introduced me to nineteenth century novels and the marriage plot. A marriage-plot-novel the book may be, but Rose Campbell is a “strong-minded” woman who has vowed not to “have anything to do with love” till she has proved she is “something besides a housekeeper and a baby-tender!” Of course, as a rich heiress in fashionable New England, keeping to that resolve proves difficult. But she has her Uncle Alec to help, just as she did in childhood; indeed, Rose's continued dependence on the father-figure has disturbed some modern readers. Personally, I'm adamantly against ideologies, like Christian Patriarchy, which, in the words of Susan B. Anthony, “ordain all men sovereigns, all women subjects”. But I'm still not sure that I consider Rose's reliance on Uncle Alec as more than a healthy relationship of youth being counseled by the wisdom of experience. I'll hold off judgment on that aspect till a future rereading.
I do know that I'm uncomfortable with the treatment of Phebe Moore. Phebe's story is begun in Eight Cousins when Rose decides to “adopt” the sweet, musical orphaned kitchen-hand from the poorhouse. In Rose in Bloom Phebe is an accomplished singer who earns her bread (and reputation) far from home in the big city. Yet she still refers to Rose as “little mistress” and wants to “make some sacrifice” for her. In an article on Henry James' review of Eight Cousins Edith Gilmore provides something of an explanation for Alcott's subservient placement of Phebe: “Alcott never does work out some confusion about the advantages of coming from 'fine old stock' as compared to a nowhere origin like Phebe's. Although we are told that Phebe's hardships have formed her courageous character, it is evident that Alcott sympathizes with Rose's pride in her lineage and likes the concept of Rose as the flower of an ancient stem.”
But I'm even more troubled by the implication that Phebe must give up her singing career and sing for her husband alone when she marries. Actually, the sacrifice is natural in the nineteenth century context, but it's the treatment of it that disturbs me. (Jenny Lind did some concerts and became a professor of singing after her marriage, but one feels that it was not only her fame that made the difference, but the fact that her husband was a musician and composer who worked with her. Fine as the man may be who marries Phebe, one feels that he would be looked down on if he gave up his business to be close to her while she devoted her energies to her art.) From the beginning Phebe's art is presented as being an aid to domesticity; we first hear her singing in Eight Cousins as she scrubs floors. Later, Archie falls more in love with her while she and Rose sew and sing. Her debut as a singer is at a charity concert for orphans, with whom she identifies herself. “I never shall … think my music lost if it makes home cheerful for my mate,” she finally declares. “Birds sing sweetest in their own nests, you know.”
This view of art as an aid to domesticity is in direct contrast to that of George Eliot's singing heroines - Armgart and Princess Halm Eberstein. Armgart, the eponymous heroine of Eliot's verse-drama, refuses a marriage proposal, declaring, “The man who marries me must wed my Art —Honour and cherish it, not tolerate.” Princess Eberstein, in Daniel Deronda, gives up a child to further her career and only remarries (and gains that ridiculous title) when she thinks she has lost her voice.
Whether or not Alcott was aware of Eliot's singing heroines, Phebe ends up looking like the Jewess Mirah who maintains incredible simplicity, eschews the theatrical and is characterized by her devotion to the men in her life, rather than to her art.
As an amateur singer myself, I feel like my voice is “my letter to the world that never wrote to me”. To have it proposed that one stop singing publicly is like damming up the springs of the soul. “I love in singing, and am loved again,” Armgart says, leading her friends to conclude that in losing either her voice or the instinct behind it, they “should lose that whole [they] call [their] Armgart.” I am not my voice, but my voice is myself.
I tend to think Louisa May Alcott may have granted Phebe a little more of the autonomy of her voice if her art was closer to Louisa's own. While Jo March eventually submerges authoress in wife and mother, I have more of an impression of her intimate connection with her art.
Conclusion? I don't have one, except that here is another instance of the inevitable war between female ambition, intellectuality, desire, domesticity and religion that always leads me back to Christina Rossetti's inability to say “enough on earth”.
Now on to a different tack - SPOILERS FOLLOW
My favorite chapter in Rose in Bloom is “Among the Haycocks”. I like it despite the fact that every time I read it I feel guilty for not being more familiar with Keats, Milton, Emerson and Thoreau. Since it's full of literary references, I decided to take a look at what some might mean in the context of the story. I think the abundance of quotes by Emerson and Thoreau are self-explanatory to anyone who understands Louisa May Alcott's adoration for the men themselves and immersion in their philosophies. Therefore I'll put forward what I think may be the possible meanings of the other references; of course, I could be entirely wrong, or at least reading too much in. What can I say? I've loved this novel too long.
"'The Eve of St. Agnes' is the most perfect love story in the world, I think," Mac says, as he reads Keats' medieval story to Rose. Since the chapter is really the beginning of the cousins' love story, I think the inclusion of the poem is significant. The poem begins with a world of silence, desolation and “bitter chill”. Even when we enter the castle revelries, where the maiden Madeline is, we discover she is detached from her suitors and all that is going on around her. This parallels Rose's detachment in the fashionable world she has recently participated in, and indeed the situation of virtually all heroines of nineteenth century novels. Although Madeline plans to follow the tradition that is said to reveal to a girl her lover on St. Agnes' Eve, we see no evidence that she is thinking of Porphyro, who comes of an enemy family, and has entered the castle with the help of an old servant. Perhaps this parallels the fact that Rose has not thought of Mac in that way. In the next chapter of the novel, Rose is awakened to Mac's love only when he declares it; she initially rejects him, but it is the expression of his eyes that slowly woos her; she accepts his love after he has become a poet. Similarly, Madeline (literally) awakens to find Porphyo's gaze on her as he sings and plays her lute. It seems that while Louisa May Alcott was a feminist, she portrayed (in this novel, at least) a rather traditional view of enclosed (or even imprisoned) female existence, with the male gaze as an agency in awakening love.
Perhaps a more hopeful paradigm for Rose is when Mac compares her to the nymph Sabrina in Milton's masque Comus. While she has already played the part of the Lady tempted by intemperance (Charlie's weakness and intemperance at frivolous balls) and illicit sexuality (flirting, risque novels and a marriage without respect) she has, like the Lady, repel[led] interference by a decided and proud choice.” But comparing Rose to the nymph, Sabrina, who rescues the Lady when her brothers' efforts have failed, may imply that she has attained (spiritual) power and is now an example and aid to other tempted maidens. (I think my thoughts on this were better when I was first reading about Comus, but I forgot them.) Well, do you think I've over-analyzed an obscure 19th century book?
