“I want to do something splendid…something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I remember reading those words when I was a young girl and holding Little Women to my heart. At last I thought there is someone like me who wants to be independent and write and conquer the world and won’t be told that a “girl” can’t do it.
It was the anniversary of Louisa May Alcott’s birth on November 29. Here is her story.
My book came out; and people began to think that
topsy-turvy Louisa would amount to something after all …
-Louisa May Alcott, 1855
Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and May, were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher Bronson Alcott, and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.
Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau, and theatricals in the barn at “Hillside” (now Hawthorne’s “Wayside”).
Like her character, “Jo March” in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy. “No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race,” she claimed, “and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences …”
For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. Louisa preferred to play the “lurid” parts in these plays –“the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens.”
At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: “I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!”
Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment, Louisa determined, “… I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world.” Whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or household servant, for many years Louisa did any work she could find.
Louisa’s career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. In 1854, when she was 22, her first book Flower Fables was published. A milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches (1863), based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, DC during the Civil War.
When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher in Boston, Thomas Niles, asked her to write “a book for girls.” Little Women was written at Orchard House from May to July 1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. “Jo March” was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her own individuality –a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype then prevalent in children’s fiction.
In all, Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT YOU ROCK!
Thanks for taking the time to read and if you have a story about a remarkable woman you would like to share, please feel free to leave your site information in the comments section.
Information obtained from the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association
I love this piece and I also love her courage “and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!”
I love this… Thanks for sharing
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Love this series, Bernadette! 🙂
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After reading this post, I am definitely going to buy ‘Little Women’ the next time I pass by a book shop!
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Thanks for sharing Louisa’s story! I need to read Little Women.
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[…] week I look forward to Friday morning and a treat in the form of Bernadette’s regular ‘Feminist Friday’ posts on her blog haddonmusings.com The women featured, both famous and not so famous, are aways […]
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Bernadette, I received a red leather bound copy of ‘Little Women’ when young and it became my favourite book for years! So interesting to learn more about Alcott and I had no idea she was such a prolific writer. What a wonderful sense of determination and she held true on her statement at 15 to be famous!
Inspired by your posts I have written a piece on my post today about a pioneering British printmaker, Helena Markson. It can be found here: https://annikaperry.com/2016/12/02/a-sense-of-place/
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Annika, thanks for sharing Helena’s story. I just reblogged it.
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I can remember reading Little Women when I was in primary school. Don’t remember the story though 🙂 Might have to go back and read it again through adult eyes
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You will enjoy it, I am sure. Thanks for stopping by and reading.
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Love this! Such great determination!
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Very nice, Bernadette. Thank you for sharing.
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A timely post that reminds us of the power of women, their determination, their contributions, their creativity, and their generosity in sharing.
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I love this series Bernadette! Thansk for inspiring
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I loved Little Women and Jo’s Boys, but I had no idea she wrote so many books. And she died so young! Thank you.
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One of the most wonderful things about living where I have been living is the proximity to LMA – I visited her house, of course, several times and her grave in Sleepy Hollow to chat with her. I brought up four daughters on my own and my nickname was Marmie for many years on account of Little Women but your piece really captures the remarkable woman she was. Sitting in my mother’s living room in Oxford England, I have to thank you for your kismet timing …. I just needed this piece today!
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Sending you hugs.
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I love Alcott! Little Women is a favorite. I also like the old movie -especially at Christmas. I have “Under the Lilacs” and read it every spring!
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I devoured Alcott’s books when I was growing up. I loved the sweetness in that family, and often wished my siblings and I could be so nice to one another!
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Well, you know the story was fiction after all . My sisters and I were definitely not Little Women material when it came to our relationships.
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