Louisa May Alcott, "Little Women"

The region around Boston was simple and genuine countryside. “There,” says Cunliff, “the aspiring writer could live on very little, cultivating a piece of land to get what he needed for his livelihood […] and making an occasional trip to Boston to borrow books, or meeting with a publisher. […] it was in that circle of cultured and intimately connected communities, around Boston, that the phenomenon of transcendentalism appeared, an imprecise term hardly attributable to any of the most important figures of the time. “

These are writers imbued with Kantian philosophy, convinced that they live in a beneficial universe, in connection with nature, of a substantial romantic mold and in constant movement towards perfection, obtainable, moreover, only in America. It was Emerson who formulated transcendentalist theory most completely. Among the many members of the movement, from Emerson himself to Thoreau, to Hawthorne, to Whitman, there was also Amos Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May, the author of “Little Women”.

Louisa May was born in Germantown in Pennsilvania in 1832, then moved to Concord, west of Boston, with her family, the second of four sisters. She grew up in an “enlightened and progressive” environment, fiercely abolitionist, and lived the reality of the Civil War. The father founded a school known for its revolutionary ideas, where the principle of respect for the spontaneity of the child is applied.

This is how Silvano Ambrogi describes Louisa, as she is captured in a portrait of her:

“We see her at the corner of a desk, with a dress with wide, very long skirts, a white and voluminous curled bib, wavy hair and a large bun at the nape of the neck, in short, the appearance of a lady from the good society of the time. Her arm appears completely outstretched, with almost D’Annunzio languor, but her viriloid grit acts as an open contrast: her sunken gaze, which points straight ahead and her mouth tightly closed. Her pen appears between her fingers as if it were a stiletto or a pistol. “

Amos Bronson transforms the house into a transcendentalist cenacle, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson frequent the drawing room.

Louisa gives school to the latter’s daughters and has free access to the library, where she reads everything from Plato to Dickens, her idol, whom she will meet during a trip to the old continent and of which she will recreate “The Pickwick Circle”, through the secret society founded for fun by the protagonists of her most famous book.

She works as a nurse, she falls ill with typhus, she writes many successful books, containing all the elements of the classic nineteenth-century appendix novels, with gothic adventures and tragic heroines. During a trip to Europe as a companion — described in the second part of “Little Women”, that in Italy was published as “Little Women Grow Up “— she has a love affair with a musician who becomes the novel’s Laurie. She will die in 1888, of a cold, while she runs to her father’s bedside without knowing that he died two days before her.

Published in 1869, and then in the full version in 1880, “Little Women” refers to the life that took place in the Alcott / March house, in the years of the formation of the four sisters and immediately offers us the image of America in the second half of the Nineteenth century. Of the four girls, only Beth retains the original name and, like Louisa’s unfortunate younger sister, she too will die (although not in the first part).

Each of the protagonists has a distinct and different personality from the others, although they all grew up in the same environment and under the watchful and wise eye of their mother. Since their first appearance on the scene, the terms used to refer to each of them immediately indicate their characters, shape them and make them stand out in the eyes of the reader.

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all”, added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

“We’ ve got father and Mother and each other “, said Beth contentedly, from her corner di lei.

In these first lines there is already the whole novel, the strengths and weaknesses of the sisters, the shortcomings that will affect the plot, their way of acting, of presenting themselves, their movements.

Jo, the tomboy, is lying on the carpet. For her, the author chooses the verb grumbled, she grumbled, to fix her bellicose character from the beginning.

The wise and romantic Meg, (sighed) sighs over the wealth she can’t have that will lead her into temptation.

The spoiled and capricious Amy shows up with an injured sniff, “an offended sniffling”, while for the good Beth, who shyly stands in a corner, the adverb contentedly is used, that is with contentment, meekness.

The main character is Josephine (Jo) March, in whom Alcott is reflected. Through her, the author gives voice to her feminism, protesting against the injustices suffered by women. Jo is a “bad boy”, her only beauty is her hair, which she will be deprived of in a surge of generosity. Clumsy and furious, capable of alternating good impulses and anger, she dreams of going to university, of fighting alongside her father in the Civil War. She is the intellectual of the house, the writer full of imagination who composes her short stories and reads them in the attic to her sisters.

Following the teachings of her father Amos, Alcott deeply believes in God and in the possibility of improving oneself, of making a sort of pilgrimage in life towards transcendence, sublimation and perfection, of which the little book given at Christmas by her mother to her daughters is a symbol. This involves a fight for all four girls, but especially for Jo, who has the most difficult character. It will be of great help and comfort to her to discover that even her mother, apparently infallible, like her had to fight to rein in and reform her own nature. In the end, good will triumph over weaknesses, envy, whims and the sisters will find themselves more united than ever, in the end the pilgrim’s transcendent journey will be completed.