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This collection concentrates on the secondary works of Louisa May Alcott and looks at the idea that Alcott was as heavily influenced by her times as by her transcendentalist upbringing. Her work often subverts the conventional and includes the new, the practical, and the real. The sections include: (1) the gothic and the monstrous feminine, (2) the theme of useful work, (3) the themes of physical and mental health, and (4) Alcott's philosophy concerning creativity and genius. Contributors emphasize Alcott's belief in women's agency and argue that Alcott can be considered as a brilliant bridge between the Transcendental idealism of the early nineteenth century and later reforms.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part 1 Re-defining the Gothic: The Sensational has a Modern Edge.- Chapter 2: The Sensational Possibilities of the Double-Proposal Plot in Alcott's Moods.- Chapter 3: Reading the Monstrous Feminine in the Works of Louisa May Alcott.- Part 2 Re-Defining Woman's Identity through Work.- Chapter 4: Louisa May Alcott's Literary Activism: A Realist Reading of Hospital Sketches.- Chapter 5: Louisa May Alcott's Work: A Story of Experience and the Heroine's Educational.- Chapter 6: Louisa May Alcott's Re-"Work"ing of Thoreau's Walden.- Chapter 7: Circus, Gender, and Class Under the Lilacs.- Part 3 Re-defining Health and Strength.- Chapter 8: "Health Should Come First": Alcott's Model of Hygienic Female Development in Eight Cousins.- Chapter 9: "Cozy Corners" and "Pebbly Beaches": Resolving Emotional Distress through Nature Connectedness in Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom and Jack and Jill. Chapter 10: "A Sweeter Poem Than Any They Could Write": Female Mental Resilience and Genre Limitations in "A Whisper in the Dark" and A Modern Mephistopheles.- Part 4 Re-defining Creativity: A Challenge to Emersonian Ideas.- Chapter 11: Women in search of the Sublime: Louisa May Alcott and May Alcott Nieriker.- Chapter 12: Hospital Sketches and Celebrity Authorship in the Civil War Era.- Chapter 13: The Care and Feeding of Genius: Louisa May Alcott's Jo's Boys.
About the author
Lauren Hehmeyer, M.A., M.I.S., is a retired professor from Texarkana College, USA. She is the co-editor of The Forgotten Alcott: Essays on the Artistic Legacy and Literary Life of May Alcott Nieriker (2022). She has presented papers on the Alcotts in Paris, France; Lancaster, England; and Concord, Massachusetts
Summary
This collection concentrates on the secondary works of Louisa May Alcott and looks at the idea that Alcott was as heavily influenced by her times as by her transcendentalist upbringing. Her work often subverts the conventional and includes the new, the practical, and the real. The sections include: (1) the gothic and the monstrous feminine, (2) the theme of useful work, (3) the themes of physical and mental health, and (4) Alcott’s philosophy concerning creativity and genius. Contributors emphasize Alcott’s belief in women’s agency and argue that Alcott can be considered as a brilliant bridge between the Transcendental idealism of the early nineteenth century and later reforms.
