Category Novels

Few books have captured the imagination of generations of readers like Little Women, the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott. Over the years, the book has been adapted, to the silver screen several times, including the 1994 remake starring Winona Ryder as the heroine Jo March. Now 25 years later, director Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, which released on December 25, once again welcomes audiences into the warm, loving and chaotic home of the March family. But how much do you know about Alcott, who defied stereotypes and conventions to become one of the foremost women writers of her time?

Early life

Born in Pennsylvania, United States, Alcott’s family closely resembled the March sisters you come across in Little Women. The family struggled with poverty, forcing Alcott and her three sisters to work as governesses, domestic servants and teachers to earn money. Some of her employers even mistreated her.

Alcott learned about women’s rights and equality, thanks to her parents, Bronson and Abigail Alcott. They were friends with Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass and Julia Ward Howe, who ended up creating on a young Alcott.

Her family operated an Underground Railroad, a network of people offering shelter and aid to slaves escaping from the South. Alcott helped them hide a fugitive slave for nearly a week. These experiences shaped her character and taught her to be open-minded.

Finding her voice

Alcott championed for universal suffrage. She wrote on women’s rights and went door to door in Massachusetts to encourage women to vote. When the state passed a law allowing women to vote in local elections she was the first one to get herself registered as a voter. Overcoming resistance, she, along with 19 women, cast their ballots. The Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified in the U.S. Constitution decades after her death.

Writing became an outlet for Alcott to voice her thoughts and experiences. One of her poems was published in a women’s magazine when she was 19. This gave her confidence to write more, especially edge-of-the-seat thrillers, which were written largely by men.

Adopting the pseudonym A.M. Barnard, she penned some racy pulp fiction about spies and revenge.

Alcott started writing a story about adolescent girls at the behest of her publisher Thomas Niles. When he asked Alcott to write a “girls” story, she had her doubts of its success. After all, it was a time when women were expected only to marry and take care of the household. She was not sure how the public would respond to a talented and independent heroine like Jo March. Her scepticism proved unfounded as Little Women turned out to be a smash hit.

Drawn from her own experiences, Little Women went on to become so popular that fans flooded her with letters, demanding sequels. Despite becoming a bestselling author, Alcott enlisted as an army nurse when the Civil War broke out. Putting on a brave face, she comforted dying soldiers and helped doctors perform amputations. She later wrote about her stressful but meaningful experience in Hospital Sketches.

Mercury poisoning

While working as a nurse, she contracted typhoid fever and was treated with a compound containing mercury. Though she recovered at the time, she continued to be chronically ill for the rest of her life due to exposure to mercury. At 51, she died of a stroke in Boston on March 6, 1888. She is buried next to her childhood companions Thoreau, Emerson and Hawthorne.

 

Picture Credit : Google

If you have read the classic Jane Eyre, which is about a feisty and strong-willed governess, you may be familiar with the name Charlotte Bronte. The author along with her sisters, Emily and Anne, was one of the most important literacy voices of the 19th Century. Last month, the Bronte Society acquired a rare, match-sized book written by Charlotte at the age of 14. One of six “little books” it was created by the author for the tiny toy soldiers, she and her siblings loved playing with.

Early life

Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their brother Branwell lived with their vicar father in Haworth, West Yorkshire in England. A young Charlotte had to come to terms with death and loss from an early age as she had lost her mother when she was five and later, her two elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth to tuberculosis. After the death of her two siblings Charlotte took on the role of the elder sister.

School was a nightmare for Charlotte. The Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge had a harsh environment, and Charlotte had several bad experiences there. It served as an inspiration for the dark and cold Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre.

A world of their own

Living in a small, remote village, Charlotte and her siblings had only each other for company. But a wooden village and a few toy soldiers were enough to unlock their imagination. They invented entire worlds created entire towns – like ‘the Great Glasstown Confederacy’ – filled with peasants and nobles, where an adventure was always afoot!

Charlotte wrote tiny books recording the detailed histories and adventures of these fictional worlds. The second issue of one such book, called The Young Men’s Magazine, was recently bought by the Bronte Society for a sum of 600,000. The miniature book will be displayed at the Parsonage Museum, built in the Brontes’ old home in Haworth.

As Charlotte and her siblings grew older, their imagination became more colourful. During dinner time, all the siblings would chat about possible storylines and flesh out characters. The adventures made way for romances, secret heroes and scheming villains. Some of these stories, including that of the Duke of Zamorna and the lovely Mina Laury from the imaginary kingdom of Angria, written by Charlotte were later published by Penguin as the Juvenilia of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte.

Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell

Charlotte often worked as a teacher and governess, but did not enjoy it. She went on to study in Brussels at the Peonsionnat Heger, a school for young ladies, where she fell in love with her teacher. However, he did not reciprocate her feelings and Charlotte was heartbroken.

She found solace in writing. Charlotte and her siblings penned several novels and poems using male pen names Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Currer Bell was Charlotte, Emily was Ellis and Anne was Acton. Charlotte even used this pseudonym while writing her most successful novel Jane Eyre. She did not want to reveal her identity as she feared that readers will not take a female author seriously. A famous poet had even told her once that “literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life.”

Though her first novel The Professor was rejected nine times, her second book Jane Eyre was published to huge acclaim in 1847.

However, her siblings didn’t live long enough to see her succeed. All three of them succumbed to tuberculosis between 1848 and 1849. Without her siblings with whom she had shared a close bond, Charlotte felt lost and alone.

Years later she married her father’s friend Arthur Bell Nicholls. They lived together at the Parsonage for a few months before her death. Bronte died at the age of 38 on March 31, 1855.

 

Picture Credit : Google