Louisa May Alcott was one of the most successful and bestselling authors of her day, earning more than any of her male contemporaries. Her classic Little Women has been a mainstay of American literature since its release nearly 150 years ago, as Jo March and her calm, beloved “Marmee” have shaped and inspired generations of young women. Biographers have consistently attributed Louisa’s uncommon … uncommon success to her father, Bronson Alcott, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of his daughter’s progressive thinking and remarkable independence.
But in this riveting dual biography, award-winning biographer Eve LaPlante explodes these myths, drawing from a trove of surprising new documents to show that it was Louisa’s actual “Marmee,” Abigail May Alcott, who formed the intellectual and emotional center of her world. Abigail, whose difficult life both inspired and served as a warning to her devoted daughters, pushed Louisa to excel at writing and to chase her unconventional dreams in a male-dominated world.
In Marmee & Louisa, LaPlante, Abigail’s great-niece and Louisa’s cousin, re-creates their shared story from diaries, letters, and personal papers, some recently discovered in a family attic and many others that were thought to have been destroyed. Here at last Abigail is revealed in her full complexity–long dismissed as a quiet, self-effacing background figure, she comes to life as a fascinating writer and thinker in her own right. A politically active feminist firebrand, she was a highly opinionated, passionate, ambitious woman who fought for universal civil rights, publicly advocating for abolition, women’s suffrage, and other defin-ing moral struggles of her era.
In this groundbreaking work, LaPlante paints an exquisitely moving and utterly convincing portrait of a woman decades ahead of her time, and the fiercely independent daughter whose life was deeply entwined with her mother’s dreams of freedom. This gorgeously written story of two extraordinary women is guaranteed to transform our view of one of America’s most beloved authors.
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This is not a sunny book about the “little women” of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. Instead it’s a sober-eyed look at the perils and tribulations suffered by the family starry-eyed Bronson Alcott, who often went hungry while he wandered off like a sort of New England Don Quixote. LaPlante, who is a descendant, is also a good storyteller and determined to set the record straight. A good read.
Marmee & Louisa by Eve LaPlante was the perfect book to read after reading the ARC Louisa on the Front Lines by Samantha Seiple and Meg Jo Beth Amy by Anne Boyd Rioux. LaPlante, who is a distant cousin to Louisa May Alcott, had access to family documents and letters. Her book concentrates on the relationship between mother Abigail May Alcott and daughter Louisa while also covering the entire family and Louisa’s career.
I very much enjoyed the book, but I didn’t always like all the characters…okay, one character…Bronson Alcott, the patriarch.
Abigail May worked her entire life for women’s rights and equality and abolition. Her brother was a leader in the Unitarian church, suffrage movement, and an ardent abolitionist.
Abigail was unable to have the formal education her brother Samuel enjoyed, but read his books and educated herself with his help. She aspired to be a teacher, someone who contributed to the world.
Then she met the charismatic Bronson, a self-educated man with big ideas and a golden tongue. They fell in love and Abigail hitched her wagon to his star. Samuel was smitten, too, as eventually was all the Transcendentalists who later supported Bronson…even when they became weary of him.
That support was not just in philosophy and friendship but financial. Bronson was too radical to keep his teaching positions and too intent on “higher things” to worry about how to put food on the table or a roof over the heads of his growing family. And he traveled–a lot–leaving his family to fend for themselves.
Abigail relied on the compassion of their friends and family but also found any work she could–sewing, teaching, social work, nursing. Young Louisa felt for her mother and pledged to aid the family. She took jobs she disliked but also as a teenager started to write stories for magazines. They were sensational, Gothic thrillers that brought in quick cash. She was particularly adept at imagining these tales.
Perhaps because she was so familiar with the powerlessness of women from watching her mother’s toil, hardships, physical exhaustion and decline, mental anguish, while also indulging in acts of charity and working for abolition and women’s right to vote.
Louisa was an active girl and young woman, wary of love and thirsting for the wider world, when at thirty she signed up to work as a nurse caring for the wounded men of the Civil War. Within six weeks she became ill and was near to death when Bronson came to take her home. Abigail nursed Louisa back to life, if not health; for the rest of Louisa’s 56 years, she suffered from ill health, perhaps from Lupus.
Louisa kept writing and when Little Women was published became a sensation. She was able to finally support her family as she had always wanted, taking the burden off Abigail.
For the rest of her life, Louisa took care of her mother and family. She fulfilled her mother’s dream by voting in an election.
The love and care between these women, Abigail and Louisa, is touching and inspiring, their strength of will humbling, their story timeless.