Five Facts about the Great Author Behind Little Women
Louisa May Alcott, author of the iconic feminist novel Little Women would have been 184 years old when her birthday was celebrated with a Google Doodle on 29 November 2016. Little Women was one of the first popular novels that didn’t create a divide between males and females, and one of the first to portray women as complex, capable and ambitious. Here are five things about the author of the classical book that most people don’t know:
1. Louisa May Alcott began publishing her writing long before Little Women. She’d published short stories, poems, melodramas, and even thrillers, under the pen names Flora Fairfield and AM Barnard.
2. Alcott was strong-armed into writing the book even though she didn’t want to. She wasn’t particularly interested in writing a book for girls, as requested by her publisher. The only reason she agreed to write the book was to secure a publishing contract for her father Bronson Alcott.
3. Even though Alcott didn’t enjoy doing it, Little Women only took ten weeks to write. Alcott wrote in her journal that she did not like girls and did not enjoy ‘this sort of thing’. Despite the reservations that she voiced, the book was written in record speed and became an immediate success.
4. Little Women is Semi-Autobiographical. Much of the story was created by Alcott using childhood memories of her and her sisters’ lives. Jo is modeled on Alcott herself and gives voice to the author’s longing to be daring and to escape the antiquated gender-based restrictions.
5. Alcott refused to be swayed into writing in a stereotypical wedding. The novel was published in two parts, and while she was completing the second part fans were hoping that an announcement of a wedding between Jo and Laurie would form part of the story, but Alcott refused. Some suggested the reason is of a personal nature – Laurie’s character may have been based on Ladislas Wisniewski, a Polish musician with whom Alcott had a brief affair while in Paris in 1865. She crossed out any reference to him in her journal and wrote, ‘Couldn’t be’ in the margin. Others believe the reason was ideological. Alcott herself, who never got married, was a feminist, she believed it was wrong to assume that marriage is the ultimate goal of a woman’s life, and flat-out refused to oblige. In her journal Alcott wrote, ‘I won’t marry Jo to please anyone.’
