Louisa May Alcott’s prodigious output during the civil war
is too often hidden by Little Women, which was published in 1868. she’d
begun writing as a child and was first published at the age of 8 (a poem,
written under a pseudonym). Her first story was published when she was
fifteen, and she continued to write – to support her mother, father, sisters
and relatives – for the rest of her life.
When she was finally accepted as a nurse during the civil
war, her plans for an adventuresome setting she could reproduce in her writing
was, instead, a sordid hotel that had been converted to a dirty hospital.
The nurses soon transformed the hotel into a sanitary
hospital under the guidance of Florence Nightingale’s supporters. They learned
about sanitation, hand-washing, bathing, and cleaning, which had too often been
neglected. The nurses had been chosen for their zeal for helping the sick
and their not too attractive faces and figures. ‘Spinsters’ were
encouraged to apply and often chosen as nurses, but pretty young women were
not. The reasoning was that the patients needed comfort and ease, not to be
reminded of their infirmities and what was gone.
It was surprising to see a photo of Ms Alcott feeding a
union soldier when she was dressed in a Victorian era dark blue dress. The
philosophy behind the clothes and manners of the nurses was that the nurses
should remind the soldiers of their sisters and mothers: caring, somewhat
stern, and sympathetic.
The sympathy she must have shown to the soldiers shines
through many stories, such as “My Red Cap.” (the soldier in that story
was familiar to readers of little women as Jo’s husband.) Although Ms Alcott produced dozens of Civil War stories only a few collections are normally
found, and the 1863 version of hospital sketches is read, online, in many
places.
However, the autobiographical rendering of her leaving home to
work as a nurse at what she called “hurly burly house” is not in that
collection; nor is "My Red Cap" there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdx-_voteg
is an audio edition performed for a book shop in Concord MA, her home
town. An audio collection and other stories are available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdx-_voteg. Much of her writing is found at Project Gutenberg at no cost and at the Library
of Congress online, which also offers her diaries, which stretch from 1843 to
1888.
Ms Alcott, as a sanitary project nurse, fed, bathed,
dressed wounds, and listened to very ill soldiers. She was famous at her
hospitals for the kindness and interest she showed each of her patients. She was eager to write letters to families and loved ones – in the writer’s
opinion, with more depth of feeling than more famous people who wrote letters
for the soldiers. Many of these men were dying – and she was asked to inform
them of their condition. They were amputees whom the administrators felt
would be troubled with bad health for the rest of their lives. (There
were very few hospices or facilities for sick and injured soldiers then.)
She didn’t hesitate to ask a patient about his deformity or
sickness if she could help – and she very often did. She helped to found homes
for elderly soldiers who’d otherwise be homeless.
Her sympathy for the maimed and dying man in “My Red Cap” is
not marred by any mention of her own sickness and shortened life from mercury
poisoning. This had occurred at the “hurly burly house” when she was treated
for the typhoid she’d been infected with at that hospital.
Besides Ms Alcott’s literary works being hidden, her
achievements have been forgotten even more. The LOC pays tribute to her,
though, as do many other libraries. The ‘dime novels’ and stories that
she wrote to pay the bills for them all are found in replica and the Library of Congress is often a good source for finding them. The Saturday Evening Post printed many of her tales from the Civil War era.
Ms Alcott’s books and her intelligence were, in the writer’s
opinion, often hidden from the world behind her father’s connection to a
flamboyant version of transcendentalism (american romanticism, in literature). Mr. Alcott’s adherents fasted to extremes, engaged in ‘inner looking’
until they were half-crazed. However, the literature Mr. Alcott proposed
for their reading was completely ordinary and scholarly.
Ms Alcott’s first description of Fruitlands, a utopian
commune where they lived (and almost starved) was published in 1878 as the
short story “Transcendental Wild Oats” (although much of her work appears in
many forms). This is a satirical sketch of a family’s coming to Fruitlands, and
their leaving seven months later. The father in this story is seen, by
many, as Ms Alcott’s father, Bronson. In Little Women, he appears as the
father, a union chaplain who is no more visible when he returns from the war
than when he left.
Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was also a resident at Fruitlands, but a critical observer of the utopian communities in the second
half of the 1800’s, published the Blithedale romance, with a similar beginning
and ending. In his novel, Mr. Hawthorne touched upon aspects of the post Civil War era that were not often mentioned, as did Ms Alcott in her many
works.
Further reading
“Transcendental Wild Oats” by Louisa May Alcott. https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/engl368/transoats.pdf
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2081/2081-h/2081-h.htm
“Louisa May Alcott, a notable woman of the Civil War” https://www.historynet.com/louisa-may-alcott
“louisa may alcott” national museum of civil war medicine. http://www.civilwarmed.org/alcott/
“civil war hospital sketches from louisa may alcott” https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/07/civil-war-hospital-sketches-louisa-may-alcott/
“Louisa on the Front Lines” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/samantha-seiple/louisa-on-the-front-lines/
Biography from her website. https://louisamayalcott.org/louisa-may-alcott
Biography from encyclopedia britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/louisa-may-alcott
Louisa May Alcott - Her Life, Letters, and Journals by Louisa May Alcott https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38049/38049-h/38049-h.htm
Biography, resources. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/louisa-may-alcott
Louisa May Alcott’s prodigious output during the civil war is too often hidden by Little Women, which was published in 1868. she’d begun writing as a child and was first published at the age of 8 (a poem, written under a pseudonym). Her first story was published when she was fifteen, and she continued to write – to support her mother, father, sisters and relatives – for the rest of her life.
However, the autobiographical rendering of her leaving home to work as a nurse at what she called “hurly burly house” is not in that collection; nor is "My Red Cap" there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdx-_voteg is an audio edition performed for a book shop in Concord MA, her home town. An audio collection and other stories are available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwdx-_voteg. Much of her writing is found at Project Gutenberg at no cost and at the Library of Congress online, which also offers her diaries, which stretch from 1843 to 1888.
