Literature

MARBLEWOMENWEB xmidsemesterpaperwithcomments xpresentation1.pptxarticle21 CupidAmorandPsyche

 Rewrite the paper attached (mid-semester paper with comments) according to the comments: 1. First, Introduce the myth because the story alludes to the myth – the myth is attached as a PDF file The myth can shed light on the story (this is the thesis – specify it in the introduction) 2. Present the original myth briefly and then try to compare it to the story using quotes. 3. Explore similarities and differences that may shed a new light on the story. 4. Draw conclusions about the comparison. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j84oqn0g273r1gq/MARBLE%20WOMAN ?dl=0

In “Cold Dates,” is about a woman called Shari, she is tired from dates, tired of small talk and she is trying to become the woman she thinks men will want. Shari is dispirited from the number of dates she’s been on, 88 and counting, without finding someone.

Shari’s feelings of despair touched my heart, her frustration, and her helplessness and even she was willing to change herself to find love and start a family. She is in a situation where many women are in the world due to the technological world and other reasons.

This story is about a black single woman called Apple who wants to get married and have a family, but in the city where she lives there is a matchmaking system in which the father of the woman who wants to marry places a flag (in different colors indicating her age and wishes to marry), Apple does not want to use this method for various reasons. In the end, the desire for family overpowers her and she hangs the flag.

The story elicited feelings of sadness and helplessness for Apple, her strong desire to get married, her feelings of being unwanted by men implicit in the lines of the text and yet her stubborn refusal not to hang the flag. The text made me think about the situation of women in our current world who are currently in Apple’s condition and don’t even have a “flag”.

Mor Marom – 312141427

Dr.

Etti

Gordon-Ginzburg

Children in Gothic Literature

26\03\2020

Greek Myth in “A Marble Woman” by LM Alcott Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Motifs from Greek Mythology in…? The Allusion to the Myth of Amor and Psyche in….?

  In the novella  “A Marble Woman” written by Louisa May Alcott one can observe the integration of Greek mythology in order to deliver a message of collective importance. A myth is a traditional story that embodies beliefs regarding facts or phenomena on in which often the forces of nature and soul are personified. It also commonly held belief or the misconception that idealizes the reality. Myths belong to the general classes of traditional tales. Myths have been widely incorporated in literature, especially in the definition and elaboration of societal traditions. Source? However, it is worth noting that myths serve anticipated objectives, such as keeping people away from unethical practices or promoting morality. In this context, in Louisa May Alcott’s novella “A Marble Woman” the myth outlined of Cupid and Psyche is reviewed while making the necessary comparison and focusing on the Greek myth elements, its mutual importance difference between ancient tale and other genres like legends and fairy tales. Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Allusions to Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Verb and Unclear wording Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ? do you mean: alluded to? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ?

Misconceptions describing the subject love and relations exist in the two stories. In the novella, “A Marble Women”, the female character gets married to a monstrous husband who at first was her guardian (Louisa Alcott 197), Psyche also moved from her father’s house to her husband’s house (McCullough 90). Also, there is love at first sight as stated,: “For many minutes Bazil Yorke watched the unconscious child as if there was some strong attraction for him in the studious little figure”(Louisa Alcott 136). Love is wretchedness or rather a mystery used as a mythic element in the novel. One of the character’s’ experience is explained when Louisa Alcott/ states that “love makes half the misery of the world; it has been the bane of my life, it has made me what I am, a man without ambition, hope, or happiness.” (Peabody 150). Why are you bringing this quote? What does it aim to prove? In “A Marble Woman” Alcott states that love will bring either sorrow or happiness for one’s life.Quote? Cupid and Psyche had to overcome some obstacles to be together as husband and wife despite their differences (Apuleius & Edward). The scenario, therefore, presents aspects defining Greek myth from the relationship perspectives. However, it is worth noting that the given argument is applicable in a real-life situation. The stability of marriage depends on the cooperation of the involved parties. If they care about each other and communicate effectively, then they are likely to lead a happy marriage life and vice versa. Although the concept is approached as a misconception, it aims to encourage couples to participate in executing marriage goals to enhance happiness. What is the connection to the story? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Is Bazil Yorke really monsterous? I don’t think so. Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Indeed, but under completely different circumstances, and Psyche’s lover and then husband is the God of love himself and no monster at all Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: I agree, but Cecil is a child when he falls in love with her, whereas Cupid and Psyche are no children Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What do you mean by that? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: If this quote is not from the novella you have to say so here Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What scenario? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What argument? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What is the concept and what is the misconception?

The usage of elements of the myth in the Novel novella are manifested when love is portrayed to be a mystery, . Cupid was not a real human being, but some evil serpent-like creature and he fell in love with Psyche who also was superhuman and worshipped as a goddess due to her perfect beauty. It is expected that the evil creature would have fallen for a normal human being, but he did not, : “Mr. Yorke had love trouble and can’t bear women, so none dare goes near him,” or Psyche would get married to the real human lovers, but it’s not the case (Peabody 135). “She shall be given to one who waits for her on yonder mountain; he overcomes gods and men” Later described as “monster” (Peabody 90). “Surely he whom the Oracle had called her husband was no monster, but some beneficent power, invisible like all the rest“(Peabody 90). Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: He was a god! Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: NO! Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: No, she was mortal Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Do you speak about the novella here? You should say so Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: He did! But she left him! This is why he hass “love troubles” Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What is the connection between the two sentences? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ? context?

The novel presents myths as modeling societal behavior of behavior and bringing about positive religious experiences. In “A Marble Woman” novel, Cecil, already secretly in love with Yorke, chooses to stay with Yorke, and become his ideal woman, a marble woman.” (McCullough, 61). Psyche’s father sought guidance from the god of Apollo, who was the god of light, reason, and prophecy he and was advised to abandon her on a rocky crag where a serpent-like creature would marry her. Having the conclusion that beauty was a curse, Psyche was not like any other person, and so she was worshipped as a goddess of love due to her perfection. This also led her to her life partner, the evil creature, since the real human lovers felt intimidated to approach her. Cecil fell in love with Yorke as well aslike Psyche with Cupid despite Cupid and Yorke’s physical and emotional aspects. Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Why “a marble woman”? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Connection? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: NO! Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ?? Both were VERY good looking!

In most settings, myths are associated with repercussions, as presented in “A Marble Woman” story and Cupid and Psyche. The main characters always survive difficult tasks like for the case of Psyche when Venus, Cupid’s mother, told her, Cupid’s mother, that for them to wed, she had to do some difficult tasks first. She was supposed to sort a huge pile of seeds for a single night and was helped by ants. Concerning the second task, she was assisted by a river god on how to collect the fleece of the golden sheep. She traveled to Proserpina queen of the dead to convince her to drop her beauty in a box for Venus for the last task, and the unseen voice helped her. SOURCE? Cecil tried to get Yorke’s attention but was disappointed (Alcott142) until he told her that he was done with love (Alcott151). Cecil’s starting point in life as a twelve-year-old child, homeless and alone, and later on her addiction to opium, depicts her life journey which was ridden with difficulties in which she puts aside her natural impulses for warmth and affection. She experiences difficulties in establishing love relationships, but her success at deadening nature in addition to Yorke’s actions actually backfire (Alcott 82).Psyche decided to perform all tasks that Venus wanted her to do so that she could get a chance to be with her loved one (Pelsue? ). She was then made immortal and free from obstacles created from humans. While Cecil decides to fight and “conquered” her loved one and abandoning her childish innocent image what requires of to actually fight against herself because for her a woman in love is capable of anything (Alcott 249). Through it the readers can observe that the bond between the couples would not be broken. Where do you learn that? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What repercussions?? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Does she? I don’t think so. She persists in her attempts to achieve love, as we learn towards the end of the novella Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What actions/ Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: How? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ?? unclear, also due to wording and syntax Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What couples?

Most mystery love stories usually end well, and the myth of cupid and psyche is not an exception. Psyches’ family knew that she was going to be killed by Cupid, but that was not the case since she did the tasks by Venus to see him again, and that came to pass when she was made immortal (Apuleius & Edward). Louisa May Alcott in her story “A Marble Woman” ensures that the context in which the myth was integrated is enlightening and informative that is applicable in real-life as for Cecil and Yorke. The Greeks promoted morality and ethical practices through the formulation of myths and misconceptions concerning multiple life aspects such as relationships. As a result, cohesion in the society was significantly enhanced, thus economic activities. Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: ?? source? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: NO Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: NO Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: How so?! Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: No – this is fiction Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: How is this relevant here?

The Usage of Psyche and Cupid in the Novel was meant to compare Cecil and Psyche. Cecil and Psyche were both courageous and faced all they had to go through with great determination and persistence till finally, they reached love. The comparison is based on character traits, behavior, purpose and even external appearance. : “Colorless, like a plant deprived of sunshine, strangely unyouthful in the quiet grace of her motions, the sweet seriousness of her expression, but as beautiful as the psyche and almost as cold” (Alcott 144). What does this quote suggest? Why is it here?

In conclusion, it is possible to observe that Louisa May Alcott implements many elements from the Myth into the novel indirectly, majorly the overcoming of obstacles to reach the ultimate love and marriage. Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What obstacles does Cecil have to overcome?

The transformation of a woman into a statue is difficult, and in the end, impossible, because female passion cannot be contained.√ Although the presented myths and misconceptions might not be currently applicable in currently, it is worth noting that they were instrumental in defining societal activities and interactions.  Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Word? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: What misconceptions? Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: This undermines everything you have written so far. If the myth is not applicable to the story, why discuss it in the first place?! Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: Where?

Works Cited

Apuleius, Lucius, and Edward John Kenney. Cupid and Ppsyche. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

McCullough, Kate. “Louisa May Alcott’s Incestuous Fathers and Fiendish Mothers, or, the Daughter As Wife.” Pacific Coast Philology (1991): 59-67. Retrieved from:www.jstor.org/stable/1316556. Comment by etti gordon ginzburg: MLA

Peabody, Josephine Preston. Old Greek Folk-Sstories Told Anew. No. 114. Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin [c1897], 1897.

Pelsue, B. The myth of Cupid and Psyche – Brendan Pelsue, 2017. Retrieved from

Dear Mor,

What is your main argument in this essay? The comparison between the novella and the Greek myth of Cupid (Amor) and Psyche is not systematic, and mostly clear. What are the similarities between the two stories? What are the differences? Why this allusion in the first place? And then your statement, at the end of the paper, that this comparison is not applicable here, undermines the paper’s entire rationale. Moreover, there are many factual mistakes regarding the myth, and many quotes from the story are not framed and, therefore, cannot be understood. Finally, the paper is in need of thorough editing. Please see my detailed comments above.

If you have questions, we can meet (online) to discuss them. I also suggest that we meet before you start writing your second paper.

Etti

60

Cupid & Psyche
Presented by:
Muna and Raghda

The story

Greco-Roman
From: Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew by Josephine P. Peabody. London: George Harrap, 1910. pp. 89-103.

The Usage of Elements of the Myth in the Novel:
Love is a misery
“Love’s bring joy or sorrow for a whole life long.” (p.89)
“love makes half the misery of the world; it has been the bane of my life—it has made me what I am, a man without ambition, hope, or happiness.” (Yorke, p.150)

The Houses

Psyche moves from her father’s house into her husband’s house.
Cecil moves from Yorke’s first house –when he is her guardian- to a newer house when he is her husband.

The first house in both tales is fancy, yet the second is fancier.
“A fountain fluttered gladly in the midst of it, and beyond there stretched a white palace wonderful to see… It was all kinglier than her father’s home …The lordly rooms, beautiful with everything that could delight a young princess. No pleasant thing was lacking. There was even a pool, brightly tiled and fed with running waters.” (p.90)
“a long, lofty hall, softly lightened by the sunshine that crept in through screens of flowers and vines. A carpet, green and thick as forest moss, lay underfoot; warm-hued pictures leaned from the walls, and all about in graceful alcoves stood Yorke’s statues, like fit inhabitants of this artist’s home. Before three wide windows airy draperies swayed in the wind, showing glimpses of a balcony the overhung the sea, whose ever-varying loveliness was a perpetual joy” (p.197)
“All that you see is yours” (p.90) “yes, this is home.” (Yorke, p.197)

Monstrous Husband
“She shall be given to one who waits for her on yonder mountain; he overcomes gods and men.”
Later described as “monster.” (p. 90) “Mr. Yorke had a love trouble and can’t bear women, so none dare go near him.” (p.135)
“Surely he whom the Oracle had called her husband was no monster, but some beneficent power, invisible like all the rest. “ (p. 90) “O Bazil, so generous, so gentle, why did I not know this sooner, and thank you as I ought?” (p.230)

The Gaze
“At that moment Psyche was asleep in her chamber; but he touched her heart with his golden arrow of love, and she opened her eyes so suddenly that he started.” (p.89) “For many minutes Bazil Yorke watched the unconscious child, as if there was some strong attraction for him in the studious little figure.” (p.136)

Mount Olympus vs. Yorke’s Studio
“(Cupid) hastened up to Olympus.” (p.103) “Cecil climbed the winding stairs.” (p.140)

“All the younger gods were for welcoming Psyche at once… The maiden came, a shy newcomer among these bright creatures. She took the cup that Hebe held out to her, drank the divine ambrosia, and became immortal.” (p.103)
“Cecil found so much that was inviting, she forgot fear in delight… A smiling woman seemed to beckon to her, a winged child to offer flowers, and all about the room pale gods and goddesses looked down upon her from their pedestals with what to her beauty-loving eye seemed varying expressions of welcome.” (p.140)

Psyche Hurts Love
“Poor Psyche was overcome with self-reproach. As she leaned towards him, filled with worship, her trembling hands held the lamp ill, and some burning oil fell upon Love’s shoulder and awakened him.” (p.92) “The beautiful Psyche lay headless on the ground, but the girl scarcely saw it, for half underneath it lay Yorke, pale and senseless.” (p. 162)
“I never thought my Psyche would cause me so much suffering, but I forgive her for her beauty’s sake.” (Yorke, p. 164)
Psyche/Cecil repents:
“Why, here’s my Psyche mended and mounted again!” (Yorke, p. 163)

Fearless Female Characters
Cecil and Psyche were both courageous and faced all they had to go though with great determination and persistence till finally they reached love.

Hebe:
The Goddess of Youth or the Prime of Life
“She took the cup that Hebe held out to her, drank the divine ambrosia, and became immortal.” (p.103) “.. the wavy masses of her dark hair were gathered up with a fillet, giving her the head of a young Hebe.” (p. 144)

Conclusion
Louisa May Alcott implements many elements from the Myth into the novel indirectly, majorly the overcoming of obstacles to reach the ultimate love and marriage.

The Usage of Psyche and Cupid in the Novel:
Cecil and Psyche
p. 144
“Colorless, like a plant deprived of sunshine, strangely unyouthful in the quiet grace of her motions, the sweet seriousness of her expression, but as beautiful as the psyche and almost as cold.”

Foretelling
p.144-145
“The little god was just drawing an arrow from his quiver with an arch smile, and the girl watched him with one almost as gay.”

Who is the real Cupid?
P.145 “Don’t fire again, little Cupid, I surrender.” (Alfred)
P.148 “he turned away to examine the Cupid which Alfred had not accepted”
P.148 “What suggested the idea of this Cecil?
…You did!
…Your making Psyche suggested Cupid, for though you did not
tell me the pretty fable, Alf did, and told me how my image
should be made.”

“Cecil, already secretly in love with Yorke, chooses to stay with Yorke, and become his ideal woman, a marble woman.” (McCullough, p.61)
p.151
“A marble woman like your Psyche, with no heart to love you, only grace and beauty to please your eye and bring you honor; is that what you would have me?” (Cecil)
“Yes, I would have you beautiful and passionless as Psyche, a creature to admire..” (Yorke)
“I am done with love! And lifting the little Cupid let it drop broken at her feet.” (Cecil)

The transformation of a woman into a statue is difficult, and in the end, impossible, because female passion cannot be contained. (McCullough p.62)

References:
McCullough, K. “Louisa May Alcott’s Incestuous Fathers and Fiendish Mothers, or, the Daughter As Wife.” Pacific Coast Philology, vol. 26, no. 1/2, 1991, pp. 59–67.
www.jstor.org/stable/1316556.
Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew by Josephine P. Peabody. London: George Harrap, 1910. pp. 89-103.
Pelsue, B. (2017, Aug 3). The myth of Cupid and Psyche – Brendan Pelsue[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjj_-CPxjCM

Children’s Literature, Volume 17, 1

98

9, pp. 98-123 (Article)

DOI: 10.1353/chl.0.0430

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Chinese University of Hong Kong (11 Dec 2015 13:50 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chl/summary/v017/17.estes.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chl/summary/v017/17.estes.html

Dismembering the Text: The Horror of
Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women
Angela M. Estes and Kathleen Margaret Lant

Me from Myself—to banish—
Had I Art-

Impregnable my Fortress
Unto All Heart—

But since myself—assault Me—
How have I peace
Except by subjugating
Consciousness?

And since We’re mutual Monarch
How this be
Except by Abdication—
Me—of Me?

—Emily Dickinson

On the floor of an attic room slumps a thirty-year-old woman, strip-
ping off her disguise as a submissive seventeen-year-old govern-
ess; removing her false teeth, she takes another swig from a flask
and plots a scheme to undermine and conquer an entire family.
In another room sits a young girl, laboriously—albeit resentfully
—stitching together small remnants of fabric as she learns simul-
taneously the practical art of patchwork and the womanly virtues
of patience, perseverance, and restraint. What possible connection
could exist between these two women?

These two scenes—the first from Louisa May Alcott’s thriller
“Behind a Mask” and the second from her children’s story “Patty’s
Patchwork”—exemplify the apparent extremes that characterize
the heroines and plots of Alcott’s works. Traditionally, Alcott has
been considered a writer of inoffensive, sometimes mildly rebel-
lious children’s fiction, but the discovery and republication in 1975
and 1976 ‘ of Alcott’s anonymous and pseudonymous adult thrillers
(first published between 1863 and 1869) and the emergence of more

Children’s Literature 17, ed. Francelia Butler, Margaret Higonnet, and Barbara Rosen
(Yale University Press, © 1989 by The Children’s Literature Foundation, Inc.).

98

The Horror of Louisa May Akott’s Little Women 99

thoughtful recent critical approaches to her children’s stories have
raised significant questions for Alcott scholars: How is the Alcott
canon to be reenvisioned to explain the existence of her hidden
fictional efforts? How do we account for Alcott’s fascination with the
lurid, the wild, the unacceptable and untrammeled heroines of the
thrillers when we remember the little girls—at least superficially
docile—of the children’s short stories and the ultimately tamed Jo
of Little Women} And, most importantly, how do these thrillers, char-
acterized by violence, deceit, infidelity, and licentiousness of every
kind imaginable, reshape or enrich our understanding of Alcott’s
classic children’s novel Little Women (1868)?2

I

The seemingly contradictory aspects of Alcott’s fiction can be better
understood when we place her in a personal and historical con-
text. She was intimately involved in the transcendental circle of her
father and his friends, the literati of Concord, including, of course,
its leader Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alcott embraced the transcenden-
tal ideals of self-expression, self-reliance, and self-exploration as
espoused by both Emerson and her father, Bronson Alcott. In a
journal entry (27 April 1882), Alcott affirms Emerson’s pervasive
influence on her life and thought: “Mr. Emerson died at 9 p.m.
suddenly. Our best and greatest American gone. The nearest and
dearest friend Father has ever had, and the man who has helped
me most by his life, his books, his society. I can never tell all he has
been to me … his essays on Self-reliance, Character, Compensa-
tion, Love, and Friendship helped me to understand myself and
life, and God and Nature” (Cheney 345). Alcott insisted, moreover,
that the self-reliance and self-awareness so vaunted by the tran-
scendentalists be extended to women as well as men. In a letter
to Maria S. Porter, she asserts woman’s right to an identity and a
life of her own by calling for an exploration and redefinition of
“woman’s sphere”: “In future let woman do whatever she can do;
let men place no more impediments in the way; above all things let’s
have fair play,—let simple justice be done, say I. Let us hear no more
of ‘woman’s sphere’ either from our wise (?) legislators beneath the
gilded dome, or from our clergymen in their pulpits.” Alcott goes
on to insist that woman be allowed to “find out her own limitations”
(Porter 13-14).

100 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

But Alcott, well educated in the proprieties of her own time,
realized the dangers for a woman of nineteenth-century America
in advocating such potentially liberating attitudes too openly. In
fact, Alcott seemed to sense the ambiguities inherent, at least for
women, in Emerson’s position, for it is Emerson, the man from
whom she learned the value of self-reliance, whose censure she
fears when creating (in the adult thrillers) her most self-reliant and
self-assertive female characters:

I think my natural ambition is for the lurid style. I indulge in
gorgeous fancies and wish that I dared inscribe them upon my
pages and set them before the public…. How should I dare to
interfere with the proper grayness of old Concord? The dear
old town has never known a startling hue since the redcoats
were there. Far be it from me to inject an inharmonious color
into the neutral tint. And my favorite characters! Suppose they
went to cavorting at their own sweet will, to the infinite horror
of dear Mr. Emerson, who never imagined a Concord person
as walking off a plumb line stretched between two pearly clouds
in the empyrean. [Pickett 107-08]

Alcott was, moreover, reticent about openly advocating self-reliance
and assertiveness in her works for children; she was aware of the
responsibility she bore her young readers in that they so fully iden-
tified with and followed the careers of such characters as Jo. In fact,
after the publication of Little Women, Alcott seemed quite moved by
her young readers’ responses to her works: “Over a hundred letters
from boys & girls … & many from teachers & parents assure me
that my little books are read & valued in a way I never dreamed of
seeing them” (quoted by Stern in her introduction to Myerson and
Shealy, xxxiii). And in a letter of 1872 to William Henry Venable,
Alcott expresses gratitude that her stories are “considered worthy
to be used for the instruction as well as the amusement of young
people” (Myerson and Shealy 172).3

In the final analysis, however, it seems clear that Alcott was not
unambivalently committed to the creation of “innocent” entertain-
ments (Myerson and Shealy 172) for the young. In fact, her im-
patience with such works becomes obvious in her more candid mo-
ments: she claims in a letter probably written in 1878 that she wrote
what she refers to as “moral tales for the young” because she felt
pressure from her publishers and because such tales provided her

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 101

with a much needed income. “I do it,” she admits, “because it pays
well” (Myerson and Shealy 232).

Louisa Alcott found herself, then, confronted with conflicting
impulses: on the one hand, Alcott—educated under the tutelage
of Emerson and Bronson Alcott—craves freedom and the power
of self-assertion for both herself and her characters; on the other
hand, she feels strongly the pressure to meet the needs of her young
readers and the demands of her publishers. In Alcott’s most famous
novel for children, therefore, woman’s development toward mem-
bership in the acceptable female sphere is rendered in a surface
narrative; to reveal the complex, dangerous truths of female experi-
ence, the self-assertive drives toward womanly independence, Alcott
(resorting to one of the ploys she uses frequently in the thrillers—
disguise) must incorporate a subtext. Thus, in Little Women, Alcott,
employing both a surface narrative and a subtext to disclose an
extended vision of feminine conflict, presents a vision of female ex-
perience at once innocuous and deadly. What appears at first to be a
conventional and somewhat sentimental tale of the innocent trials of
girlhood—what we have mistaken for a “feminine” novel of domes-
tic education—is, on closer examination, another of Alcott’s lurid,
violent sensation stories. For in presenting the conflict between
appropriate womanly behavior and the human desire for assertive-
ness and fulfillment, Alcott finds herself forced to wage war upon
her protagonist, Jo. Young Jo—fiery, angry, assertive—represents
all that adult Jo can never be, and for this reason young Jo must
be destroyed. Thus, while the surface narrative achieves some clo-
sure, while it implies a moderately “normal,” well-integrated future
for Jo, the horrifying subtext of Little Women reveals that for an
independent, self-determined Jo, no future is possible.

II

The horrors that lurk at the heart of Alcott’s novel are, surpris-
ingly, least obvious to those who cherish her work most. Even today,
women who as children read Little Women remember Jo at her best,
that is to say, at her most liberated. Elizabeth Janeway, for exam-
ple, praises the novel’s heroine as “the one young woman in 19th-
century fiction who maintains her individual independence, who
gives up no part of her autonomy as payment for being born a
woman—and who gets away with it” (Janeway 42). Janeway seems

102 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

to repress her awareness that Jo—who never wants to marry, who
values her writing above all else—does finally marry and abandon
the writing she cherishes, taking up the kinds of writing her family
and husband deem suitable for her.

However, two of the most hostile readers of Little Women, Leslie
Fiedler and James Baldwin, have sensed a certain horror and du-
plicity in it, and despite their patent distaste for Alcott’s novel,
their unsympathetic readings of Little Women illuminate the work.
In comparing Alcott’s work to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, Baldwin and Fiedler denigrate both works, terming them sen-
timental, self-righteous, dishonest, and inhumane—among other
harsh criticisms. Both imply, too, that a secret crime or perversion
hides at the center of these two novels. Fiedler finds the “chief plea-
sures” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin “rooted not in the moral indignation
of the reformer but in the more devious titillations of the sadist”
(114). And at the center of these “titillations of the sadist” is Little
Eva, “the pre-pubescent corpse as heroine” (114). Fiedler compares
Stowe’s “orgy of approved pathos” to that created by Alcott in Little
Women: “Little Eva is the classic case in America, melting the ob-
durate though kindly St. Clare from skepticism to faith. What an
orgy of approved pathos such scenes provided in the hands of a
master like Harriet Beecher Stowe, or the late Louisa May Alcott,
who in Little Women reworked the prototype of Mrs. Stowe into a
kind of fiction specifically directed at young girls!” (114). James
Baldwin also sees a kind of orgy of “sentimentality” in Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, which he condemns by comparing it with Liiiie Women: “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin is a very bad novel, having, in its self-righteous, virtuous
sentimentality, much in common with Little Women. Sentimentality,
the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the
mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the senti-
mentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid
heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent
inhumanity, the mask of cruelty. Uncle Tom’s Cabin—like its mul-
titudinous, hard-boiled descendants—is a catalogue of violence”
(92).

Baldwin and Fiedler have sensed—perhaps because of their an-
tagonism toward these novels and their lack of sympathy with the
characters who inhabit these two works by women—the double-
ness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Little Women. As masculinist critics,
however, neither seems capable of sufficiently disengaging him-

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 103

self from the prejudices of his culture to understand or elucidate
the complexities of the two novels. For it is true that both novels
mask secret crimes and enact hidden violence, and the more open-
minded reader must inevitably ask herself why Alcott and Stowe
resort to hidden abuses to resolve the conflicts their novels present.
And also, if Little Women has “much in common” with Uncle Tom’s
Cabin; if Alcott’s novel is, in Baldwin’s terms, replete with a “dishon-
esty” that masks some “secret and violent inhumanity,” some act of
“cruelty,” then the reader must ask the nature and source of the
novel’s “dishonesty,” she must discover the act of “inhumanity” and
“cruelty” the novel perpetrates.4

The answers to these questions begin to surface only when we dis-
inter the protagonist oÃ- Little Women, Jo March, from the text of the
novel. Forjo is an experimental heroine through whom Alcott can
explore the tensions of female experience in nineteenth-century
America: between being a dutiful member of woman’s sphere and
being an independent, self-reliant woman. In the surface narra-
tive oÃ- Little Women, the story suitable for Alcott’s young readers, Jo
March begins as an unruly, self-assertive girl and gradually learns
to become a proper “little woman.” But when Leslie Fiedler asserts
that Little Eva is the “model for all the protagonists of a literature
at once juvenile and genteelly gothic” (114), he again inadvertently
points by implication to the true design of Little Women, revealed
in the novel’s disguised text. For the experimental transformation
of Jo March into a proper “little woman”—performed and delin-
eated in a textual laboratory which masquerades as an informative
and supportive guidebook for children—turns out to be, in fact,
a “gothic” study in horror, the very kind of story Alcott so longed
to write but which she renounced, or tried to, for the sake of her
young, impressionable readers.

In order for Jo to live fictionally, to maintain her position within
the narrative framework Alcott has constructed, Alcott must mur-
der Jo spiritually. Given Jo’s lust for independence, her devotion to
her own power and development, Alcott could never have allowed
her to marry for love—in other words, to love and marry Laurie—
for, as the novel demonstrates with Meg’s marriage to John Brooke,
marriage for love reduces woman to “submission” (Little Women
209). Alcott was vehement in her refusal to allow this to happen to
Jo. In a letter to Thomas Niles (1869), she deplores the numerous
“pairing[s] off” in Little Women, asserting “I don’t approve” (Myer-

104 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

son and Shealy 119), and in a letter to Samuel Joseph May (1869),
she bitterly complains that “publishers are very perwerse & wont
let authors have their way so my little women must grow up & be
married off in a very stupid style” (Myerson and Shealy 121—22).

Tragically, Alcott’s reluctance to sacrifice Jo to convention
through marriage ultimately results in Alcott’s violence against this
very character. In a letter to Elizabeth Powell, Alcott is quite clear
on her own desires for Jo and on the conflicting demands she feels
from her readers. Alcott’s solution is to subject Jo to certain vio-
lent narrative abuses: ” ‘Jo’ should have remained a literary spinster
but so many enthusiastic young ladies wrote to me clamorously de-
manding that she should marry Laurie, or somebody, that I didn’t
dare to refuse & out of perversity went & made a funny match for
her. I expect vials of wrath to be poured out upon my head, but
rather enjoy the prospect” (Myerson and Shealy 125).

Like Cassy, the horribly abused slave woman of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
and like Sethe, the equally besieged black woman of Toni Mor-
rison’s Beloved, Alcott chooses to murder her dearest child rather
than force that child to live in a world hostile to her. Alcott’s mur-
der of Jo, then, is the secret violence at the center οι Little Women.
Alcott’s response to her fiction seems characteristic of the woman
or the woman writer beset by irreconcilable conflicts and demands:
Jo finds herself among the good who must die young. In order that
she not be corrupted by the adult world of heterosexuality, Jo must
be killed while at her zenith of eager and fiery independence.

Ill

From the beginning oÃ- Little Women, fifteen-year-old Jo March rebels
and refuses to be a “young lady”: “Tm not! And if turning up my
hair makes me one, I’ll wear it in two tails till I’m twenty,’ cried
Jo, pulling off her net and shaking down a chestnut mane” (5). Jo’s
behavior is entirely inappropriate for a proper young female. Her
“quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit” are “always getting
her into scrapes” (36). And although Jo is devoted to and loves the
female community she shares with her mother and sisters—Meg,
Beth, and Amy—she acts “in a gentlemanly manner,” uses “slang
words,” and constantly defies her sisters’ attempts to admonish and
reform her:

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 105

“Don’t Jo; it’s so boyish!”
“That’s why I do it.”
“I detest rude, unladylike girls!”
“I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!” [4-5]

In her arrogation of masculine mannerisms, language, and roles,
Jo instinctively and correctly identifies the opportunities for inde-
pendence, self-reliance, adventure, and assertion as those conven-
tionally reserved for men. Jo realizes, in fact, the awful dichotomy
between her own impulses and the expectations held out to her: “I
can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy” (5).

Jo March is, thus, a nineteenth-century female caught between
the requisite role of the domesticated “little woman,” represented
by her given, imposed name, Josephine, and her own self-guided
impulses, represented by her “masculine” chosen name, Jo. Her
conflict is so intense that she has renamed, redefined herself. In
spite of Jo’s self-reliant acts, however—”I’m the man of the family
now Papa is away” (6)—she receives continual reminders from her
sisters of her inevitable fate: “you must try to be contented with
making your name boyish and playing brother to us girls” (5). But
for a brief moment at the beginning of Little Women, Jo March re-
sides in an idyllic female community of which she is the “male”
head. She is a heroic figure—a young woman intent on maintain-
ing the female community of “woman’s sphere” while still acting in
accordance with her own self-reliant impulses.

And Jo’s heroic balancing act works as long as this “woman’s
sphere,” the matriarchal community of Jo’s family, remains entirely
self-contained and entirely female. But once a male character—the
young boy next door, Laurie, who has been longing to enter this
female utopia—successfully penetrates the female community, the
plot oÃ- Little Women and the destiny of Jo are immutably altered.

Laurie, a rich but orphaned young boy, is warmly welcomed into
the March family, and at first—with the children still inhabiting a
prelapsarian Eden—life appears to go on as before. Because the
children are presexual in the early parts of the novel, Laurie (as his
name suggests) becomes in effect “one of the girls.” He is accepted
into the female community and poses no threat to Jo or to the
female world she loves. Nevertheless, planted in this female garden
now, with the arrival of a male, are the seeds of its own destruc-
tion. But before these seeds sprout and take root, Alcott seizes the

106 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

opportunity provided by this idyllic lull in sexual development; she
begins, in a subtext, to reveal the causes of both the disintegration
of this female community and Jo’s fall from self-reliance.

By using Laurie, a male, as a foil for Jo, Alcott underscores the
nature of the conflicts which Jo, as a female, must experience and
the fate to which she—unlike Laurie—must ultimately acquiesce.
In many ways Jo and Laurie are twins: they are the same age, they
are both characterized as untamed animals—Jo as a horse (5, 6, 25)
and Laurie as a centaur (59)—and both, hating their given names,
have renamed themselves. Even Jo’s mother remarks that Jo and
Laurie would not be “suited” to each other for marriage because
they are “too much alike” (299). And Laurie’s grandfather, seeing
the influence of Jo on Laurie, thinks how Jo “seemed to under-
stand the boy almost as well as if she had been one herself” (50). So
identical are Jo and Laurie, in fact, that in their presexual relation-
ship, even as Laurie becomes “one of the girls,” so Jo becomes with
Laurie just “one of the boys.”

Despite the masculine similarities between Jo and Laurie, how-
ever, Alcott emphatically reveals that Jo’s fate in life—because Jo is,
inescapably, female—will be different from Laurie’s. Our recogni-
tion of the similar natures, attitudes, and feelings that Jo and Laurie
share serves, moreover, only to intensify our awareness of the con-
flicts Jo must endure. Although both Laurie and Jo hate their given
names and rename themselves, only Laurie can actively “thrash”
and challenge those who would force a false name and thus a false
role on him. Jo must passively “bear it”:

“My first name is Theodore but I don’t like it, for the fellows
called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead.”

“I hate my name, too—so sentimental! I wish everyone would
say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop
calling you Dora?”

“I thrashed ’em.”
“I can’t thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear

it”; and Jo resigned herself with a sigh. [27]
Not only can Laurie, because he is male, actively alter reality in ac-
cordance with his own will, but he can also, should his self-reliant
acts fail, simply leave those situations which limit him; as Huck
Finn, the archetypal masculine hero of nineteenth-century Ameri-
can literature, puts it, he can “light out for the Territory.” But when

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 107

Laurie, angry at his grandfather, proposes to Jo that they run away
from home together, Jo, although filled with the same impulses of
flight and freedom, must resign herself to captivity:

For a moment Jo looked as if she would agree, for wild as the
plan was, it just suited her. She was tired of care and confine-
ment, longed for change. . . . Her eyes kindled as they turned
wistfully toward the window, but they fell on the old house
opposite and she shook her head with sorrowful decision.

“If I was a boy, we’d run away together and have a capital
time; but as I’m a miserable girl, I must be proper and stop at
home. Don’t tempt me, Teddy, it’s a crazy plan.”

“That’s the fun of it,” began Laurie, who had got a willful fit
on him and was possessed to break out of bounds in some way.

“Hold your tongue!” cried Jo, covering her ears. ” ‘Prunes
and prisms’ are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind
to it.” [191]

Interestingly, Jo’s frustrations and lack of freedom are charac-
terized specifically in terms of her femaleness and in terms of her
relationship as a female to language. Jo, the writer, longs to con-
trol language, to make herself independent and her family secure
with her use of language. But as a woman, “prunes and prisms”
are her lot: her relationship to language should be characterized
by her desire for beauty. As Nancy Baker points out in The Beauty
Trap, her study of the American woman’s obsession with appear-
ance, women of the nineteenth century, reluctant to wear too much
makeup, “pinched their cheeks to make them pinker and . . . prac-
ticed repeating sequences of words beginning with the letter ϕ—
prunes, peas, potatoes, papa, prisms—in order to effect the small,
puckered mouth that was so popular” (Baker 21).

Even within the presexual Eden of childhood, then, Jo’s stream of
impulses is dammed and divided. Were Little Women one of Alcott’s
short stories for children, this is how we would remember Jo: a
young female destined sooner or later to come to terms with being
a proper “little woman,” but a young female alive with rebellion
and wildness, intent on having her own way. Because Little Women
is a novel, though, an extended fiction, the children—including Jo
—do grow up, they do (at least offstage) become sexual. And each
sexual coming-of-age is a blow to the foundations of the female
community which has become essential to Jo’s self-assertion and

108 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

sense of self-worth. Only as the reigning “patriarch” and caretaker
of this female family—”if anything is amiss at home, I’m your man”
(292)—does Jo enjoy any power: that power of self-reliantly pro-
tecting and providing for one’s family, traditionally reserved for the
family’s highest-ranking male. Jo’s solution to the problems her sis-
ters face in finding worthy husbands is a simple one—”Then we’ll
be old maids” (90)—and as her sisters are drawn closer and closer
to marriage, Jo vehemently protests the usurpation of her power
and the fall of her female domain: “I think it’s dreadful to break up
families so” (225).

Jo’s power begins to dwindle as a result of the first sexual coming-
of-age in Little Women—Meg’s attraction and marriage to John
Brooke. Jo immediately perceives that her weakened position is a
direct result of being female and that this challenge to her terri-
tory and power is the inevitable manifestation of male privilege:
” ‘She’ll go and fall in love, and there’s an end of peace and fun,
and cosy times together. I see it all! They’ll go lovering around the
house, and we shall have to dodge; Meg will be absorbed and no
good to me any more; Brooke will scratch up a fortune somehow,
carry her off, and make a hole in the family; and I shall break my
heart, and everything will be abominably uncomfortable. Oh, dear
me! Why weren’t we all boys; then there wouldn’t be any bother'”
(183). As Meg’s attraction to John Brooke becomes more certain, Jo
grows increasingly anxious, lamenting her feminine powerlessness
and asserting a desire to usurp masculine sexual as well as social
privilege: “I knew there was mischief brewing; I felt it; and now
it’s worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry Meg myself,
and keep her safe in the family” (182). Finally, when Jo unexpect-
edly encounters the “spectacle” of the just-engaged lovers in the
parlor, she is overcome with revulsion: “Oh, do somebody go down
quick; John Brooke is acting dreadfully, and Meg likes it!” (209).
The scene of the “strong-minded sister,” whom Jo had hoped would
reject her suitor, now “enthroned” upon the knee of Jo’s “enemy”
and wearing “an expression of the most abject submission” (209) is
intolerable for Jo.

Jo’s “shock” (209) and horror at her sister’s transformation sug-
gest that Amy, Beth, and Meg function for Jo as more than mere
sisters.5 They embody experimental alter egos of Jo; they repre-
sent the versions of female experience—the ways of reconciling a
woman’s dual impulses—possible for Jo herself. Meg, in her com-

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 109

pletely acquiescent marriage and motherhood, manifests the total
repression of self-reliant impulses. Through her marriage to John
Brooke she learns “that a woman’s happiest kingdom is home, her
highest honor the art of ruling it not as a queen, but as a wise wife
and mother” (361). Meg thus represents forjo the successful, duti-
ful member of woman’s sphere. But as this first sister departs from
Jo’s female realm, Jo vehemently rejects the example of submission
and marriage which Meg offers: “I’m not one of the agreeable sort.
. . . There should always be one old maid in a family” (224). Jo
insists that she will never marry—”Td like to see anyone try it,’
cried Jo fiercely” (138)—and is, in fact, “alarmed at the thought”
(203).

At this point in the novel, Jo is still defiantly independent and
assertive. She proudly claims that she belongs to the “new” set and
that she admires “reformers”: “and I shall be one if I can” (269).
Thus, when Jo and Amy visit their Aunt March and Aunt Carrol,
unaware that her aunt is considering taking her on a trip to Europe,
Jo boasts, “I don’t like favors; they oppress and make me feel like a
slave. I’d rather do everything for myself and be perfectly indepen-
dent” (270). But the consequences of self-reliant behavior continue
to impose themselves on Jo, for her “revolutionary” (269) outburst
costs her the trip. Jo is deprived because she has a “too indepen-
dent spirit” rather than an acquiescent and “docile” (280) nature
like that of Amy, who is chosen to accompany her aunt to Europe.

Jo gradually adjusts to her misfortune, to Amy’s departure, and
to the first assault upon her female community, Meg’s marriage,
only to be confronted with what forjo is one of the ultimate hor-
rors in the novel: Laurie reveals to Jo that he loves her—as a lover,
not as a buddy. When it is first hinted to Jo that Laurie loves her,
she rejects the possibility: she “wouldn’t hear a word upon the sub-
ject and scolded violently if anyone dared to suggest it” (293). And
when Laurie does confess his love, Jo decidedly rejects him and all
potential suitors: “I haven’t the least idea of loving him or anybody
else. … I don’t believe I shall every marry. I’m happy as I am,
and love my liberty too well to be in any hurry to give it up for any
mortal man” (329, 330).

Alcott’s nineteenth-century readers, who clamored for Jo to
marry Laurie, found Jo’s rejection—and outright horror and dis-
missal—of marriage to the handsome and wealthy Laurie incon-
ceivable. Jo’s revulsion from marriage to Laurie is not so puzzling,

110 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

however, if we remember that throughout the novel Jo and Laurie
have, in effect, been “brothers,” even doubles of the same self.
Jo categorically rejects Laurie, then, in part because marriage to
Laurie would be tantamount to incest. As Jo confides to Laurie, “I
don’t believe it’s the right sort of love, and I’d rather not try it”
(328).

Jo also refuses Laurie because marriage to him would render
Jo completely powerless. Jo has already witnessed the self-sacrifice,
repression, and submission required of Meg in her marriage to
John Brooke, and Jo realizes that she, herself, is eminently unsuited
to such a role. Jo’s mother, too, astutely observes that Laurie and
Jo “would both rebel” in a marriage to each other because both are
“too fond of freedom” and both have “hot tempers and strong wills”
(299). In other words, a marriage between Laurie and Jo would
not work because both are, in conventional terms, masculine. Even
more important to Jo, therefore, marrying Laurie would entail the
absurd paradox of relinquishing her power to the only male with
whom—in her relationship as just “one of the boys”—she has ever
had power. To retain any remnant of control over her own life, Jo
must refuse to marry Laurie. In an identical act of rebellion and
self-assertion Jo’s creator, Louisa Alcott, concurs: “Girls write to ask
who the little women marry, as if that was the only end and aim of a
woman’s life. I won’t marry Jo to Laurie to please any one” (Cheney
201). Despite the repressive and conservative message conveyed in
Little Women, Jo’s refusal to marry Laurie remains—for both Jo and
her author—the one act of self-assertion which neither can quell.

When Laurie eventually falls in love with and marries Jo’s sis-
ter Amy, the relief of being freed from the possibility of marriage
to Laurie attenuates Jo’s grief over the loss of a second member
of her female community. Amy, in her marriage to Laurie, repre-
sents another of Jo’s alter egos—an additional way of reconciling a
woman’s divided impulses toward self-reliance and woman’s appro-
priate sphere of activity. As Laurie thinks to himself, “Jo’s sister was
almost the same as Jo’s self” (388). Amy is an especially important
alter ego for Jo because she, like Jo, wants to be an artist. At the
end of the novel Amy as a wife and mother attempts to combine
her “artistic hopes” with life in woman’s sphere: “I don’t relinquish
all my artistic hopes or confine myself to helping others fulfill their
dreams of duty” (442). Amy’s declaration seems to suggest the pos-

The Horror of Louisa May Akott’s Little Women 111

sibility of balancing a life of art and a life of appropriate feminine
behavior.

Although a wife and mother, Amy has “begun to model” again,
but her ability to balance the self-expressive demands of art and
the self-repressive demands of marriage and motherhood is under-
mined by what she models. For Amy creates not out of a fresh
encounter of her own self with the world; rather, she repeats, imi-
tates, what is now for her the primary act of creation, biological
creation, as she models “a figure of baby.” And according to both
Amy and Laurie, this “figure of baby” is her ultimate achievement:
“Laurie says it is the best thing I’ve ever done. I think so myself.”
(442). Amy’s ability to balance successfully the demands of art and
womanhood becomes even more doubtful when we recall that from

the beginning Amy has resolved to be “an attractive and accom-
plished woman, even if she never became a great artist” (233). Amy
is interested in her own art, but is more concerned with what peo-
ple think of her. By her own admission to Jo, Amy intends to follow
“the way of the world”: “people who set themselves against it only
get laughed at for their pains. I don’t like reformers, and I hope you
will never try to be one” (269). Thus, although Amy seems to repre-
sent a possible alternative for Jo—as both artist and “little woman”
—Amy, in fact, follows Meg’s example in her willing suppression of
self-reliant impulses. But Jo’s response to Amy’s condemnation of
“reformers” is typically undaunted: “We can’t agree about that, for
you belong to the old set, and I to the new” (269).

Jo’s commitment to the “new” has been clear from the novel’s
beginning; she devotes herself rebelliously to her life-long pas-
sion: writing. As she sits in her “favorite refuge” (22)—the “garret”
(133)—and writes, Jo embodies a version of Sandra Gilbert and
Susan Gubar’s “madwoman in the attic,” attempting to empower
and define herself by engaging in the forbidden (for women) act of
writing. Jo’s goal, her “favorite dream,” is to do something “splen-
did” and “heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m
dead” (129). Her chief desire, in short, is to write: “I think I shall
write books and get rich and famous: that would suit me, so that
is my favorite dream” (129). Thus, when Jo publishes her first story
and receives both the praise of her family and the promise of pay-
ment for future stories, she is ecstatically happy: “I shall write more
. . . and I am so happy, for in time I may be able to support myself

112 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

and help the girls” (141). Alcott clearly discloses here that writing
is the “key” (130) to a successful life forjo: “for to be independent
and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of
her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward the happy
end” (141-42).

Jo herself is aware, however, that there may never be a “happy
end,” a successful merging of her dual impulses toward indepen-
dence and appropriate feminine behavior: ” Tve got the key to my
castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to
be seen,’ observed Jo mysteriously” (130). And in fact, along with
Jo’s success as a writer comes a warning to Jo of the dangers, even
the impossibility, of committing herself entirely to a self-reliant life
of writing. For when Jo proudly sends her first novel out to pub-
lishers, she finds that she will have to “chop it up to suit purchasers”
(245). Consequently, Jo performs a deed that foreshadows the fate
—at the hands of her “authoress,” Alcott—of her own self-reliant
being: “With Spartan firmness, the young authoress laid her first-
born on her table and chopped it up as ruthlessly as any ogre” (246).
Finally, Jo receives one further indication that writing (now Jo’s pri-
mary self-assertive act) and duty toward woman’s sphere may not be
compatible. Absorbed in her writing, Jo lets her sister Beth nurse
their sick neighbors, and when Beth contracts scarlet fever, Jo is
filled with remorse: “serves me right, selfish pig, to let you go and
stay writing rubbish myself!” (160). As a result of Beth’s illness—
caused by Jo’s devotion to her writing—Beth’s already frail nature
is weakened, and she eventually dies. And with Beth dies the last
member of Jo’s female community.

Even before Beth’s death, however, and despite Jo’s success as
an author, Jo suffers from the shock of recognition that Laurie’s
proposal of marriage has forced upon her. His proposal makes Jo
realize that she must now confront not only the loss of her female
community through the marriage of her sisters but also the assault
on her own self-reliant autonomy. In short, Jo is forced into the
realization that she is inescapably female. This realization marks a
turning point in the novel, after which Jo as we know her mysteri-
ously begins to disappear—or to be erased—from the story. Just as
Jo finds it necessary to mutilate her works to satisfy her publishers,
so Alcott must destroy Jo to appease her audience.

From the time that Beth becomes ill, Jo’s vibrant personality
begins to fade, to weaken, to undergo some horrifying transforma-

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 113

tion. Just as Alcott has referred to Jo’s book as Jo’s own offspring,
just as Alcott is aware that—to please her readers—Jo must muti-
late that offspring, now Alcott herself begins inexorably to mutilate
her own text, her own character—Jo. The comparison between Jo
as author/parent to her books and Alcott as author/parent of Little
Women (as well as to her other works) becomes convincingly clear in
Alcott’s correspondence. In a letter to Lucy Larcom, Alcott refers
to some lost manuscripts as “waifs of mine” (Myerson and Shealy
119), and to Elizabeth Powell she writes that she herself is the “Ma”
of her “stupid ‘Little Women'” (Myerson and Shealy 124). Perhaps
Alcott—in the very act of mutilating the energetic and irrepressible
Jo—felt some kinship with Jo as Jo bowdlerized her own book.

Jo’s growing awareness of what it means to be female is confirmed
when her sister Beth dies. Through Beth’s death, Alcott depicts
a further possible response from another of Jo’s alter egos to the
female predicament. Beth, who has not even sufficient self-reliant
impulses to stay alive, becomes forjo—and by extension for Alcott
—the example of what all women are required by custom to be,
the completely perfect woman—passive, acquiescent, dead.6 Ironi-
cally, however, Beth’s death is also the sole way to maintain Jo’s
idyllic female community, for only in death can Beth remain in-
violably Jo’s. When Beth dies, she is “well at last” (379), and her
death discloses one sure way of curing a woman’s problems. In con-
trast to Leslie Fiedler’s contention that the “pre-pubescent corpse”
functions to provide the “titillations of the sadist,” it seems much
more likely that for a nineteenth-century woman writer and her
audience, a “dead woman” would indeed be the only “safe woman”
(Fiedler 114). Fiedler asserts that at the death of Little Eva in Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, “death becomes the supreme rapist” (114). But in Little
Women, death is the only thing, at least in Jo’s eyes, that can save a
female from the psychological rape—the violation of self-direction
and the disintegration of female community—that await her if she
grows up and takes her proper feminine place in the heterosexual
world. For Jo, then, and for Alcott as well, the dead woman and the
perfect woman become synonymous.

From this point in the novel, Jo’s response to her own femaleness
in many ways parallels Beth’s. But because of the intensity of her
self-assertive impulses, Jo cannot simply die. Rather, she is forced
to be an accomplice to a crime, to participate actively in her own
demise. From its beginning, the text of Little Women thoroughly

114 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

documents the enormous influence that Beth—as an alter ego em-
bodying devotion to woman’s sphere—exerts over Jo: “by some
strange attraction of opposites, Jo was gentle Beth’s. . . . Over her
big harum-scarum sister, Beth unconsciously exercised more influ-
ence than anyone in the family” (38). Indeed it is through Beth that
Jo learns the virtues of woman’s sphere:7 “Then it was that Jo, living
in the darkened room with that suffering little sister always before
her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to
see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth’s nature, to feel how deep
and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the
worth of Beth’s unselfish ambition to live for others and make home
happy by the exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess
and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or
beauty” (164-65). Beth, in fact, increasingly appears to become a
part of Jo as her “submissive spirit” seems “to enter into Jo” (167).
And in her sickbed, Beth constantly keeps Jo’s cast-off “invalid” (56)
doll, “Joanna”—symbolic of Jo’s divided and therefore crippled self
—at “her side” (165). Even independent Jo finally becomes aware
of her affinity with Beth: “Beth is my conscience, and I can’t give
her up. I can’t! I can’t!” (166).

As Beth grows closer to death, her influence over Jo intensifies,
and Jo increasingly identifies with Beth: ‘”More than anyone in the
world, Beth. I used to think I couldn’t let you go, but I’m learning
to feel that I don’t lose you; that you’ll be more to me than ever,
and death can’t part us, though it seems to'” (378). Just before
her death, Beth’s influence over Jo and her affinity with Jo are so
powerful, in fact, that Beth tells Jo that she must replace her: “You
must take my place, Jo” (378). And sure enough, on the morning
after Beth finally dies, Jo is gone: “Jo’s place was empty” (379).
Unlike selfless Beth, strong-willed and defiant Jo must go on living,
but—in a children’s novel—not as Jo.

I

V

Through Beth’s death, Alcott performs a literary feat of escape
rivaling the marvels of Houdini. By this point in the novel, the
character of Jo March has become intensely problematic for Alcott.
Because Jo inhabits a fictional environment inhospitable to a fully
liberated woman, she can have no radically independent life of her
own, but because of the spirited self-reliant nature given to her

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 115

by her creator, she will not submit to repression. Since the per-
fect woman, the “true woman” is—as Alcott’s experiment reveals
—a dead woman, and since Alcott’s novel demands the showcasing
of a “true woman,” Alcott can develop the character of Jo, that in-
tractably independent and alive female, no further. Jo can only be
replaced. In other words, Alcott discovers through the character
of Jo March what, according to Ann Douglas, many other women
writers toward the end of the nineteenth century were realizing:
that there was no place for a self-aware woman to go, that women
were “strangely superannuated as a sex” (“Impoverishment” 17).
Thus, having stretched the character of Jo March as far as she can
on a rack fastened at one end by Jo’s independent impulses and
secured at the other end by her need to be a proper member of the
female community of “little women,” Alcott witnesses the final snap
of her experimental creation. But by a fascinating sleight of hand,
Alcott hides the failed experimental corpse of Jo and switches the
identity of her victim.

In Little Women, Alcott (with the help of Jo and her writing) kills
Beth and then forces Jo to assume a kind of death in life, to imper-
sonate the dead Beth. And this is why Jo, after the death of Beth,
displays none of her former willful and self-reliant behavior and all
the selflessness of a zombie. Ultimately, then, deep in the macabre
subtext oÃ- Little Women, Alcott’s true victim is Jo; Alcott has, in fact,
killed the self-celebratory Jo and replaced her with the self-effacing
Beth. And the horror of this corpse switching, this premature burial
of the living and impersonation of the dead, is accentuated by the
fact that not a scream or moan is uttered. All is executed in this
novel for children under the pleasant guise of a young girl’s gently
guided growth into a “little woman.”

Alcott’s creation of the new zombielike Jo also helps to explain the
incredible change in Jo’s character following Beth’s death. For Jo’s
transformation in the final chapters of Little Women into the blush-
ing, halting maiden and the dutiful wife and mother are other-
wise completely implausible. In hiding the evidence of her fictional
crime, the longer form of the novel actually works in Alcott’s favor.
The length of Little Women indeed helps to obscure the reader’s
memory of the youthful Jo, the girl who vehemently proclaimed
that she was “not one of the agreeable sort” and preferred therefore
to be an “old maid” (224), the Jo who was “alarmed at the thought”
(203) of marriage. Because the reader’s memory of young Jo who

116 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

“carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such
an unlimited extent” (235) is apt to have dimmed towards the end
of the novel, that reader may be more likely to accept the authen-
ticity of the new Jo, who is “thrilled” by the possibility of a “ten-
der invitation” to “joyfully depart” with her suitor, the much older
Professor Bhaer, “whenever he liked” (410). Confronted with such
schizophrenic behavior, however, the reader with a good memory
is incredulous.

V

The alert reader’s sense of discontinuity results from Alcott’s delib-
erate and somewhat desperate mutilation of both her protagonist
and her text. Not only has Jo been dismembered and then re-
formed as a less threatening version of herself, but the text also
has been dismantled, reshaped, and disguised. What was originally
a story of Jo’s refusal to accede to a repressive feminine role now
becomes a story of courtship and marriage. But this courtship and
marriage mask the horror tale that lies at the center of the novel—
the murder of Jo. At this point Jo, like the speaker in Emily Dickin-
son’s poem, has been forced to abdicate herself. Banished from her
own consciousness, Jo finds herself alienated and alone.

The kind old German professor thus shines “like a midnight sun”
on Jo in her “darkness” (406), and Jo desperately reaches out to
him: “‘Oh Mr. Bhaer, I am so glad to see you!’ cried Jo, with a
clutch, as if she feared the night would swallow him up before she
could get him in” (406). Through the power of love—Alcott’s useful
tool for altering her stubborn heroines—Jo is required to embrace
the accomplice to her own murder. Although Jo’s figurative death
is alluded to by Laurie—when he transfers his love from Jo to Amy,
he feels “as if there had been a funeral” (383) and later responds
to Jo out of the “grave” of his “boyish passion” (402)—the subtext
discloses that it is Professor Bhaer who is instrumental in effecting
Alcott’s scheme. For while Professor Bhaer and Jo covertly admire
each other from across the room, Bhaer is discussing “the burial
customs of the ancients” (408), and he impulsively moves toward
Jo, the text tells us, “just in the act of setting fire to a funeral pile”
(409). It is significant, then, that Alcott presents Professor Bhaer as
a “birthday gift” (406) to the murdered Jo, for out of the death of
her old self, Jo must now enact a new birth, a grisly resurrection.

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 117

Since the beginning of Beth’s illness, Alcott has stealthily but in-
exorably erased the authentic Jo from the text. Jo first begins to
“take lessons” (308) from Professor Bhaer and then, in an act of
self-abdication, forgoes even her own intellectual and moral vision:
“Now she seemed to have got on the Professor’s mental or moral
spectacles also” (322). Through Professor Bhaer, Alcott systemati-
cally strips Jo of all vestiges of self until she is indeed “Bhaer,” or
bare—ready to be clothed and defined by someone else, her hus-
band. When Jo finally agrees to marry Professor Bhaer, the profes-
sor looks “as if he had conquered a kingdom” and tells Jo, “be sure
that thou givest me all. I haf waited so long, I am grown selfish, as
thou wilt find, Professorin” (429). Even the feminized German title
chosen for Jo by the professor reveals the extent to which Jo has
acquiesced to her proper role and become a female version of the
professor himself. Most important, Professor Bhaer—in preparing
Jo for her resurrection as Beth—has succeeded in destroying Jo’s
one authentic means of self-assertion—her writing.

We recall that for the young Jo, writing seemed the key to her
independence, success, and happiness, the “first step toward the
happy end” (142). And when Jo realized that she could write and
sell “sensation” stories (243), she “began to feel herself a power in
the house” (244), to regain some of the ascendancy she lost as her
female kingdom was destroyed. But the surface narrative clearly
indicates that a “sensation” story, the melodramatic but authentic
inscription of her autonomous female self, is in opposition to the
virtues of woman’s sphere: “Unconsciously, she was beginning to
desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman’s charac-
ter” (316). Professor Bhaer, therefore—the upholder of social pro-
prieties and agent of Alcott’s surface narrative—disapproves of Jo’s
writing, insists that she stop writing sensation stories, and thereby
takes away Jo’s power, ensuring that there will be no “happy end”
to her story: ” Ί wish these papers did not come in the house; they
are not for children to see nor young people to read. It is not well,
and I haf no patience with those who make this harm…. They haf
no right to put poison in the sugarplum and let the small ones eat
it. No, they should think a little, and sweep mud in the street be-
fore they do this thing'” (321—22). Jo, now internalizing Professor
Bhaer’s “shortsighted” (322) moral vision, watches Bhaer burn one
of the newspapers which publish sensation stories and moments
later imitates his act, destroying all of her writing:

118 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

“They are trash, and will soon be worse trash if I go on, for
each is more sensational than the last. … I know it’s so, for
I can’t read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly
ashamed of it; and what should I do if they were seen at home
or Mr. Bhaer got hold of them?”

Jo turned hot at the bare idea and stuffed the whole bundle
into her stove, nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze.
[322]

Blazing up the chimney along with Jo’s writings go the remnants
of Jo’s independent self. Jo burns her stories to please Professor
Bhaer, and henceforth not even a memory of the early self-reliant
Jo exists.

Ironically, Jo’s last self-assertive act is the burning of her writings,
the destroying of her own self—her self-reliant, self-expressive,
and self-authenticating being. This ultimate act of self-annihilation
comes as no surprise, however, to the reader who has been alert to
the subtext of the novel. For this alternate text has foreshadowed
the enforced self-mutilation that is Jo’s fate. One of Jo’s first acts of
self-effacement in order to become a proper “little woman” occurs
early in the novel when Jo cuts off her cherished long hair, selling it
to obtain money for her mother to visit her sick father in the army.
Jo’s comments about her sacrifice reveal that it is much more than
a noble act of charity. For the shearing of her hair is Jo’s attempt
to atone for her selfish acts—”I felt wicked” (147)—and to curb her
self-assertive behavior: “It will be good for my vanity” (146). The
subtext reveals, however, the destructive consequences of the at-
tempt to suppress a woman’s self-reliant impulses, as Jo relates her
feelings after cutting off her hair: “It almost seemed as if I’d an arm
or leg off” (148).

Jo is repeatedly associated in the novel, in fact, with self-mutila-
tion. Throughout the novel, Beth cares for Jo’s cast-off “invalid”
doll—appropriately named “Joanna” (56)—a lobotomized amputee
symbolic of the fate of the “tempestuous” Jo herself: “One forlorn
fragment of dollanity had belonged to Jo, and having led a tem-
pestuous life, was left a wreck in the ragbag, from which dreary
poorhouse it was rescued by Beth and taken to her refuge. Having
no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and
legs were gone, she hid diese deficiencies by folding it in a blan-
ket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid” (36). Here

The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women 119

Beth hides the “deficiencies” of “Joanna” even as Alcott later uses
the persona of Beth to “hide” the “deficiencies” of the incorrigible
Jo. And twice in the novel Jo must mutilate her writing—the sole
means she has to express her true self—in order to conform to the
demands of others. First she mutilates her works, her “children,” to
please her editors, “feeling as a tender parent might on being asked
to cut off her baby’s legs in order that it might fit into a new cradle”
(314). Then she completely destroys her works for Professor Bhaer.

Forced to efface and divorce herself from herself, Jo tries now
to write moral children’s stories. These products of an imperson-
ating self, however, these “masquerading” (323) stories fail. Since
Jo no longer writes her beloved thrillers (“Jo corked up her ink-
stand,” 323), she has finally passed the “test” set up for her by the
surface narrative’s assistant, Professor Bhaer: “He did it so quietly
that Jo never knew he was watching to see if she would accept and
profit by his reproof; but she stood the test and he was satisfied; for,
though no words passed between them, he knew that she had given
up writing” (324). Jo now refrains from writing until after Beth’s
death when—at her mother’s suggestion—she attempts a “simple
little story” to relieve her depression and to please her family. Jo
creates a surprisingly successful and moving work but a work which
is more the result of compliance than creativity. By her own ad-
mission, certain aspects of the story—for all its “truth . . . humor
and pathos”—are not hers: “If there ¿5 anything good or true in
what I write, it isn’t mine; I owe it all to you and Mother and to
Beth” (394). Even in her act of creativity, Jo has, to a certain extent,
internalized the values of those around her.

By the end of the novel Jo has no rebellion, no self, left. Jo’s
mind, earlier filled with divided but vital and authentic impulses,
is now—like the doll Joanna’s head—vacuumed out and replaced
with Beth’s one-dimensional, selfless personality. Alcott can finally
resolve the problems and conflicts engendered by the clash of Jo’s
independent personality with her required role in woman’s sphere
only by excising and replacing Jo’s character.

Careful to leave no trace of blood in this children’s novel, Alcott
quietly substitutes for Jo an impersonation of the perfect “little
woman,” the dead and selfless Beth. And when Jo agrees to marry
Professor Bhaer, her words affirm the success of Alcott’s endeavor:
“I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I’m out of my sphere
now” (433—34). Jo has indeed been forced into her proper “sphere,”

120 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

but to do so, Alcott has had to perform a lobotomy on her. While in
the surface narrative Jo seems to learn the lessons of little woman-
hood, the subtext of the novel reveals Alcott’s Procrustean intent:
Jo may begin life as a young “madwoman in the attic,” but Alcott
kills off this madwoman, leaving only the “angel in the house” (217).

Early in the novel, when Jo writes to her absent mother to re-
port on the progress of the children, Jo writes of herself, “I—well,
I’m Jo, and never shall be anything else” (154). The horror oÃ- Little
Women is that Jo does stop being Jo. She has been replaced by a false
Jo, a broken doll, a compliant Beth. This, then, is the act of “cru-
elty,” of “secret and violent inhumanity,” which according to James
Baldwin lurks behind the “sentimentality” of Little Women. In re-
working Stowe’s “prototype”—as Leslie Fiedler suggests Alcott does
—Alcott has transformed “the pre-pubescent corpse as heroine”
into the pubescent heroine as corpse.

Thus, Little Women hides a secret crime. And like many crimes
against women, this one is frequently ignored, overlooked, or dis-
missed as irrelevant. Even readers respectful of Alcott’s novel—as
Fiedler and Baldwin are not—disregard the horror perpetrated on
Jo, insisting that Jo grows smoothly into the woman she was des-
tined to become; in this way, Anne Hollander can observe: “A satis-
fying continuity informs all the lives in Little Women. Alcott creates
a world where a deep ‘natural piety’ indeed effortlessly binds the
child to the woman she becomes. The novel shows that as a young
girl grows up, she may rely with comfort on being the same person,
whatever mysterious and difficult changes must be undergone in
order to become an older and wiser one. Readers can turn again
and again to Alcott’s book solely for a gratifying taste of her sim-
ple, stable vision of feminine completeness” (28). The tragedy of
Little Women is, of course, that Jo is no longer Jo when she reaches
maturity, for the real Jo never could reach maturity.

Torn between her personal loyalty to the original Jo—a lovely,
vibrant, lively “New Woman” (as Janeway calls her, 44)—and her
commitment to those readers who demanded a sufficiently tradi-
tional or comfortable narrative pattern, Alcott faced irreconcilable
demands. The crime in Little Women is Alcott’s brutal resolution of
this conflict, and its real horrors emerge when we become aware
of Alcott’s willingness to finish Jo off (in Jo’s Boys) as “a literary
nursery-maid providing moral pap for the young” (42).8 Alcott has,
at this moment, lost even her own fervid joy in the young woman

The Horror of Louisa May Akott’s Little Women 121

who promised so much, who shone so brightly for so many readers
young and old, but who could not grow into adulthood as herself,
as Jo.

Notes

Epigraph reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst
College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cam-
bridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1951, ©
1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. By permission
also of Litde, Brown and Company, from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited
by Thomas H.Johnson, copyright 1929 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; copyright ©
renewed 1957 by Mary L. Hampson.

1. Alcott’s adult thrillers were discovered by Madeleine Stern and Leona Rosten-
berg and published by Stern in Behind a Mask ( 1975) and Plots and Counterplots ( 1976).

2. Little Women has been both assaulted and acclaimed by contemporary critics.
Eugenia Kaledin writes that Alcott’s “acceptance of the creed of womanly self-denial
as much as her willingness to buy success by catering to middle class ideals aborted
the promise of her art and led her to betray her most deeply felt values” (251).

Most recent critics οι Little Women, however, have found more to admire in Alcott’s
fiction. Their critical responses to Little Women have generally been of two kinds.
Some emphasize the independence, autonomy, and rebelliousness of Jo March
(Janeway, Russ), while others perceive in the novel a matriarchal “reigning feminist
sisterhood” (Auerbach). Historian Sarah Elbert finds Jo’s development in the novel
to be “the only fully complete one” and views Jo’s marriage to Professor Bhaer as a
“democratic domestic union” (207).

Other critics focus on the tensions and conflicts inherent in the novel. Alma
Payne, for example, views Jo as an embodiment of the struggle between “a sense of
duty” and “a strong self” (261). Ann Douglas finds that Little Women embodies the
conflicts which Alcott inherited from her mother’s and father’s opposing natures
(“Mysteries”). And Elizabeth Keyser argues that in Little Women Alcott undercuts
the domestic values she seems to assert. Finally, Judith Fetterley, perhaps the most
insightful critic of Alcott, finds a conflict within the text of Little Women between
overt and covert messages “which provide evidence of Alcott’s ambivalence” on “the
subject of what it means to be a little woman” (370-71, 382).

In contrast to these critics, we argue here that in Little Women there is not only
evidence of ambivalence but also covert manipulation of the text by Alcott in order
to disguise the fate of her experimental, self-reliant heroine.

3. In her study of Alcott’s short stories Joy Marsella observes that Alcott acknowl-
edged the socializing effect stories had upon children and that she wrote her own
in a way that “formed minds, prepared hearts, and molded characters” in a manner
fully acceptable to the conservative editors of children’s periodicals (xxi).

4. For a discussion of the “crime” hidden at the center of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see
Kathleen Margaret Lant’s “The Unsung Hero of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

5. For other discussions of Jo’s sisters and their responses to the demands and
conflicts of becoming “litde women,” see Nina Auerbach, Sarah Elbert, Judith Fetter-
ley, Anne Hollander, Elizabeth Keyser, and Patricia Meyer Spacks. Several of these
essays and other critical works on Alcott have been collected by Madeleine Stern in
Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott.

6. Fetterley thoroughly delineates this point in “Alcott’s Civil War”: “Beth’s history
carries out the implication of being a little woman to its logical conclusion: to be a
little woman is to be dead” (380).

122 Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant

7. Fetterley supports this reading of Beth’s role in the novel: “One can say that
Beth’s primary function in Little Women is to be a lesson tojo” (381). In contrast
to our thesis here, however, Fetterley argues for Jo’s “ultimate acceptance of the
doctrines οι Little Women” (382).

8. See Elizabeth Keyser’s “Women and Girls in Louisa May Alcott’s Jo’s Boys” for
an illuminating discussion of the adult Jo’s continuing frustration and resentment
arising from her conflicts between “self-assertion and self-sacrifice” (463). Keyser
delineates “the broken fragments of Jo’s inconsistent ideology” in the “first layer” of
the text of Jo’s Boys and brilliantly suggests how Alcott’s “disposing of her characters
—most of them in conventional ‘happy’ marriages” approximates the “act of vio-
lence” Alcott contemplated in her temptation to “engulf Plumfield and its environs
so deeply in the bowels of the earth that no youthful Schliemann could ever find a
vestige of it” (469-70).

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