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145. Louisa May Alcott · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to who ed What Now?
0:03
Speaker 1: The history podcast. It's not your history class with me,
0:07
Speaker 1: your host, Katie Charlewood, history harlot and reader of books.
0:13
Speaker 1: It is Pride Month, everybody, And would it be Pride
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Speaker 1: month if we were upsetting transphobes.
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Speaker 2: The world over?
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Speaker 1: So first off, we have this fan cast of Zelda
0:23
Speaker 1: going on, right, it's not even a production, it's not
0:26
Speaker 1: even a thing. But someone said, wouldn't Hunter Shaefer be
0:30
Speaker 1: perfect for playing Princess Zelda? And if you look at
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Speaker 1: Hunter Shaeffer, yeah, she looks like the daughter of Galadriel. Like,
0:39
Speaker 1: she looks like Princess Zelda. And you have all of
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Speaker 1: the transphobes coming at the woodwork complaining that you know, Hunter.
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Speaker 2: Shaff is not a biological woman?
0:52
Speaker 1: Is if Princess Zelda is a biological human like she's
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Speaker 1: from Hirol, the mythical land of hi Rul's Higlien, she
1:01
Speaker 1: is a creature with elf like features. We don't know
1:05
Speaker 1: anything about the biology. And I do not recall anywhere
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Speaker 1: in the Zelder lore where it specifically says that Zelda
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Speaker 1: has a vagina, I mean, nowhere to my knowledge, right,
1:19
Speaker 1: But like, here's the thing, and no Kreena of time,
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Speaker 1: Zelda magics herself into chic into a man, right and
1:27
Speaker 1: then and what was it? A breath of the wild
1:31
Speaker 1: transforms into a dragon. And yet having a trans woman
1:35
Speaker 1: play this role is somehow out and the you know,
1:41
Speaker 1: out of bound somehow, like what is this?
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Speaker 2: It's absolutely nonsense.
1:45
Speaker 1: And then I had another little thought that I posted
1:48
Speaker 1: to threads, which has made more people angry.
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Speaker 2: I was like, I.
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Speaker 1: Don't get why, you know, transphobes use, you know, biology
1:59
Speaker 1: specific in an argument against trans women, because it's always
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Speaker 1: trans women that you know, they're claiming this whole biological
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Speaker 1: thing when like in the women, like after gestation or
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Speaker 1: not during gestation, I should say at conception, you'll start
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Speaker 1: off as girls. Everyone's female xx. You know everyone starts
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Speaker 1: off that. So I don't understand the issue biologically. If
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Speaker 1: someone wants to revert to factory settings, like where's the issue?
2:34
Speaker 2: Like, get over it?
2:36
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was such a weird thing. But yes,
2:39
Speaker 1: happy pride.
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Speaker 2: And so this month we are talking about LGBTQI.
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Speaker 1: If I can find them, I will talk about them.
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Speaker 1: And so I thought, I'm not talking about a trans
2:51
Speaker 1: person today, but I am going to talk about someone
2:53
Speaker 1: who I'm convinced is Ace, and that's my personal opinion,
2:58
Speaker 1: along with the pinion of mood need many historians. So
3:02
Speaker 1: here we are. But I know what you're thinking.
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Speaker 2: You're thinking, Katie quit your gibbel Jabba in fact me,
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Speaker 2: In fact you, I will. But first we've got to
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Speaker 2: get our source on.
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Speaker 1: Our sources are the Journals of Louisa May Alcott by
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Speaker 1: Madeline B. Stere, Daniel Sheeley, and Joe Myerson. Louisa May Alcott,
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Speaker 1: A Difficult Woman who Got Things done by e Hubert
3:34
Speaker 1: Louisa on the front Lines. Louisa may Alcott in the
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Speaker 1: Civil War by Samantha Sepo. The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia
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Speaker 1: by Anne Kay Phillips and greg Lee Eisling White Roses
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Speaker 1: Stories of Civil War Nurses by Rebecca Larson. Louisa May
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Speaker 1: Alcott A Modern biography by Ruth Kay Donald Alcott In
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Speaker 1: her Own Time a biographical chronicle of her life drawn
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Speaker 1: from recollections, interviews and memoirs by family, friends and associates
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Speaker 1: by Daniel Sheley.
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Speaker 2: The World of Louisa.
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Speaker 1: May Alcott by William Anderson. Louisa May Alcott by Susan Schiever,
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Speaker 1: Louisa May Alcott Life Letters and Journals by Edna D. Cheney,
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Speaker 1: And of course we have our old favorites History dot
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Speaker 1: com and biography dot com. iOS did in comfortably gold.
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Speaker 2: Then let's begin.
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Speaker 1: Louisa May Alcott was born on the twenty ninth of
4:43
Speaker 1: November eighteen thirty two in Germantown, Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, in
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Speaker 1: the United States of America. Just in case we're not
4:52
Speaker 1: clear on the geography. She was born to Amos Bronson Alcott,
5:00
Speaker 1: transcendentalist and educator, and Abigail May, who was one of
5:05
Speaker 1: the first pet social workers in Massachusetts. Abigail May was
5:11
Speaker 1: known as Abba Abba like the Swedish pop group, which
5:17
Speaker 1: is irrelevant, but I felt like you needed to know this.
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Speaker 2: So here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: Amos Bronson Alcott, he was ducked poor. Like he not
5:32
Speaker 1: dirt poor, but like that's a lie, that's too much.
5:35
Speaker 2: He was quite poor. He was impoverished. And yeah, how
5:40
Speaker 2: he landed Abba is saying something, but you know what
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Speaker 2: they say, the one all takes it all. I regret nothing.
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Speaker 1: So Louisa. She was the second of four daughters, so
5:54
Speaker 1: there was Anna, Louisa Elizabeth and may trigger one. I'm
6:00
Speaker 1: going to mention pregnancy loss infant loss, so I'm skipped
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Speaker 1: like five seconds. Abbas suffers four miscarriages and has one
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Speaker 1: stillborn son. When Louisa is two years old, the family
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Speaker 1: moved from Philadelphia to Boston, Massachusetts. And it's here, when
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Speaker 1: she's three years old, that she goes wandering at night.
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Speaker 1: Who is in what wise unsure? Because she's three? And
6:29
Speaker 1: why did three year olds do anything other than confusion,
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Speaker 1: hunger or pure on adult radd rage. So she's three,
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Speaker 1: she's out for a wander, and what does she do
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Speaker 1: but falls into a frog pond and almost drowns, except
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Speaker 1: she is saved by an African American boy. And this
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Speaker 1: is something that she always remembers because he risked his
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Speaker 1: life to save her, you know, and this is a.
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Speaker 2: Time where, you know, racism is rife.
7:02
Speaker 1: And it's very much the norm, and it really helps
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Speaker 1: her sort of have her opinion and was something that
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Speaker 1: she would later go on to say was the foundation
7:12
Speaker 1: of her personal abolitionist beliefs. So in Boston, her dad
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Speaker 1: sets up a tempo school and he starts kicking about
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Speaker 1: with other transcendentalists like Ralph Warlow Emerson, Henry David Thorowe,
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Speaker 1: Nathaniel Hawthorne.
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Speaker 2: And Horace Mann.
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Speaker 1: So while he's doing this, Abba she was burdened with
7:37
Speaker 1: most of the childcare juries and all of the housekeeping,
7:42
Speaker 1: but as she wasn't too happy about that to be honest, now,
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Speaker 1: Bronson he does help with some childcare. So before Louisa
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Speaker 1: is old enough to join school, he teaches the girls
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Speaker 1: the alphabet by making shapes with their bodies like y
8:02
Speaker 1: MCA or if that reference is too old for you,
8:06
Speaker 1: if you're very young.
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Speaker 2: Hate ott, oht you okay, you get me, you get me.
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Speaker 2: Hopefully one of these references.
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Speaker 1: Will make sense to you. So Bronson, he had a
8:22
Speaker 1: very strict schedule for the girls, and he believed in
8:25
Speaker 1: the sweetness of self denial. And yeah, the girls also
8:31
Speaker 1: had like a governess for a bit as well. So yeah,
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Speaker 1: this whole like sweetness of self denial, it's very much
8:39
Speaker 1: along the lines.
8:40
Speaker 2: Of self praise is no praise.
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Speaker 1: But honestly, fuck that noise, because like, if no one
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Speaker 1: else is gonna praise you, you may as well praise yourself,
8:49
Speaker 1: you know, be proud of your achievements and the thing
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Speaker 1: you did. So yeah, this tempo school. It's progressive. Progressive
9:01
Speaker 1: is definitely a word. And it was educating Boston's elites,
9:07
Speaker 1: like the fancy people.
9:09
Speaker 2: The well to do.
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Speaker 1: Only people who believed in nativism and such. Oh those
9:14
Speaker 1: kind of people, right, and so education it's typically repetition.
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Speaker 1: It's a repetition regregitation of facts. And the way that
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Speaker 1: Bronson Alcott would teach is he would engage in conversation
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Speaker 1: and active discussions.
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Speaker 2: So he was treating sort of a.
9:36
Speaker 1: Primary level education, sort of akin to like what people
9:41
Speaker 1: would do in third level sort of college university, where
9:44
Speaker 1: you have that open discussion as opposed.
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Speaker 2: To learn you know, people, places, facts, you know dates,
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Speaker 2: you know those.
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Speaker 1: Kind of things. He's like, oh, let's chat about it now.
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Speaker 2: This may shock you. But the Bostonian elites, the people
10:02
Speaker 2: who believed that Irish were a different race, these parents
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Speaker 2: weren't too into the whole open discussions about religion and
10:12
Speaker 2: sex in the classroom, and they started pulling their kids. Meanwhile,
10:18
Speaker 2: Louisa is keeping a journal which her parents read and
10:22
Speaker 2: then leave notes on her pillow. I don't know how
10:27
Speaker 2: to feel about that, friends, I don't know how to
10:30
Speaker 2: feel about that. So her mum gets her to write
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Speaker 2: to process her emotions because she's struggling because she's met
10:39
Speaker 2: with the reality of being a girl in the eighteen hundreds.
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Speaker 2: She wants to play sports with the boys, but she's
10:46
Speaker 2: not allowed because apparently having a vagina means you can't
10:52
Speaker 2: do sports. I don't know.
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Speaker 1: And so at the Temple School, which is already losing
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Speaker 1: student and Ronson decides to allow a black student to.
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Speaker 2: Join his school.
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Speaker 1: And when he refused to kick them out, every single child,
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Speaker 1: every single white child, sorry, was removed from the school
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Speaker 1: and he was forced to close. And so the family
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Speaker 1: they moved to pastors New They moved to Concord, which
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Speaker 1: is paid for by Ralph Waldo Everson, and the girls
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Speaker 1: made friends and put on plays, you know with Hoesmer, Goodwin, Everson,
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Speaker 1: Hawthorne and Channing children. The Alcotts and the Hosmers would
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Speaker 1: put on plays together, especially so Louisa. She gets this
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Speaker 1: like formative education at the Emlson House until she's old
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Speaker 1: enough to attend Concord Academy with her older sister. And
12:01
Speaker 1: she's really like living her best life. She's climbing trees,
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Speaker 1: she's writing poems, and like kids, they got to be kids,
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Speaker 1: and for Louisa, this was the happiest time.
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Speaker 2: Of her life.
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Speaker 1: When Louisa is eight years old, her family is struggling financially,
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Speaker 1: like her mother Abba, She's.
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Speaker 2: Like money, money, money, we need money.
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Speaker 1: And so this well educated woman, what she is doing
12:35
Speaker 1: is she's going around asking.
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Speaker 2: For seamstress work so that they can pay for the basics. See,
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Speaker 2: Bronson is a way a lot with intellectual pursuits. So
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Speaker 2: these women and girls are having to look after themselves.
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Speaker 2: And when Louisa may Alcott is ten years old, her
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Speaker 2: dad brings two dudes back from England, Charles Layne and
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Speaker 2: Henry Write, to live at their cottage with them, the
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Speaker 2: cottage Emerson is paying for. Bronson is out philosophizing, leaving
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Speaker 2: Charles Lane at his home. Okay, that's something that he
13:17
Speaker 2: did in Lane.
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Speaker 1: He is an absolute dick titor. He hates the girls
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Speaker 1: are strong willed and stand up for themselves. He gives
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Speaker 1: them this.
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Speaker 2: Massive learning load geometry, geography, Latin French grammar, arithmetic, music, spelling,
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Speaker 2: and journal writing. Not only does he increase the educational
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Speaker 2: workload the women, they be choring like they are constantly
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Speaker 2: working one way or another. And like when you read
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Speaker 2: old timey books about poverty and such, right, usually somewhere
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Speaker 2: somehow there's like him mad or a nanny like doing housekeeping.
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Speaker 1: Like even people who aren't that privileged, like you see
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Speaker 1: that as a very like normal thing.
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Speaker 2: Right.
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Speaker 1: However, here it's just the wife and the kids doing
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Speaker 1: all the work. Because these lofty motherfuckers they want to
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Speaker 1: establish a utopia. Because see free thing girls are congregating
14:26
Speaker 1: to Concord and Bronzon.
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Speaker 2: Is really believing his own fan mail and.
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Speaker 1: Lane and Bronzing, they want to set up a transcendental
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Speaker 1: commune cult sort community where men and women live in harmony.
14:43
Speaker 1: I should probably mention what transcendentalism is. So it's basically
14:48
Speaker 1: this philosophical, philosophical, philosophical and literary movement that sort of
14:55
Speaker 1: emerged in the nineteenth century. I'm typically around sort of
14:59
Speaker 1: like New England in that sort of area, and Transcendentalists
15:03
Speaker 1: believed that society and its institutions specifically like organized religion
15:10
Speaker 1: and political parties, corrupt the purity of the individual. So
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Speaker 1: basically they believe that people are at their best when
15:20
Speaker 1: they're self reliant and independent.
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Speaker 2: And it's only from this sort of weird kind of
15:25
Speaker 2: individualism that true community can form, right, so kind of
15:32
Speaker 2: like ye old hippies like pioneer hippies and other pioneers
15:37
Speaker 2: are before this, but let me have this pioneer hippies.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, they want this commune cult community. Sorry sorry,
15:47
Speaker 1: and effectively they want to like have this magic wee
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Speaker 1: vegan feminist utopia sixteen miles outside of Concord called Fruitlands,
15:59
Speaker 1: not wim Lane in case you're getting confused, fruit Lands,
16:04
Speaker 1: and so there were to be no animals hurt in
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Speaker 1: the production of this commune like they wouldn't have any
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Speaker 1: animal products at all, so like no honey, no wool,
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Speaker 1: which is ridiculous because sheep need to be shared. They
16:21
Speaker 1: get too hot and the will gets too heavy, like
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Speaker 1: you're hurting the sheep if you don't share it. That's
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Speaker 1: why you're supposed to learn how to share things properly.
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Speaker 1: But yes, this was a commune cult farm in which
16:38
Speaker 1: no animals were to be involved in that. So this
16:41
Speaker 1: is a farm in the eighteen hundreds with no animals.
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Speaker 2: They thought this through. So typically if you.
16:50
Speaker 1: Wanted to plow a field, you would have a horse
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Speaker 1: do that, but they didn't have horses because they didn't
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Speaker 1: want to. It was an animal in any way, and
17:02
Speaker 1: so the men were the plow horses. The men had
17:07
Speaker 1: to manually plow the fields themselves, and they couldn't plant
17:13
Speaker 1: anything that grew down right, don't ask me for why.
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Speaker 1: But you couldn't grow a root vegetable, So you couldn't
17:23
Speaker 1: grow potatoes. I love potatoes though, I mean, I know
17:28
Speaker 1: it's a cuba, but like you couldn't grow turnut or beetroot, carrots,
17:34
Speaker 1: and like they were two months behind on farming anyway,
17:40
Speaker 1: and so by winter they had oatmeal, water and apples.
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Speaker 2: In this utopia fruitlands. So some of the neighbors who
17:57
Speaker 2: were not in the commune, they took pity on the
18:00
Speaker 2: family and they snuck a cow in for Abba to use.
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Speaker 2: Like I'm gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it.
18:08
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do it. Water mood. Yeah, So they like
18:14
Speaker 2: snuck in a cow so that Abba could secretly have
18:19
Speaker 2: access to milk, like to secretly get milk. Like, this
18:24
Speaker 2: is the point we're at, because they're so little food.
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Speaker 2: And if clandestine cream wasn't bad enough, you've got Charles
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Speaker 2: Lane who decided that women didn't need opinions. He decided
18:40
Speaker 2: that men they were supposed to discuss philosophy, and women
18:45
Speaker 2: were to discuss food and clothes.
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Speaker 1: And in this commune, and you're gonna be shocked by this,
18:53
Speaker 1: women did all the household chores and labor. So yeah,
18:58
Speaker 1: winter time, the family, they are freezing and starving, and
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Speaker 1: Abba is sick of being an unpaid servant and watching
19:07
Speaker 1: her family starve.
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Speaker 2: And in January she.
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Speaker 1: Tells Bronson that she's leaving and she's taken the girls
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Speaker 1: with her. Her brother arranges a cottage just like a
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Speaker 1: few miles down the road. She packs up all the furniture,
19:21
Speaker 1: grabs the girls, and goes. She tells him that he
19:25
Speaker 1: is ruining their children's lives, and he must have taken
19:30
Speaker 1: that to heart because a few months later he joins them.
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Speaker 1: So the ways I met Alcott's father, he's really sad
19:44
Speaker 1: about leaving the fruitlands, Like he's genuinely upset about it.
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Speaker 1: He's like slobbing about not working. He's barely eating and
19:52
Speaker 1: he just stares at the wall. Like in Abba, what
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Speaker 1: she is like getting angry, like flying into a rage
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Speaker 1: at least once a day because she has four daughters
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Speaker 1: to feed, and eleven year old Louisa she's starving and
20:08
Speaker 1: crying herself to sleep every single night. And so they're
20:14
Speaker 1: in this new cottage and eventually he starts manning up
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Speaker 1: and Abbat is in charge. Bronson is like planting a garden.
20:23
Speaker 1: He's piping water into the house and he starts working,
20:28
Speaker 1: but refuses a wedge because it's against his principles and
20:34
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to own property. So Emerson bought property
20:41
Speaker 1: just so that Bronson would move in. So finally Louisa
20:48
Speaker 1: has a room of her own. They're staying in Hillside
20:53
Speaker 1: and they break into a factory and right around in
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Speaker 1: coal carts. She gets to gnoyed by other children and
21:02
Speaker 1: like just likes to.
21:04
Speaker 2: Do her own thing. And at one point she just
21:07
Speaker 2: like takes a horse and slay for a joy ride,
21:10
Speaker 2: like she's just out there doing her thing.
21:14
Speaker 1: Just I love the fact that Louisa Mayle caught beloved
21:17
Speaker 1: author just goes just steals a horse and.
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Speaker 2: Slay and she's like, whoop do you do? Motherfuckers? Grand
21:26
Speaker 2: horse auro, Grand theft horse. So there's they'll they'll be
21:31
Speaker 2: away for me to make this work. That's not the
21:33
Speaker 2: point Grand theft quote. Oh I'll figure something now, I'll
21:40
Speaker 2: figure something now, So Louisa. She loved her dad, but
21:46
Speaker 2: she saw how his idealism failed her and her sisters,
21:51
Speaker 2: and as she grew into a teenager, she refused to
21:54
Speaker 2: conform to feminine ideals and prepare for marriage. Quote, it
22:02
Speaker 2: does me.
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Speaker 1: Good to be alone. I've made a plan for my
22:05
Speaker 1: life as I am in my teens and no more child.
22:09
Speaker 1: I'm old for my age and I don't care much
22:11
Speaker 1: for girls things. When she wasn't rambling through the woods
22:15
Speaker 1: and climbing trees, she wrote poetry. And yeah, she was
22:21
Speaker 1: also a staunch abolitionist because like in the eighteen forties,
22:26
Speaker 1: the slavery debate is happening and thousands of escaped enslaved
22:31
Speaker 1: people fled to the Northern States and mom and pop
22:37
Speaker 1: they were actually active in anti slavery societies in sheltered
22:41
Speaker 1: runaway like formerly enslaved people at Hillside. So their house,
22:47
Speaker 1: their little collage, was a stop on the railroad. So yes,
22:52
Speaker 1: the Alcots were part of the underground railroad. Which is
22:59
Speaker 1: probably the coolest about Bronson. I've got to be honest.
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Speaker 2: Because Bronson, he is faffing about and pursuing intellectual shit
23:10
Speaker 2: instead of earning a wage.
23:13
Speaker 1: To you know, ensure that his you know, family are fed. Like,
23:19
Speaker 1: how how can you be this disillusioned?
23:23
Speaker 2: How okay, it's fine, abbas patals. They are shocked at
23:30
Speaker 2: how she's living, and they arrange for her to get
23:33
Speaker 2: a social work job back in Boston because there are
23:39
Speaker 2: loads and loads of poor Irish immigrants there and she
23:44
Speaker 2: is working. She's got loads of work there because of this,
23:49
Speaker 2: but it's not enough to alleviate the family debt.
23:55
Speaker 1: And so Louisa and the family they rendered out Hillside
23:59
Speaker 1: and they in a small house in Boston. Louisa said,
24:06
Speaker 1: I always left a keep house feeling like a cage
24:10
Speaker 1: seagull as I washed dishes and cooked. She supported her
24:15
Speaker 1: family as she could, taking on odd jobs and even
24:18
Speaker 1: working as a house servant for seven weeks. In the
24:23
Speaker 1: summer of eighteen fifty, the entire family contracts smallpox. They
24:29
Speaker 1: can't work for a while, and their finances they really suffer,
24:33
Speaker 1: and Louisa she turns to writing as an escape, and
24:38
Speaker 1: in September eighteen fifty one, eighteen year old Louisa may
24:43
Speaker 1: Alcott publishes her first poem, Sunlight, and this is in
24:48
Speaker 1: a women's magazine, and she aarned five all Dulls. The
24:53
Speaker 1: following year, Nathaniel Hawthorne bought Hillside from the Alcotts, so
24:59
Speaker 1: like they somehow ended up owning Hillside. I'm not sure how.
25:06
Speaker 1: It's kind of convoluted, but yeah, so Hawthorne he ends
25:10
Speaker 1: up buying it from them basically so they are not destitute.
25:15
Speaker 1: So he saves the family from financial ruin, and so
25:19
Speaker 1: they end up moving into a Nesser home in Boston.
25:22
Speaker 1: And Louisa tried to write for money, and at nineteen
25:26
Speaker 1: she starts writing pulp fiction Blood in the thunder Tales
25:32
Speaker 1: as she calls them Blood in thunder Tales, under the
25:35
Speaker 1: pseudonym A. M.
25:37
Speaker 2: Barnard.
25:39
Speaker 1: And when she's twenty one, she showed her memoir essay
25:44
Speaker 1: how I Went Out to Service to James T Field,
25:48
Speaker 1: who had published Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter four years before.
25:52
Speaker 1: He rejected it, telling her sticky or teaching miss Alcott,
25:57
Speaker 1: you can't write all right, buddy. Four months later, she
26:03
Speaker 1: convinces another publisher to publish her first book, Flower Fables,
26:10
Speaker 1: which is a collection of stories about fairies, elves and
26:14
Speaker 1: stuff for like Emelson's Daughters. Sixteen hundred copies were published
26:20
Speaker 1: and she earned a grand total of thirty five dollars.
26:25
Speaker 1: The following year, the Alcott moved to New Hampshire and
26:28
Speaker 1: Louisa stayed behind to write. When in New Hampshire, her
26:33
Speaker 1: younger sister Lizzy contracts scarlet fever, but eventually she recovers.
26:41
Speaker 1: When Louise's twenty four, her family returned to Concord because
26:45
Speaker 1: Emelson bought them a two story farmhouse called Orchard House,
26:50
Speaker 1: and everything seems to be going fine. But then the
26:53
Speaker 1: following year, in eighteen fifty eight, Lizzie takes a turn
26:57
Speaker 1: for the worse and the doctors say there's no hope
27:01
Speaker 1: for her, which Lizzie is a clear inspiration for Beth
27:08
Speaker 1: in Little Women.
27:10
Speaker 2: Lizzie Beth like even the names are connected. The disease
27:16
Speaker 2: ravages her body. Lizzie was wasting away and Louisa stayed
27:22
Speaker 2: by her sister every single night until she finally succumbed
27:26
Speaker 2: to her illness. In three weeks after.
27:31
Speaker 1: Lizzie passed away, Louise's big sister Anna gets engaged and
27:38
Speaker 1: Louisa writes that she is losing a second sister.
27:43
Speaker 2: Like actually she does.
27:44
Speaker 1: She goes another sister was gone, and I'd rather be
27:49
Speaker 1: a free spinster and pedal my own canoe. Twenty six
27:54
Speaker 1: year old Louisa returns to Boston. Changed by the loss,
27:59
Speaker 1: she buckles down and goes back to work to support
28:01
Speaker 1: her family. She teaches, she takes sewing work, and she writes.
28:07
Speaker 1: Bronson tells her like her dad. He tells her to
28:10
Speaker 1: send her work to the prestigious Atlantic Monthly, and Love
28:16
Speaker 1: and Self Love is published. It's a love story about
28:20
Speaker 1: an orphaned girl. And so she writes this like very
28:25
Speaker 1: romantic love story, but she is still churning out these
28:28
Speaker 1: blood and Thunder tells which pulp fiction.
28:32
Speaker 2: It's so good. I love it so much.
28:34
Speaker 1: So in eighteen sixty her family takes in the family
28:38
Speaker 1: of an executed abolitionist, John Brown, who we've all been
28:43
Speaker 1: discussing at a later date. So April eighteen sixty one,
28:49
Speaker 1: it is the American Civil War, and Louisa she wanted
28:55
Speaker 1: to fight, like she wanted to fight in the war,
28:59
Speaker 1: but of she's a woman, she's not allowed. And the
29:04
Speaker 1: following year, in eighteen sixty two, she applies to be
29:07
Speaker 1: a Union Army NUS because of course it's the Union,
29:11
Speaker 1: because she's not an idiot. In December that year, she
29:16
Speaker 1: is in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and there was a crushing defeat
29:21
Speaker 1: for the Union and hundreds of wounded Union soldiers are
29:25
Speaker 1: pouring into the hospital, Like this is her first day
29:31
Speaker 1: because the Battle of Fredericksburg, right, there's twelve thousand Union
29:35
Speaker 1: casualties like in all, and so you've just got soldiers
29:39
Speaker 1: like pouring into this hospital and she's like, she wanted
29:42
Speaker 1: to be here, she wanted to be involved. And then
29:45
Speaker 1: she's seeing first hand and like the one is the
29:50
Speaker 1: thing is like what she's doing mainly is washing people.
29:55
Speaker 1: It's a lot of washing. Like as a nurse, that
29:57
Speaker 1: seems to be her primary task. That's her main task
30:02
Speaker 1: is to wash the men. Obviously that's kind of necessary
30:06
Speaker 1: but also.
30:07
Speaker 2: K but yeah, unsurprisingly, being a nurse in the eighteen hundreds,
30:14
Speaker 2: the job takes a physical toll on her.
30:17
Speaker 1: She gets this cough, which leads to a delusional fever dreams,
30:21
Speaker 1: which leads to pneumonia, which leads to typhoid fever, which I.
30:26
Speaker 2: Read was treated with calamel like calamel motion calamel, Okay,
30:32
Speaker 2: I need to look that up. So she recovers from typhoid,
30:37
Speaker 2: but then she comes down with mercury poisoning, because that's
30:43
Speaker 2: how they treated all the old timey like illnesses. They're like, here,
30:47
Speaker 2: have some poison. Kay.
30:50
Speaker 1: So after six weeks, she's sent back home. When she
30:55
Speaker 1: gets back home, her publisher asks her to compile letters
30:58
Speaker 1: that she wrote as a nurse into a book, and
31:02
Speaker 1: she gets paid two hundred dollars for hospital sketches, which
31:08
Speaker 1: errans her acclaim and more.
31:12
Speaker 2: And publishers began to.
31:17
Speaker 1: Seek out her writing, but she's still like really friendly
31:22
Speaker 1: with her original publisher, and she gives her pet project
31:28
Speaker 1: Moods to James Redpath, her publisher, and she is absolutely
31:33
Speaker 1: distraught when he asks her to cut it in half,
31:37
Speaker 1: and so she's like, no, this is my baby. I
31:39
Speaker 1: put my blood into this, And so she brings it
31:42
Speaker 1: to another publisher who also says it's too long, and
31:46
Speaker 1: she removes ten out of the thirty chapters, and the
31:50
Speaker 1: book it has mixed reviews. And at thirty three, a
32:00
Speaker 1: wealthy Boston shipowner asks Louisa to travel to Europe as
32:05
Speaker 1: the paid companion to his invalid daughter. So this is
32:09
Speaker 1: like the Grand Tour. So the Grand Tour is when
32:12
Speaker 1: rich people from America would go gallivanting around Europe, and
32:16
Speaker 1: there were certain places they would go see. You know,
32:18
Speaker 1: it was a very much a done thing. It was
32:21
Speaker 1: like when you get to a certain agent society, it
32:25
Speaker 1: was it was what you did. And so she goes
32:30
Speaker 1: on it. And so she accompanies this woman to go
32:34
Speaker 1: on this grand tour, and she has a swell time.
32:39
Speaker 1: She really like learned from this experience and she has
32:42
Speaker 1: just a really good time on all. But when she
32:45
Speaker 1: returns home, she discovers that all of her family.
32:49
Speaker 2: Bills are unpaid.
32:52
Speaker 1: And so she spends the rest of the year writing
32:55
Speaker 1: twelve news stories and she's tiled, and I mean know,
32:59
Speaker 1: she's like so tired, like she literally collapses from exhaustion,
33:04
Speaker 1: and she's just like so desperately trying to keep her
33:07
Speaker 1: family above water. And when she's thirty five, Louisa is
33:13
Speaker 1: offered the job of editor of Mary's Museum, a children's magazine,
33:20
Speaker 1: which earns her five hundred dollars a year because editor
33:25
Speaker 1: Thomas Niles he notices a gap in the market and
33:29
Speaker 1: asks her to write a book for young girls, and
33:33
Speaker 1: Louisa says no because she's not interested in writing moral
33:40
Speaker 1: pep for the young. Like she didn't see herself as
33:44
Speaker 1: a children's author, and she lived through like poverty, tragedy,
33:51
Speaker 1: illness in war, and she just didn't want.
33:55
Speaker 2: To do it.
33:57
Speaker 1: However, Ronson, I'll call it to father.
34:03
Speaker 2: He had a manuscript that he wanted published, and so
34:09
Speaker 2: she agreed on the condition tablets, which is his manuscript,
34:15
Speaker 2: would be published. This was his request. He was like,
34:19
Speaker 2: if you know my manuscript to be published, if you
34:25
Speaker 2: write yours, like, make that part of the deal. And
34:28
Speaker 2: so she does.
34:31
Speaker 1: She does that for this man. Anyway, skip forward to
34:36
Speaker 1: February eighteen sixty nine and Louisa breaks down. She quits
34:42
Speaker 1: her job and she moves to Concord to write a
34:45
Speaker 1: book that she didn't want to write, and she writes.
34:51
Speaker 1: She writes an ordinary coming of age novel about four
34:56
Speaker 1: sistels growing into young women, a semi autobiographical and fairly
35:03
Speaker 1: sanitized account of her own childhood in Concord, A little
35:08
Speaker 1: bit you might know as little Women. Anna Alcott becomes
35:16
Speaker 1: Meg March, Lizzie becomes Beth, and May becomes Amy.
35:25
Speaker 2: Now Lizzie becomes Beth. That's the same name, but with
35:29
Speaker 2: different nicknames.
35:31
Speaker 1: Right, the alliteration for Meg March, you have.
35:36
Speaker 2: May to Amy. They just rearranged the letters. She just
35:40
Speaker 2: rearranged the letters.
35:41
Speaker 1: It's an anagram, an anagram, and Joe, Joe is an
35:49
Speaker 1: idealized version of herself. And mister March he is an
35:54
Speaker 1: employed but absent chaplain like. He's like, she gave him
35:59
Speaker 1: a way out, and there's a maid to do the housework,
36:07
Speaker 1: and she's just like, and I it's yeah, it's what her.
36:15
Speaker 2: Life could have been.
36:18
Speaker 1: And so she sends the first twelve chapters.
36:22
Speaker 2: To thumb Up Niles, and he calls it dull, and
36:29
Speaker 2: Louisa agrees.
36:32
Speaker 1: Then Niles shows it to his niece and she fucking
36:38
Speaker 1: loves it. And so Louisa she pushes through illness, exhaustion,
36:46
Speaker 1: and a never forming opium habit to finish the novel
36:53
Speaker 1: two and a half months after starting it. She has
36:57
Speaker 1: offered one thousand dollars flat fee or a three hundred
37:02
Speaker 1: dollars advance and six percent royalties on each copy sold,
37:07
Speaker 1: and on the thirtieenth of September eighteen sixty eight, Little
37:12
Speaker 1: Women was published. It's an instant's success, selling out the
37:17
Speaker 1: first printing of two thousand copies, and so she was
37:21
Speaker 1: asked to write a second volume. Her readers begged her
37:26
Speaker 1: for Joe and Laurie to marry, but she didn't believe
37:30
Speaker 1: in marriage. The publisher had sold four thousand copies of
37:35
Speaker 1: the second volume before it was finished. Like pre orders, man,
37:39
Speaker 1: pre orders are important. In Part two was published on
37:44
Speaker 1: April fourteenth, eighteen sixty nine, and by the end of
37:48
Speaker 1: May seventeen thousand copies had been sold and she could
37:53
Speaker 1: finally pay off her family's debt. The following year, in
38:03
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy, she wrote Old Fashioned Girl, and it's a hit,
38:09
Speaker 1: And so she treats her and her.
38:11
Speaker 2: Sister made to a trip to Europe.
38:14
Speaker 1: And this time when she goes, she's a celebrated author
38:19
Speaker 1: and not a servant. So even though she got to
38:22
Speaker 1: enjoy like Europe the first time she went, this time
38:26
Speaker 1: she's going with agency, you know, with something behind her.
38:32
Speaker 1: And it's on this tour that she discovers her brother
38:36
Speaker 1: in law has passed away, and so she's inspired to
38:40
Speaker 1: write a sequel for Anna's Sons, a sequel to.
38:43
Speaker 2: Little Women, Little Men.
38:47
Speaker 1: And so she continued traveling and writing until she was
38:51
Speaker 1: too sick to enjoy her fame and fortune. In eighteen
38:57
Speaker 1: seventy seven, she buys Anna a home, and she goes
39:00
Speaker 1: to care for Abba, her mother, because she's like without
39:06
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a period of time when you've got
39:09
Speaker 1: men earning the money holding the purse strings, and Louisa
39:13
Speaker 1: May Alcott is making money, and she's also on all
39:18
Speaker 1: of the drugs, which she's been on like since the
39:22
Speaker 1: Civil War really, and she is doing her best to
39:28
Speaker 1: care for and protect her family, and so me she
39:32
Speaker 1: makes sure that Anna has a roof over her head,
39:35
Speaker 1: that she's safe and secure. And her mother, who Abigail
39:41
Speaker 1: May who just consistently fought for her children to be
39:49
Speaker 1: able to fucking eat, you know, and who was again
39:54
Speaker 1: one of the first social workers in Massachusetts.
39:59
Speaker 2: And so she's getting to that point in her life.
40:03
Speaker 1: And in November, Abba dies in her daughter Louisa's arms,
40:11
Speaker 1: and after this, Louisa is determined to do right by
40:15
Speaker 1: her mother. In eighteen seventy nine.
40:20
Speaker 2: Louisa May Alcott was the first woman in Concord to
40:23
Speaker 2: register to vote, and she was an active believer and
40:29
Speaker 2: was outspoken about women's suffrage and prison reform. Like she
40:34
Speaker 2: has putting her money where her mouth is, and as
40:38
Speaker 2: she's like continuing to campaign, more.
40:42
Speaker 1: Tragedy strikes In December eighteen seventy nine, her youngest sister,
40:48
Speaker 1: may dies from complications in childbirth, and Louisa she adopts
40:57
Speaker 1: her niece Lulu Well. She's also taking.
41:00
Speaker 2: Care of Bronzeon.
41:03
Speaker 1: But Louisa she is getting sicker. She's got vertical fatigue,
41:09
Speaker 1: she's got fainting spells and gastro intestinal issues, but she
41:14
Speaker 1: is still writing. In eighteen eighty six, she publishes Joe's Boys,
41:20
Speaker 1: the third volume in the March trilogy, and she mirrored
41:25
Speaker 1: her life in Joe's Fame. And on the first of
41:31
Speaker 1: March eighteen eighty eight, she visits her father for the
41:35
Speaker 1: final time. On his deathbed, she says goodbye, and she
41:41
Speaker 1: goes home and falls into a coma. On the fourth
41:47
Speaker 1: of March, Bronson dies. And on the sixth of March
41:53
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, two days after her father, Louisa May
41:59
Speaker 1: Alco passes away at the age of fifty five, and
42:05
Speaker 1: father and daughter they are buried next to each other
42:08
Speaker 1: in concords Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Louisa she never married, She
42:16
Speaker 1: never considered courting. She was never interested in anybody anywhere.
42:24
Speaker 1: She knew the hows and whys and what for is,
42:26
Speaker 1: but it was never anything that was interesting to her.
42:29
Speaker 1: And so many historians believe that Louisa Malcott was asexual.
42:35
Speaker 1: She was romantic perhaps in the above. Now, of course,
42:40
Speaker 1: the argument can be made that she saw what her
42:44
Speaker 1: mother went to living with her father and his idealism,
42:48
Speaker 1: and how it created suffering in their family, and that
42:53
Speaker 1: was not a life she wanted for herself.
42:56
Speaker 2: So even though the done thing was.
42:58
Speaker 1: To get married for safety, security, which is something he
43:02
Speaker 1: wasn't providing, and so for her, the benefits weren't there.
43:08
Speaker 1: So even for some people who are ace they would
43:11
Speaker 1: marry any because it was the dune thing to do.
43:13
Speaker 2: They just kind of, you know, go on with it.
43:18
Speaker 2: But there's never an inkling of any of those sort
43:22
Speaker 2: of feelings, any of those romantic connodations anywhere, and her
43:28
Speaker 2: journals and her letters, none of it. And so that's
43:31
Speaker 2: where I think Louisa Mayelcott stands. And if I'm wrong,
43:36
Speaker 2: she can haunt me and tell me for why. So
43:41
Speaker 2: that ends my story on Louise and Maylcott. Now, if
43:46
Speaker 2: you were at the Red Line Literary Festival last year,
43:50
Speaker 2: then you may have heard me tell the story, and
43:53
Speaker 2: it was probably funnier. However, we can't find the recording.
43:59
Speaker 2: They can't find it, I can't find it. We don't
44:01
Speaker 2: know what's happened to it. And so here we are.
44:04
Speaker 2: And I thought, I haven't talked about this before, and
44:07
Speaker 2: I've had a very busy month with a lot of
44:10
Speaker 2: personal stuff going on that I will tell you about
44:12
Speaker 2: no time maybe. But if you liked this story, please
44:16
Speaker 2: written review five stars. If you didn't like it, you
44:18
Speaker 2: can just say nothing and do nothing. It's fine.
44:22
Speaker 1: Although I finally checked my Spotify. My Spotify what's it called?
44:30
Speaker 1: The thing on Spotify the.
44:32
Speaker 2: Reviews write the comments right, which is I never I mean,
44:36
Speaker 2: I don't look at them often because I'm usually too busy,
44:39
Speaker 2: and it's connected to like a different email, it's a
44:41
Speaker 2: whole thing. And so I looked at it and I
44:44
Speaker 2: had these unread like comments.
44:47
Speaker 1: And they're all from like January, right, and this one
44:50
Speaker 1: person just commented on every single video, not video episode,
44:57
Speaker 1: and it was like what And it was like really
45:01
Speaker 1: mean stuff too, and it was like why are you
45:04
Speaker 1: so obsessed with me?
45:07
Speaker 2: And like I was good.
45:08
Speaker 1: I think I deleted a couple of them, and then
45:10
Speaker 1: I got bored and then.
45:11
Speaker 2: I went and like.
45:14
Speaker 1: Had a ferreh or washe or something because I was
45:16
Speaker 1: feeling fancy.
45:18
Speaker 2: And that's about it really. Also, I would like to
45:23
Speaker 2: dedicate this episode to my drag queen loving friend and
45:28
Speaker 2: know there's no drag queens in this episode. To Sahar, I.
45:32
Speaker 1: Hope you're having a you're having like a super fun
45:36
Speaker 1: time and that work isn't too stressful. So yeah, let's
45:39
Speaker 1: see recommendation time. So I don't really drink alcohol much anymore,
45:48
Speaker 1: for like a bunch of raisins that we'll talk about
45:49
Speaker 1: at some point, but I do feel the need to
45:53
Speaker 1: support creators, especially once who are really really cool, and
45:58
Speaker 1: so I ended up buying Be a Better Drinker by
46:02
Speaker 1: Hannah Chamberlain, and like there were so many like fun
46:09
Speaker 1: like drinks in it, even though I don't really drink anymore,
46:12
Speaker 1: so like some of them are like, oh, I could
46:13
Speaker 1: make this a really nice mog taale because sometimes I
46:16
Speaker 1: just want to drink something pretty okay.
46:17
Speaker 2: Let me have my whimsy anesthetic. So that is my
46:20
Speaker 2: reading recommendation for you this week.
46:23
Speaker 1: When i'd recommend something by Louise and may Elcott, I
46:27
Speaker 1: feel like that's a bit on the nose, don't you
46:30
Speaker 1: for watching.
46:31
Speaker 2: Go watch little Women. Actually like watch Belgian Greta Gerberg
46:36
Speaker 2: went on a rider. Any of them, any of them.
46:38
Speaker 2: There's another version from like the past, like a really
46:42
Speaker 2: black and white one. I think, go watch that.
46:45
Speaker 1: Go watch any of them.
46:46
Speaker 2: It's fine, have a good time, and for listening. For listening.
46:52
Speaker 2: You know what I've actually been enjoying recently was the
46:55
Speaker 2: Cotton Club model, like nineteen eighties. I think it's nineteen eighties.
46:59
Speaker 2: I was certain it was nineteen eighties. Oh, I've really
47:02
Speaker 2: enjoyed this thing. I'm listening to. When's it set? And
47:04
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't know. I'm really bad with dates.
47:09
Speaker 1: Clearly that's why I'm single, but also because like as
47:14
Speaker 1: a historian, not being great at dates it is such
47:17
Speaker 1: a wild thing, like really which is insane because I'll
47:20
Speaker 1: remember very specific dates for very specific reasons. But then yeah,
47:25
Speaker 1: I'm a disaster, a bi central disaster, if you will.
47:29
Speaker 2: But anyway, thank you for listening. I look forward to
47:32
Speaker 2: chatting to you about.
47:33
Speaker 1: More LGBTQIA people from history next week, same bad time,
47:38
Speaker 1: same bad channel, And so I shall wish you good night.
47:44
Speaker 2: Adios.
47:45
Speaker 1: Ah we my friends By