Motherhood and Literary Form in Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

by

Melissa J Aday, B.A.

A Thesis

In

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Approved

Dr. Michele Navakas Co-chair of Committee

Dr. Jen Shelton Co-chair of Committee

Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School

May, 2012

Copyright 2010, Melissa J Aday

Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... III

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II.THE MATERNAL IN CHARLOTTE TEMPLE ...... 8 Narrative Non-linearity: The Mother’s Story in Charlotte Temple ...... 9 The Mother’s Foil ...... 12 An Ideal Model ...... 15 The Epistolary Component: A Note from Home ...... 18 A Love Letter ...... 20 The Mother’s Letter ...... 21 Charlotte’s Surrogate Mothers ...... 23 The Didactic Voice: Narrator as Mother ...... 26 Charlotte’s Letter Home: An Imitated Voice ...... 28

III. THE MATERNAL IN LITTLE WOMEN ...... 32 Marmee’s Voice as Frame ...... 32 The House as a Symbol for Marmee ...... 35 Formative Experiments: Learning Through Play ...... 40 Developing the Individual House ...... 51 Finding the “Palace Beautiful” ...... 54

IV. CONCLUSION ...... 60

NOTES ...... 65

WORKS CITED ...... 67

WORKS CONSULTED ...... 69

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012

ABSTRACT In this essay I will examine mother-daughter relationships in eighteenth and nineteenth century American novels, claiming that the mother characters instruct their daughters to function within society’s guidelines while at the same time encourage them to develop individuality. I will frame my argument using Lora Romero’s discussion of nineteenth century American domesticity in which she claims that domestic novels are conservative in some areas yet progressive in others. I complement this perspective with that of Julia Stern who provides criticism of eighteenth century American sentiment which I use as a model for acknowledging the ambiguities in mother-daughter relationships. My essay directly responds to a recent special edition of Studies in American Fiction in which editors Jennifer Desiderio and

Desireé Henderson call for a recontextualization of Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte

Temple. In analyzing the relationships between mothers and daughters in Rowson’s

Charlotte Temple and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, I will show that eighteenth and nineteenth century American daughters can neither separate themselves entirely from maternal figures nor wholly conform to them. Instead daughters must find ways of manipulating the socially constructed maternal role in order to illustrate their own individualities and function within the changing American nation.

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION In 1868 Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, a novel that focuses on the nineteenth-century domestic household grounded in a mother’s relationship with her daughters. A scene in chapter eight depicting an emotional conversation between

Marmee, the matriarch, and Jo, the second daughter, provides readers with a striking view of mother-daughter interactions which highlights the duality of the maternal nature. The discussion takes place in the aftermath of youngest sister Amy’s fall through the ice on the river, a result of Jo’s spiteful neglect of the young girl.

Distraught by the realization that Amy has come so close to death, Jo cries “It’s my dreadful temper! I try to cure it; I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever.

Oh, mother! what shall I do! what shall I do?” (Alcott 77). In response Marmee compassionately tells Jo of her own struggles with anger, explaining how she is

“angry nearly every day of her life” and that her anger is something she tries desperately to “cure” (Alcott 78). The conversation continues for over three pages, and in that span Marmee never once lets her daughter know that anger is a natural emotion or attempts to examine the root of Jo’s anger. The mother shows “patience and humility . . . sympathy and confidence” to her daughter, but her conversation tells Jo not that it is alright to feel anger, but instead it insists that Jo realize that she must “try with heart and soul to master this quick temper, before it brings [her] greater sorrow and regret” (Alcott 79). In this exchange we are shown the ideal mother, a woman whose personal efforts are centered upon the goal of being the “woman [she] would

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 have [her daughters] copy” (Alcott 79). She is intent upon guiding her children with love, but she must also frame their growth within the guidelines society sets forth, principles which bind her as well. Her maternal nature is jaded with a sense of tyranny through which she evasively teaches her daughters to mimic her own actions. The inherent duality of the scene encourages a sense of skepticism regarding the formation of domesticity which encourages examination of the motherly bonds between adult mother and female child.

My argument in this essay is that eighteenth and nineteenth-century American novels of sentiment affirm the idea that, through the mother, and only through the mother, is the daughter expected to formulate any definition of self. While the mother encourages this independent self-development, she also confines it within dominant social strictures. Thus the daughter functions as an extension of the maternal being in mind, body, and action, becoming an icon that is comforting to a society shaken in its beliefs and fearing the changes to come. These principles appear in Susanna Rowson’s post-Revolutionary War novel Charlotte Temple (1794) as well as Alcott’s postbellum

Little Women. Though published nearly seventy five years apart, both texts exhibit a similar focus upon a comforting yet controlling mother figure who encourages and confines the daughter’s self-development. Rowson provides Lucy Temple as her central maternal character, but she places Lucy at a continual distance from her daughter, Charlotte. While Lucy stands as the model which Charlotte is meant to follow, their separation hinders the mother-daughter relationship in a way which makes Charlotte susceptible to alternate mother-like forces. Regardless of these

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 difficulties, Lucy Temple remains the touch point in Charlotte’s thoughts and the object to which she clings for self-definition. Alcott too makes her mother character,

Marmee, the guiding figure of the story, allowing her the freedom to develop

“experiments,” often as instances of guided play, through which she educates her daughters (Alcott 106). By encouraging games such as Pilgrim’s Progress in which the girls take on pretend “burdens” and “travel through the house,” Alcott’s Marmee provides her children with freedom to improve themselves individually, but limits their freedom by educating them within society’s expected norms (Alcott 13). As in

Charlotte Temple, the daughters of Little Women are expected to model themselves upon the virtues evident in their mother and to censor themselves according to conservative social mores, ideas which manifest themselves in American society in new ways in the midst of the fears inherent in post-Civil War changes within the nation. The ambiguities of the mother/daughter relationships suggest that readers should skeptically analyze the maternal image, determining ways to revise the role of mother rather than wholly mimicking or breaking away from the given ideal.1

This essay identifies three critical characteristics of early and postbellum

American novels of sentimentality geared toward young women. My first claim is that the novels present daughters who are learning to speak in individualized versions of the maternal voice, a voice which has encouraged personal development but confined that development by eclipsing it with dominant social ideals. Secondly I will demonstrate that the daughters are provided two versions of their maternal idol which they are expected to mimic: the human mother and the image of the physical structure

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 of a house which is a manifestation of the maternal being. Both represent ideas of protection and provision, but the mother represents sentiment and feminine feeling whereas the house is a physical representation of society’s confinement; interestingly the two come together in the image of the good housewife or the idea of house as home in both novels. The novels demonstrate that the attainment of the domestic home and the title of mother is possible only through the development of voice, and thus I argue that the search for this voice, which is the key to obtaining mother-like and house-like status, is enhanced in the novels through the authors’ choices to incorporate multiple rhetorical forms in their structures. I conclude the essay by examining the two dead daughters—Rowson’s Charlotte and Alcott’s Beth—as the superlative examples of the negative results of the full acceptance of the ideal mother. Their deaths point to a need for skepticism in reading eighteenth and nineteenth-century mother figures.

To establish these points I draw from Lora Romero’s studies of nineteenth- century American domesticity as well as Julia Stern’s extensive work on sympathy in eighteenth-century American novels. I join the two in order to illuminate one way that the novels encourage skepticism or subversion of the ideal maternal model. Romero’s work centers upon questioning social binaries, especially those which deem domesticity as the stable barrier between high culture and pop culture (1). Claiming that domesticity is typically seen as a space insulated from the infiltration of politics, she calls attention to the problematic idea that thought can only either be conservative or subversive (Romero 4). She claims that “traditions, or even individual texts, [can] be radical on some issues . . . and reactionary on others” (Romero 4). I use her

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 recognition of textual ambiguity to analyze the roles of the maternal charactersin

Charlotte Temple and Little Women, focusing upon how these mothers represent two social perspectives at once. The mothers are intent upon developing daughters who are able to function as unique individuals and stand within the confining barriers of a patriarchal society. Romero’s critical perspective allows for my claim that the novels can be both progressive and constrictive in the same instance. To clarify, I am not insinuating that the daughters are so socially restricted that the texts appear as merely didactic pieces which confidently reflect patriarchal norms, nor am I stating that the texts are explicitly subversive political pieces. Instead I argue that the novels encourage readers to view their domestic arenas with a lens of skepticism through which they question, uphold, and occasionally break away from social norms.

Working within this critical framework, I am able to use Julia Stern’s perspectives on eighteenth-century sentimentality as a model for illuminating one way that eighteenth and nineteenth-century texts encourage skepticism, promoting conservative and subversive methods at the same time.2 Stern’s work teases out the ways in which early American novels used sympathy as a means of providing voice to the silenced non-citizens within the margins of the new republic (Stern 3). By using

Adam Smith’s idea of “fellow feeling”—a means of learning to empathize with others in order to form a sense of unity—, Stern remarks upon the imbedded call for sympathy of early novels (Stern 7). She points to the rhetorical formation of these novels, which often incorporate, for example, letters from multiple characters or dynamic first-person narrators, as representing a potentially “multivalent form” of

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 creating voice, but she is also concerned that what appears to be a “conduit for equal and open exchange” may at times be a “guise for vocal tyranny” (Stern 18). I take this a step further, focusing upon the mother as the tyrannical manipulator of voice.

Utilizing her model, I thus argue that Charlotte Temple and Little Women demonstrate a conflicting stance between a combination of voices and an eclipsing of voices by a single dominant voice, not a multi-vocal communicative process enhanced by individual voices but rather a uni-vocal usurpation of speech made possible by the eclipsing of other characters by the mother figure.

Primarily I will be working to illustrate the ways in which the mothers at the same time exert both a guiding influence and a tyrannical usurpation. I will begin by highlighting the maternal framework of the texts, identifying in Charlotte Temple the development of Lucy Temple’s personal history and discussing in Little Women the first chapter of the novel and the way in which Marmee bookends that chapter in echoes of her voice that continue to resonate throughout the text. Secondly I will examine the infiltration of house imagery in relation to the maternal figures of the texts in order to demonstrate that the daughters learn to yearn for the ability to be like their mothers and to have houses of their own. In order to affirm this claim, I will illustrate the authors’ use of a layered novelistic style inclusive of differing rhetorical modes in order to make an attempt at developing characters with multiple, individual voices, represented in variant structural modalities. Instead, however, both authors develop a single maternal voice which permeates the story line, inculcating the novels in the forms of both mother characters and mother-voiced narrators, creating a space

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 for freedom while at the same time restricting growth within the walls of social norms.

This analysis will allow for the final demonstration that, like the daughters they depict, the novels are allowed freedom to experiment through structure while they too are confined to society’s expectations. The image of a domestic environment patrolled by the comforting tyranny of a mother grounded in society’s norms serves as a reassuring symbol in both late-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century American society, eras in which the American people are shaken in their beliefs and fear the social upheaval prevalent in issues surrounding the Civil War. The most startling and revealing result of such an idolized domestic relationship is that the daughter characters, constrained by their maternal formers and clung to by society, cannot become models of their mothers but instead must die because death is the only state in which they can achieve societal perfection. These deaths, I argue, are the best example of how the novels encourage readers to take a skeptical view of social guidelines for women which ensnare the mother-daughter relationship. The dead daughters create a space for readers to question the ambiguities of the novels and examine the precarious interior balance between self-development and social formation.

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CHAPTER II

THE MATERNAL IN CHARLOTTE TEMPLE Before proceeding to my argument about Charlotte Temple, I offer here a plot summary because the text has moved into relative obscurity for modern readers.

Susanna Rowson centers her novel upon sixteen year-old Charlotte Temple, daughter to a stable yet simple mother and father who support Charlotte’s maternal grandfather.

The text introduces her family at length, but at no point do readers see her actually interact with these important figures. Readers are introduced to Charlotte as a student at a girls’ boarding school where she is finishing her education. Guided by a corrupt teacher, Charlotte is led into a clandestine meeting with a young army Lieutenant named Montraville with whom the young woman falls in love. The couple, accompanied by Charlotte’s teacher and Montraville’s companion, sails to America with the English troops, arriving just at the verge of the American Revolution. Once in

America, Montraville refuses to marry Charlotte, eventually marrying and leaving the pregnant young woman at the will of his ruthless friend. The novel, using an omniscient narrator who supposedly has first person knowledge of the tale, details the results of Charlotte’s fall and ultimate death, illustrating her longings for home, family, and friends. The piece serves as a sentimental and didactic novel, but also as a striking piece of social commentary questioning the proper education of women as well as the proper social response to women who have lost their virtue.

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NARRATIVE NON-LINEARITY: THE MOTHER’S STORY IN CHARLOTTE TEMPLE

Susanna Rowson begins to highlight the mother-daughter relationship early in

Charlotte Temple, specifically in chapters two through five which tell the mother’s story. The maternal narrative functions as the methodology for reading Charlotte’s future situation, and its importance is emphasized through a disruption in the linearity of the narrative form. This disruption is one of the early examples of what Stern considers “novelistic creativity” in the text, a term referencing the rhetorical choices of the novel which give it a mistaken sense of multivocality (Stern 3). This sort of creative novelistic structure can also be seen in Alcott’s Little Women which includes whole chapters depicting the adventures of individual characters, letters, a newspaper- like section, and, most important to my argument, the maternal voice as structural framework. Chapter two initiates a divergence from linear prose, leaving the novel’s main characters, Charlotte and Montraville, behind in favor of examining what is initially the story of Charlotte’s father. The chapter creates a portrait of a kind-hearted and benevolent young man more concerned with matters of the heart or “internal happiness” than a monied life he considers “outward shew [sic]” (Rowson 6).3

Rowson’s depiction of Mr. Temple provides a counter argument to characters like the rake as his refusal to sacrifice his virtuosity in favor of social success acknowledges the difficulties of personal life choices in a hierarchical society centered upon capitalism. His virtuosity is equaled in the character of Lucy Temple, the daughter of the elderly Captain Eldridge who is detained in a debtor’s prison and who tells his sad story of deception and loss to Mr. Temple. Lucy’s role in the story, first as a moral

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 being unwilling to give up her virtue to an unfeeling man and later as a dutiful daughter and caretaker of her father, positions her as being a perfect match for Mr.

Temple, a point which he recognizes, stating “I don’t know a woman more formed to insure happiness in the married state” (Charlotte 18). The role of dutiful daughter is a critical initial step in the development into an ideal woman, thus filial obligation is a crucial theme both in Charlotte Templeand in Little Women. It is not Lucy’s role as wife, but her role as idolized maternal force which is most critical in Rowson’s piece, and as her virtues are developed it becomes clear that the story being told is less that of Mr. Temple, but more that of Lucy Temple.

Chapters two through five do not merely look back at a critical past, but additionally initiate the creation of individual female voice within the narrative by inserting Lucy Temple’s story and creating in her the voice of the ideal mother. The main speakers in chapters two through five are Mr. Temple and Captain Eldridge.

Charlotte’s mother, Lucy Eldridge Temple, seems never to speak but is always spoken for, yet she plays a significant role in this section of the novel. Though Lucy is not the first object to catch Temple’s eye upon walking into Captain Eldridge’s apartment, she is the first to capture his heart (Rowson 8). Her father’s concern over his situation hinges not upon his own fate, but upon that of his “poor girl” (Rowson 8). In chapter two readers are told that “Miss Eldridge impressed on [her father’s] cheek the kiss of filial affection, and obeyed,” and such is her description and position throughout the following scenes, however, it is her happiness which becomes central to the male dilemmas of financial exchange which guide the narrative progression (Rowson9). It

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 is Lucy’s refusal of a suitor, Mr. Lewis, coupled with his disregard for her honor, which leads to her father’s arrest and the subsequent deaths of her mother and brother

(Rowson 11). It is the thought of Lucy which causes Mr. Temple to vow that “that sweet maid must not wear out her life in a prison,” and subsequently give up his own inheritance to free Captain Eldridge (Rowson 16). At the same time, her strength of character illuminates her individual importance in the text; she does not seem to need to speak for herself because her actions speak louder than her limited voice ever could.

She has held both her mother and brother as they died, yet retains the presence of mind to go to a prison to care for her father whom she “supports . . . by her industry . . . cheer[s] . . . with her smiles, and bless[es] by her duteous affection” (Rowson 15). She has served as the dutiful daughter, fully engulfing herself in the actions of the domestic sphere, thus making her an ideal wife, and thus logically (at least for the eighteenth century) the superlative mother. Interestingly her personal wants and desires are never acknowledged, a point which calls the authenticity of the maternal symbol into question for though Lucy Temple is a woman and mother, she is a human being with needs as well. Lucy’s actions, not her “arts,” draw her to Temple and make her different from other women for she has a “purity of sentiment,” a realistic approach to matters of life, at least in the early part of the book, which frees her from more typical descriptions of melodramatic sentimentality in her ideas of romantic love

(Rowson 20). While her voice may not always be the premiere component of her interactions, Lucy herself is always the premiere character, often speaking more through her actions, substantiating herself as an immovable force within the text. The

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 image of the mother as a source of feminine strength frames Charlotte’s narrative and serves as the unattainable object which the young woman searches for throughout her short life.

THE MOTHER’S FOIL

To further acknowledge Lucy’s goodness and instill her with the power of a maternal idol Rowson uses a foil to highlight the differences in women who possess a sense of what Julia Stern calls “fellow feeling” and those who do not (5). The foil she introduces is Miss Weatherby, a wealthy, spoiled young heiress whom Temple’s father intends to make his daughter-in-law. The differences in Miss Weatherby and Lucy are emphasized structurally through the inclusion of ten lines of poetry written in rhyming couplets and preceded by this first-person statement by the narrator: “I cannot give a better description than by the following lines” (Rowson 19). The lines appear as follows:

The lovely maid whose form and face Nature has deck’d with ev’ry grace, But in whose breast no virtues glow, Whose heart ne’er felt another’s woe, Whose hand ne’er smooth’d the bed of pain, Or eas’d the captive’s galling chain; But like the tulip caught the eye, Born just to be admir’d and die; When gone, no one regrets its loss, Or scarce remembers that it was. (Rowson 19)

The inclusion of poetry is important for two reasons. First, in introducing these lines, the narrator for the first time uses a first person pronoun, making her not only an omniscient guide through the story, but a participating character in the narrative

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 process. Secondly, this is the first time that the text acknowledges its own limitations, highlighting an inability to effectively communicate the uncaring, almost amoral nature of Miss Weatherby. Early American novels, such as Charlotte Temple, which comment upon the inadequacies of language within their pages, were not uncommon in post-revolutionary America, and Looby claims that such texts “raised to an unusually high pitch of self-reflexivity knowledgeability about the conditions of historical agency and verbal performativity in the United States” (Looby 9). Rowson’s use of this method indicates that she recognizes the need for a multiplicity of communicatory processes, thus the layering of rhetorical techniques within the novel.

Though these processes initially seem to be forming a means through which multiple marginalized voices gain aural recognition, instead the structural stratification acknowledges a means of vocal performance in which all speakers take on another voice, the voice of the mother. Rowson’s depiction of MissWeatherby shows the breakdown of the basic prose genre and requires the addition of another technique in order for its message to be transmitted. The message is a return to a critique of society’s values which is a through line for the entire novel. The author continually questions the importance of monetary worth over self worth, emphasizing her belief in the importance of a compassionate and moral internal nature. Though it might have been more direct to tell readers through prose that Miss Weatherby is beautiful and graceful but self-centered and amoral, the poetry reaches out to readers more poignantly. The floral imagery is simple, but its message is gut wrenching, causing one to wonder about his or her own actions or the actions of others they might know.

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Certainly the thought of being forgotten in death rips at the heart. As the text continues one recognizes Miss Weatherby’s qualities in other characters, even wondering if anyone will regret the loss of or even remember Charlotte whose innocence seems to frame her as a type of delicate flower somewhat different from Miss Weatherby, but a delicate flower nonetheless. In this instance, the author chooses to allow poetry to speak, understanding that poetry speaks differently than descriptive prose.

Furthermore, the lines point specifically at Lucy Temple who has “felt another’s woe” in the concern of her mother and father over her brother, “smooth’d the bed of pain” for her dying brother and mother, and “eas’d the captive’s galling chain” by comforting Mr. Eldridge in prison (Rowson 19). Highlighting the difference between

Lucy Eldridge and Miss Weatherby to such an extent emphasizes Lucy as the ideal woman within the text, one who can venture through adversity and remain unscathed.

These four chapters centered on the past are critical to the development of Charlotte’s story because they develop her mother’s story, providing the necessary framework for reading Charlotte herself. The mother highlights values of sentiment, such as generosity, familial love and duty, forgiveness, and understanding, all of which are qualities denied to Charlotte and discussed by the narrator as the novel progresses. All of these values form Lucy Eldridge Temple and are qualities which readers assume have been visible to Charlotte throughout her childhood. At the same time, the analysis of Miss Weatherby encourages the skeptical reading of conservative family ideals and the questioning of whether assuming or ignoring the characteristics of the maternal symbol can lead to positive individual female development.

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AN IDEAL MODEL

Charlotte’s mother is presented to her as an ideal art form which she is intended to mimic in hopes of attaining ideal maternal qualities. In a poignant early scene of the novel Mr. and Mrs. Temple walk in a utopian garden discussing their daughter who is away at school. As they praise her beauty and affection her mother states that Charlotte “will never lose sight of the duty she owes her parents,” and her husband in turn formulates a telling response: “If she does . . . she must forget the example set her by the best of mothers” (Rowson 32). The patriarchal character in

Little Women makes this same observation to his wife in chapter forty-three of the novel stating that their daughters “ha[ve] had a good example before [them] all [their] li[ves]” (Alcott 432).It is this image of the ideal mother, described by the narrator as possessing “Humility, Filial Piety, conjugal Affection, Industry . . . Benevolence [and]

Content [sic]” which the text upholds as the framing device of the narrative and the touchstone for the fallen daughter’s actions (Rowson 32). Interestingly, however, most of these same characteristics refer to the Temple home as well. Prior to the purchase of the home, Mr. Temple describes it as a place in which one may forget the outside world of “splendor, profusion, and dissipation” thus creating the small cottage in which they will live as a utopian paradise in which the family can provide for themselves without outside influence (Rowson 21). Later the house is described as being attended by “Plenty . . . Prudence . . . Hospitality . . . Peace . . . Content . . .

Love . . . and Health,” words similar to those used in reference to the mother (Rowson

21-2). The family is said to “cast not a wish beyond the little boundaries of their own

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 tenement,” and readers gain the same sense of content in descriptions of any character in proximity to Lucy Eldridge Temple, illustrating mother and house as parallel representative structures of a protected yet loving social education (Rowson 21).

Though Lucy is silent in the scenes which make up the initial chapters of the tale, later she is active and independent, especially in her ability to domesticate any structure, even a prison, and in later chapters these qualities combine to create in her a resonant maternal voice.

In developing the story of the mother, Rowson creates a model of comparison for Charlotte and her readers, a model which is most important because Lucy and

Charlotte are never positioned together in the novel, but instead always communicate from a distance. As Lucy Temple’s perfection is developed, readers begin to question how the sheltered and protected Charlotte is ever expected to succeed with such a perfect model to live up to. The final sentences of chapter five emphasize the expectations which Charlotte faces, informing readers that she is attending a boarding school having been “permitted to finish the education her mother had begun” (Rowson

22). The strange wording of the sentence links mother and daughter almost as one character rather than two, an example which seems to illustrate how Rowson’s text is more about the mother than the daughter. The wording pictures Charlotte as a bodily extension of her mother, a character who speaks not with her own voice—which would make the text multi-vocal—rather with her mother’s voice, making the text univocal. What appears to be heteroglossia instead exhibits the idea that all women should speak through the same voice which emphasizes the same desires and ideals.

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This rhetorical move is both an illustration of the danger of not incorporating multiple voices and a method of claiming that women can only combat patriarchy through a collective rather than an individual voice. Regardless her dismissal to a boarding school brings to mind two questions: Why is the daughter ever ripped away from the idyllic domestic front? Why is she ever tempted by the outside world which her parents seem to despise? Charlotte’s removal to a boarding school suggests the stifling of Charlotte’s potential in her mothers’ utopian home. Yet it is that home that

Charlotte Temple longs for throughout the novel, be that at the boarding school or once she has eloped. The novel continuously acknowledges Charlotte’s attempts to regain her lost mother, a woman whom she attempts to replace with surrogate characters, Madame Du Pont, Mademoiselle La Rue, Montraville, and Mrs.

Beauchamp, at every turn (Stern 50). These women will be discussed later in this essay. However, the idea of home in this text refers both to the mother and the physical location of the home. Just as Charlotte seems lost without a guiding maternal person, she appears to be lost without the protection of a maternal home. The lack of both mother and home serves as a space for fruitful textual analysis. In fact the absence of these is read to a fuller extent when compared with the close proximity of mother to daughters in Little Women because both versions of the relationship can be read as skepticism regarding the idea of maternal surveillance.In Charlotte Temple maternal influence exerts itself in Charlotte’s longings for both the person and the structure, as though she herself recognizes that the stand-in mothers can fill her void no better than the counterfeit houses in which she lives.

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THE EPISTOLARY COMPONENT: A NOTE FROM HOME

One way in which the novel demonstrates voice is through the inclusion of letters, some of which represent the maternal voice and others which display attempts at attaining this ideal form of voice. In some instances letters are presented for readers to view in their entirety in the traditional epistolary sense. In other words, they appear as though transcribed by the author who has copied them word for word into her story.

At other times letters are described by the narrator without providing the reader with specific wording. Still in other moments the writing or delivery of letters is mentioned but no discussion of the contents of the written discourse is provided. Letters themselves seem to take on a life of their own, serving almost as secondary characters that provide insight on the major characters, sometimes through their contents and other times through their metaphorical representations. In most instances the focus of the novel immediately following the appearance of a letter is the letter itself. Be it through dialogue, narrative, or authorial interjection, the letter is offered up by the narrator for the readers to analyze for both content and reception.

Perhaps the most important letter in the text is the one to Charlotte from her mother, for it is the only means through which readers ever hear any direct words from mother to daughter. The letter reminds Charlotte simultaneously of her family’s love and expectations for their daughter. The letter is short, almost forceful, interestingly tyrannical, but seemingly loving and well meaning. Charlotte is referred to as her mother’s “beloved girl,” a “good affectionate child,” and as the “darling of [her grandfather’s] aged heart,” all terms of endearment that exemplify her family’s love

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(Rowson45-6). Yet the tone itself is direct and authoritative. Representative of the ambiguity characteristic of any written correspondence, the letter can be read in a way which casts it contrary to the sentimental or emotional epistle which readers might expect to see. Though words of endearment pepper the page, some of the phrasing is curious, especially the sentence regarding Charlotte’s education: “as I know you to be a good affectionate child, and make it your study to improve in those branches of education which you know will give most pleasure to your delighted parents, as a reward for your diligence and attention I have prepared an agreeable surprise”

(Rowson 45). This phrase “I know” is quite forceful, acknowledging zero possibility that the daughter might deviate from her expectations. Additionally, going home is posited as a “reward” as though the school is some sort of punishment. Furthermore, the mother’s orders regarding punctuality could be read as almost harsh while the term

“future felicity” makes one wonder if current felicity is nonexistent (Rowson 46).

Charlotte’s reaction seems to illustrate her reading of the note in a much more loving and heart-felt manner, but her emotional response even causes her governess to question whether the letter has brought Charlotte happiness or disdain (Rowson 46).

The letter is masked in duality, in one light serving as loving savior and guide, in another illustrating constraint which requires one to “sacrifice love to duty” (Rowson

47). Though it seems that the letter may encourage Charlotte’s resolution, the lack of a present mother remains. The counterfeit mother figure, in the form of Mademoiselle

La Rue, chosen by Charlotte is easily able to sway Charlotte from the ideas the letter promotes. One wonders whether the letter does more to push Charlotte to elope than

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 encourage her to stay thanks to its frightful ambiguity. Regardless, it stands as the only instance of direct maternal voice for Charlotte in the novel due to her separation from the physical mother and home.

A LOVE LETTER

By comparing the letter of guidance and constriction from Charlotte’s mother to the love letter from Montraville to Charlotte, a better understanding of Charlotte’s confusion in the ideas of love and duty can be developed. The love letter that is slipped to her in a clandestine meeting with Montraville signifies the moral dilemmas of both Montraville and Charlotte from the very moment that it appears. Though

Montraville seems to recognize the gravity of any sort of love affair, the “purposely written” letter which he carries with no guarantee of running into Charlotte points toward an individual guided more by desire than by moral rectitude (Rowson 5). The author defines Montraville with a mixture of good and bad characteristics, describing his compassionate character—“generous in his disposition, liberal in his opinions, and good-natured almost to a fault”—and to his single-mindedness—“eager and impetuous in the pursuit of a favorite object, he staid not to reflect on the consequence which might follow the attainment of his wishes” (Rowson 36). Montraville is quite aware of his faults as he understands that, though he is immersed in the idea of Charlotte, seeing her “can be productive of no good” (Rowson 5). Rowson later entitles a chapter on

Montraville “When We Have Excited Curiosity, It Is but an Act of Good Nature to

Gratify It,” a heading which reflects the ambiguity and even sarcasm imbedded within her writing style (Rowson 39). The title satirically defends Montraville’s inability to

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 control his actions regarding Charlotte, and the chapter furthers this by detailing a lecture from Montraville’s father warning him against “folly and precipitancy” in marriage (Rowson 40). Though he knows right from wrong, he ignores filial obligations and even his own hesitations, writing a letter to a woman he hardly knows and resting on coincidence to bring them together. The letter verifies Montraville’s claim that he focuses upon the present without consideration for future situations, a fact which he relives once he becomes attached to Julia Franklin. Interestingly, he too is formed yet conformed by society, yet for him no loving maternal figure is present to provide comforting guidance.

THE MOTHER’S LETTER

The letter from Charlotte’s mother appears in the chapter entitled “Conflict of

Love and Duty,” and in it the dilemma of her relationship is symbolized by the conflicting appearance of the two letters (Rowson 42). Her internal battle consumes her throughout the text, beginning with her disgust at her first secret excursion with

Madame La Rue and culminating in her indecision to write to her family. For

Charlotte the distance from her mother enables her to keep secrets, a practice which

Alcott’s Marmee criticizes throughout Little Women by describing the burdens of carrying secrets and encouraging daughters to tell their secrets to their mothers to keep them out of trouble (Alcott 202). The scene in which she debates what to do with the love letter is critical to her development as a character. First it illustrates her insecurity and inability to make a decision without being guided by others, emphasizing the ease with which she can be manipulated and confused through verbal communication with

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 her teacher. At the same time that La Rue criticizes Charlotte asking if she has “a mind to be in leading strings all [her] life time,” she is herself guiding her charge, serving the role of the evil surrogate mother, encouraging her to open the letter and to think favorably upon Montraville’s appearance and person, even playing upon Charlotte’s sympathy by conjuring images of the soldier’s death (Rowson 28). Secondly, as acknowledged by critic Marion Rust, the letter highlights Charlotte’s attempt to believe that choices can be erased rather than lived with, evident in her belief that she might be able to read the letter but still return it without it appearing to have been opened (Rowson 30). With mother at a distance and unable to reiterate the consequences of her actions, Charlotte is able to delude herself with her naïve beliefs.

For the two main characters, this letter is a critical component of their development within the novel. It paints an image of two children attempting to be adults,two youths choosing to ignore the advice of the previous generation who understand very well that in life decisions cannot be blotted out but must instead be lived (Cowell). Rust argues that this advice plays out differently for Montraville than

Charlotte thanks to gender. As a man Montraville has the Franklin-esque ability to pull himself up by his bootstraps and fix mistakes, often through monetary means.

Charlotte on the other hand cannot erase the loss of virtue or the birth of a child, attaining autonomy only at the end of her life when she can order her father to care for her daughter. Yet it seems that, though Montraville is able to marry and rise in status, he remains haunted emotionally by the ordeal. Realizing he loves Julia not Charlotte, he ambiguously states: “I shall never forget you, Charlotte” (Rowson 73). He later

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 writes that “conscience tells me it was I, villain that I am, who first taught you

(Charlotte) the allurements of guilty pleasure,” (Rowson 101). Upon hearing of her betrayal by Belcour, he blindly walks the lanes she walked, and once he learns of her death, he mourns for her publicly (Rowson 128-9). Yet it is his words to Mr. Temple at Charlotte’s graveside which truly question how well he has erased the effects of his decisions. He states, “Strike—strike now, and save me from the misery of reflexion,” words which illustrate that, though he may be free to succeed in the public eye, in his own he is a failure, menaced by his transgressions (Rowson 129). Being that this is a text grounded in sentiment and matters of the heart, the suffering Montraville seems almost as pitiful a character as Charlotte, and in Rowson’s sequel Lucy Temple which depicts the story of Charlotte’s daughter, Montraville’s sufferings are magnified when he must break up the marriage of his son when he discovers that the woman he intends to marry is actually his half sister. In both texts Rowson places the importance of compassion and connection to others over the solitary development of self, acknowledging that the lack of an easily attainable, physical and visual maternal figure is partially the cause of Charlotte’s confusion and fall because she is pressured to become the mother but is not provided with the necessary motherly compassion.

CHARLOTTE’S SURROGATE MOTHERS

Charlotte’s yearning for her mother drives her to search for other character to fill the void by providing guidance and sympathy. Near the end of the novel she is encouraged by a new friend, Mrs. Beauchamp, to send a letter home to her mother.Mrs. Beauchamp provides the sort of individual ability strengthened by

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 compassion from others which Rowson champions throughout the text. In all other instances within the text when Charlotte is faced with a decision, her face-to-face confidants are manipulative, and they encourage her decisions not based on compassion but rather on selfish means. When these influential persons are women, they are always characterized in motherly terms. In the case of Madame La Rue who serves as a bad mother figure, it is likely a sense of jealousy which drives her negative impact on Charlotte. Charlotte’s “innocence and gentleness of . . . disposition” earns her the admiration of the school’s headmistress, Madame Du Pont, another more positive mother stand-in, a woman who praises Charlotte, telling her to “continue . . . in the course you have ever pursued, and you will insure at once their happiness and your own” (Rowson51, 46). The purity and virtue of Charlotte is decidedly different from that of La Rue who is described as a woman who lived in “defiance of all moral and religious duties” (Rowson 23).This noted variance casts a sense of ambiguity around the description of Charlotte as La Rue’s “favourite [sic],” causing one to question whether the word should be read literally or with a note sarcasm (Rowson

24). As in the comparison of Lucy Temple and Miss Weatherby, Charlotte and La Rue function as foils which readers can skeptically view as a means of questioning the limiting effect of the ideal maternal symbol on an insecure and unsupported daughter.

La Rue never acts as a true friend to Charlotte, but rather leads her down paths guided by the older woman’s “spirit of intrigue” (Rowson 23). La Rue continuously adjusts the truth of situations with wording that prevents Charlotte from recognizing the dangers of the encounters encouraged by her teacher; take for instance the visit to the

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 summer-house in chapter six, the opening of the letter from Montraville in chapter seven, and eventually the elopement in chapter twelve. Perhaps the narrator states the case of La Rue best:

when once a woman has stifled the sense of shame in her own bosom, when once she has lost sight of the basis on which reputation, honour, every thing that should be dear to the female heart, rests, she grows hardened in guilt, and will spare no pains to bring down innocence and beauty to the shocking level with herself: and this proceeds from that diabolical spirit of envy which repines at seeing another in the full possession of that respect and esteem which she can no longer hope to enjoy [sic] (Rowson 30).

This entire passage refers to the maternal being: positioned away from the mother’s guidance and physical example, a woman can “stifle” motherly words, “los[e] sight” of the maternal model, and crush that maternal figure by damaging other innocent women. As a bad mother figure, La Rue encourages Charlotte to mimic her rather than

Lucy Eldridge Temple, increasing the distance between the two and working to sever the mother-daughter bond. Rather than serving as a model representative of social norms while still providing compassionate freedom, La Rue erases social norms and encourages total freedom. In doing so she lays the groundwork for Charlotte’s fall and illustrates that the dismissal of maternal voice rather than a personal reworking of maternal voice can lead only to female destruction.

To accompany the unruly female voices, Rowson provides her readers with

Montraville and Belcour, young men who should be representatives of male patriarchy by conforming to and respecting the maternal ideals of protected experimentation and guided development. Instead both men ignore the female patriarchal voices of maternity, choosing instead to make manipulative choices which function

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 predominantly in Charlotte’s demise. Certainly Montraville is a sort of mother figure whom Charlotte is attracted to through a sense of longing and dependence (Stern 50).

Yet he is not a positive figure for he is motivated by his own desire for Charlotte when, knowing that he cannot marry her due to her lack of fortune, he plays upon her sentimental nature by claiming that she “never loved [him]” and pretending to

“welcome the friendly ball that deprives [him] of the sense of [his] misery” (Rowson

43). He too fails to see what might be best for Charlotte, fails to represent a true sense of love or compassion toward her, and fails in the eyes of the narrator and even society. Belcour is the third “friend” who plays upon the innocent Charlotte, plays upon her longing for maternal comfort. Originally merely in league with Madame La

Rue, on the ship he becomes enamored with Charlotte and “form[s] a resolution to endeavour to gain her himself when ever Montraville should leave her [sic]” (Rowson

62). He recognizes that she is “sensible, well informed, but diffident and unassuming,” and like his counterparts, he uses those traits against her, working to manipulate her and eventually securing her demise (Rowson 62). Like his friend Montraville, he is led by a “selfish passion which ha[s] taken possession of his heart” (Rowson 105). Both of the male voices ignore social mores, disregard the guidance of those who illustrate means of functioning within social guidelines, and aid in Charlotte’s failure to model the ideal maternal state.

THE DIDACTIC VOICE: NARRATOR AS MOTHER

It is in reference to these manipulative characters that the work earns its reputation for didacticism, for the narrator goes to great efforts to caution readers

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 against such corrupt individuals, exhibiting maternal qualities in its guiding yet compassionate voice.4 In the Preface to the text Rowson cautions girls against the

“snares not only of the other sex, but from the more dangerous arts of the profligate of their own [sex],” pinpointing from the beginning that La Rue’s character may be an even greater contributor to Charlotte’s fall than the men with whom she interacts

(Rowson xlix). With force and almost physicality she “wish[es] for power to extirpate those monsters of seduction from the earth” who prey upon Charlotte and the other

“dear girls” for whom she writes (Rowson 26).Yet one might wonder about her actual beliefs regarding the arts of manipulation. Considering the political agenda wrapped up within the pages of her sentimental novel, the idea that she is herself manipulating is a possibility. Certainly she manipulates in a direction of morality, but, like her deceitful characters, she pulls at the heartstrings of readers in order to direct their thoughts. Dressed in the guise of motherly direction, she prods readers into a specific stream of thought, manipulating through ambiguity, an ambiguity which if learned might eventually allow for the manipulation of dominant cultural ideals.

The impact of personal relationships changes significantly once Mrs.

Beauchamp takes an active role in the narrative and serves as the first truly positive maternal double. Prior to her entrance Charlotte has been supported by her family as well as her governess. Her family’s devotion is evident in descriptions of her as a

“good” and “grateful affectionate girl” provided by her parents and compliments given

“her filial affection” which has “soothed [her grandfather’s] soul to peace” (Rowson

32, 49). Her mother’s letter additionally speaks to the goodness of her daughter’s

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 heart, praising her hard work in earning an education and her “diligence and attention”

(Rowson 45). Yet these wishes, along with her governess’s praise, function at a distance from Charlotte, a distance which impedes the reception of such positive messages because of their ignorance of Charlotte’s affair with Montraville. Rowson demonstrates how the power of written communication can easily break down when assaulted by equally powerful verbal, in-person argumentation. Though authority figures might have more power when in immediate contact with an individual, spoken performance from less authoritative peers proves more volatile in Charlotte’s case.

Again readers witness one form of communication breaking down and being replaced by another, in this instance a vocal prowess historically critical to the development of an independent United States. Perhaps Rowson’s illustration questions whether verbal or written voice will be more critical in the development of her character’s autonomy.

CHARLOTTE’S LETTER HOME: AN IMITATED VOICE

With the development of the friendship between Mrs. Beauchamp and

Charlotte, Rowson points out that even the loving maternal nature of Mrs. Beauchamp is constrained by social acceptance. From the first moment that Mrs. Beauchamp sees

Charlotte in New York, her compassion toward the unfortunate girl is brought to the reader’s attention as she comments that “surely [Charlotte’s] mind is not depraved.

The goodness of her heart is depicted in her ingenuous countenance” (Rowson 66).

For the first time since a sense of hope marks Charlotte’s situation, hope highlighted in a demonstration of the sort of empathy for which Rowson is arguing. At this point of the narrative Charlotte lives in solitude only occasionally broken up by a visit by

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012

Montraville or Belcour. Intruding into the story, the narrator comments that such a woman as Charlotte “has no . . . friendly, soothing companion to pour into her wounded mind the balm of consolation, no benevolent hand to lead her back to the path of rectitude…she feels herself a poor solitary being in the midst of surrounding multitudes” (Rowson 69). In chapter twenty Charlotte is brutally feeling these pangs described by the narrator, and Mrs. Beauchamp is feeling the urge to comfort the young woman whom she has by sheer luck again encountered. Rowson frames Mrs.

Beauchamp almost as a reader of her authorial interjections, having her verbally repeat word for word one of the narrator’s comments stating “Dear sufferer, how gladly would I pour into your heart the balm of consolation, were it not for the fear of derision” [My emphasis.](Rowson 77). This directly positions Mrs. Beauchamp as the character meant as an object lesson for readers who are meant to observe her example and learn from it rather than simply accepting the narrator’s word as truth. Her desire to help this fallen woman is evidently against the grain of cultural custom, thus causing her to hesitate in concern for what such an involvement might do to her own reputation. It is only after an emotional outburst in response to an overhead musical performance by Charlotte that Mrs. Beauchamp takes action on her desires, and only because her husband agrees that she should, praising her actions by stating that the

“heart that is truly virtuous is ever inclined to pity and forgive the errors of its fellow creatures” (Rowson 79). Her offer of friendship leads to a new breakdown of communication for Charlotte. When Mrs. Beauchamp appears at her door with such friendship Charlotte is “so confused she c[an] hardly speak,” demonstrating the silence

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 which she has been plagued with throughout the majority of the text (Rowson 80). She is plagued with silence again and again during Mrs. Beauchamp’s visit, but when invited to dine in the Beauchamp home, Charlotte opens up, “summon[s] all her resolution and determine[s] to make Mrs. Beauchamp acquainted with every circumstance” (Rowson 81). Though readers do not hear her voice, her friend does, but after such encouragement Rowson provides an eloquent little speech by Charlotte regarding her desire to be reunited with her family. Compassion has opened up her abilities to speak verbally. With encouragement from her new friend who tells her to

“write to [her family] again” she gains the confidence to attempt to speak through her letters as well (Rowson 82). Again, Charlotte is goaded by another person in making a decision, but in this instance it is a person who focuses upon Charlotte, has compassion for the situation of the fallen woman, and is not consumed with her own vanity. The letter Charlotte writes, appearing in its entirety as an example of Rowson’s adaptation of the epistolary form, is heart wrenching and honest. She holds nothing back, regardless of the pain which it brings. At the same time she is performing the maternal voice, molding her letter into the shape of the loving but forceful note sent to her from her mother at the beginning of the text. She must fight to gain this voice, battling for the ability to “write with the least coherence” and “blinded” by tears

(Rowson 83). Her senses fail, but with a boost in spirits from the kindness of another

Charlotte is able to succeed in communicating, begging for forgiveness while at the same time making an autonomous attempt to outline the means by which her child should be told about her situation. The letter is not an entirely confident one as the

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 measures of grief and insecurity flood the text, but it is one in which power is grasped and held for an instance, yet slips frustratingly away. It represents what a drop of compassion can do, and readers are hopeful regarding what might happen if Charlotte is flooded with the friendship and understanding she desperately needs.

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012

CHAPTER III

THE MATERNAL IN LITTLE WOMEN Unlike Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, Louisa May Alcott’s Little

Women has remained popular even into the twentieth century. Being considered a children’s novel, the text has served as a canonical piece of literature for children, especially girls, and multiple cinematic adaptations of the novel have been produced.

The story focuses upon the March family, a mother and her four daughters (and a minimally included father), and details their growth from children into knowledgeable and grounded adult women. The educational components of the narrative are clearly visible, specifically in the wonderfully engaging though socially tyrannical Marmee, the mother of the text. Her words guide the children throughout the text, in the end creating socially active, strong, and modestly independent wives and mothers. Like

Charlotte Temple, the text serves as an example of social commentary on women’s issues, specifically those of the nineteenth century, while at the same time connecting to an audience of women which transcends the era in which it was written.

MARMEE’S VOICE AS FRAME

Alcott’s Little Women Alcott’s initial chapter provides an introductory frame work which directs the reading of the entire novel, most importantly illustrating that the daughters’ development within the novel is directed by Marmee’s encouragement yet limited by her tie to constraining social norms. The chapter opens upon the four

March daughters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, who are lamenting their sad financial situation which has resulted in a “Christmas without any presents” (Alcott 5). Readers

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 discover that the girls’ mother, Marmee, has previously suggested that money could be better spent in helping Civil War soldiers. This sets up the introductory conversation as a repetition of Marmee’s words and places her voice as the initial point of the narrative, eclipsing the individuality of the girls’ voices. The girls are encouraged to renounce personal desires in order to provide for those around them, a major component of the development of the “ideal womanly character” outlined by Alcott critic Judith Fetterly. Alcott analyzes what such an ideal woman might possibly be within her text presenting one perspective through the father’s “especial message to

[his] girls” in the letter read by Marmee (Alcott11). He charges his daughters to

“conquer themselves so beautifully, that when [he] come[s] back [he] may be fonder and prouder than ever of [his] little women” (Alcott 12). In other words, he hopes to come home to see four women accomplished in manner, especially self-control, women who are mimics of their perfect mother. Marmee is the girls’ living, breathing example of ideal womanhood. Fetterly states that Alcott’s little women must “fight” against “discontent, selfishness, quarrelsomeness, bad temper, [and] thinking too much of worldly things,” and in order to succeed against these they must “acquir[e] one central weapon: self control” (30). Nina Auerbach is critical of the father’s role, however, stating that “in a family of daughters . . . the mother’s power is seen as all- suffusing; this indomitable community of women aligns father with children as a ritual praiser, rather than sharer, of her reign” (7-8). In other words, the father’s letter is merely complimentary to the mother’s guiding principles, simply a rhetorical means of

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 highlighting the formational responsibilities of the mother which are intended to creatively develop women grounded in the conservative strictures of society.

But what are these educational goals upon which Marmee centers her household? Certainly she desires her daughters to be selfless and willing to give to others, such as the soldiers or the Hummel family (Alcott 5, 17). Other characteristics are outlined after the reading of the letter as the girls, motivated by their father’s praise, make personal vows to improve upon character flaws. Meg promises to exert herself to control her vanity and improve her work ethic, Jo sets a goal of being more dedicated to the home, Beth’s commitments are not voiced but symbolized only through tears as though she has too many failures to name, and Amy vows to work on improving her selfishness (Alcott12). All of these characteristics tie into the ways in which the daughters develop into Marmee’s little women as the novel progresses. In fact, after chapter one, the rest of the text represents the girls’ struggles to earn the label “little women.”Problematically, however, the revelation of Marmee’s secret also reveals another: Marmee is herself securely grounded in a hierarchical love relationship in which her husband seems to exert control over her. Yet at the same time, the family’s lack of money seems to re-balance the vertically built relationship, providing Marmee with more power within the family as well as within her work outside of the home. The domestic space which she creates based upon the re- education of her daughters in a conservative though non-traditional manner erases and obviates class and gender differences, creating a world in which equality for her girls is possible. The chapter ends with the family in bedtime song led by Marmee. The

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 narrator states: “The first sound in the morning was [Marmee’s] voice . . . and the last sound at night was the same cheery sound” (Alcott14). The girls’ day to day routine is framed by mother’s voice, as is chapter one and Alcott’s entire social experiment.

Thus chapter one provides readers with a detailed methodology for reading the novel and, more importantly, for reading the daughters themselves.

THE HOUSE AS A SYMBOL FOR MARMEE

The descriptions of ideal womanly characteristics continue within chapter one, taking on the imagery of a physical house as a symbol of the freedom and confinement of society’s ideal female status. The plot smoothly transitions from Marmee’s reading of the letter to a discussion of her daughters’ childhood pretend game of Pilgrim’s

Progress. Marmee describes the game in great detail:

Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece-bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks, and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the house-top, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City. (Alcott 13)

Their childhood journey represents an imaginative interpretation of John Bunyan’s

1678 Christian allegory, but its freedom is confined to the limits of the large March house as the daughters are encouraged and guided by Marmee, ruler of the domestic domain. As children, the physical house provided a location for the girls’ journeys, but as young women, it is the figurative representation of a moral grounding point which anchors their travel. Of course, above all, the house functions as a metaphorical stand- in for Marmee who is really the center of the girls’ lives. She is the protectress, the comforter, the keeper of secrets, the voice of guidance, the framework and foundation

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 for her children’s lives. At the beginning of the novel the house itself is a place of quiet inaction until Marmee becomes the central point of the girls’ thoughts as the clock reminds them that it is nearing time for her to return home (Alcott 9). Once she enters, the house is a place of hustle and bustle, no more complaining or play rehearsal, but rather a center for learning and improvement. In their game of Pilgrim’s

Progress, she was the place from which they journeyed, just as she is when the daughters leave her for their own adventures (Alcott13).

In the controlled environment of the house, the daughters have the opportunity to pretend to struggle through a pilgrim’s progress, but in chapter one Marmee redefines the game based on its symbolic representations. She challenges the girls to reconceptualize the game within a new, adult framework in which play takes on a new role:

We never are too old for this…because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City. (Alcott 13)

The framework which Marmee develops legitimates play as a creative activity which enables one to achieve goals in a more personal manner. The bundles which each girl must carry are her own personal inadequacies which can only be conquered in individualized means. With this in mind, Marmee suggests that the daughters consider

Pilgrim’s Progress as a personal quest in which they should “begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on [they] can get before father comes home” (Alcott

13). Interestingly, this time frame is irrelevant as the game of Pilgrim’s Progress

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 continues long after their father returns home. More importantly, the girls are encouraged to individually develop themselves and their skills but to frame those within a more constrictive end goal of being like Marmee rather than like themselves.

The representation of Marmee as a house is referred back to continuously within the novel, and her positioning as both a liberating and constraining structure is made more and more clear as the daughters gain opportunities to experiment with their liberty. In chapter eleven, tellingly entitled “Experiments,” the girls, with the encouragement of their mother, take a vacation from their chores, centering upon the

“all play, and no work” mantra (Alcott 108). Marmee agrees to the idea for a week, but qualifies her consent by stating that they “will find that all play, and no work, is as bad as all work, and no play” (Alcott 107). As she predicts, they do soon grow bored with the experiment, and once she recognizes that they are uninterested, she quietly intrudes upon the game. All along she and their house servant, Hannah, have continued to care for the home, taking up the girls’ “neglected work, keeping home pleasant, and the domestic machinery running smoothly” (Alcott 108). Intending to

“impress the lesson more deeply,” Hannah is given a day off and Marmee feigns sick, leaving the girls in charge of the house (Alcott 108-9). Jo remarks that the “unusual spectacle of her busy mother rocking comfortably, and reading early in the morning . . . feel[s] as if some natural phenomenon had occurred; for an eclipse, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption would have seemed stranger” (Alcott 110). The household is a mess without mother’s interjecting influence, but it becomes even more so when Marmee leaves the house. The narrator states that a “strange sense of

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 helplessness fell upon the girls” as their mother leaves, followed quickly by “despair” as an uninvited dinner guest appears (Alcott 112). The adventure is hilarious, full of ridiculous attempts and failures, and at one point the narrative breaks because

“language cannot describe the anxieties, experiences, and exertions” of the day (Alcott

112). At the end of the day the girls have been drastically affected by the experiment.

They have been forced into an instance of having to take on their mother’s role and have discovered that “housekeeping ain’t no joke” (Alcott 109). Though they have had the opportunity to play “housewives,” they have found themselves to be lacking

(Alcott 114). Their own skills are each unique, but they are inadequate in the role of homemaker. The scene remarks upon the ability to devote time to the development of independent skills when there are no other responsibilities, a fact which modern readers recognize as a comment denoting Marmee’s ability to foster the needs of her children at the probable expense of neglecting her own. Returning home to moralize to her daughters, Marmee explains that the lesson was meant to “show you what happens when every one thinks only of herself,” yet she does not promote all work in the stead of all play (Alcott 115). Above all else, the novel is difficult in its desire to promote a sense of balance which seems impossible, and it is this equilibrium with which the chapter ends. Marmee instructs the girls to “have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant . . . then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets and life become a beautiful success in spite of poverty” (Alcott 116).

Protecting through idealistic moralizing at the end of the day, Marmee remains the structural protectress, justified in her “motherly little deception” which turned play

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 into work and both into a lesson (Alcott 109). In the end, mother returns to make the chaos of her absence, which was “not a bit like home,” idyllic once again (Alcott 114).

Up through chapter fourteen, the novel has emphasized “household joy,” often by examining the March house in comparison to other households, especially the

Laurence house next door (Alcott 153). The two houses are visibly different; one was an “old brown house, looking rather bare and shabby” while the other was a “stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach-house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory, and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains” (Alcott 46). By this point there is no question that the March house is full of life and the excitement of childhood, but contrastingly the Laurence house “seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house; for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out” (Alcott 46). The outside appearance accurately describes the interior feeling of the houses, making one seem a home while the other exists only as a protective structure. Other rich houses, such as that of the King’s, in which Meg works as a governess, Plumfield, in which Jo works as a companion to Aunt March, and the

Moffat home which Meg visits, are described in a similar manner as the Laurence house, all being beautiful and extravagant buildings lacking in the moral and virtuous warmth of the March home. Certainly, the contrast of the visual imagery of the structures remarks upon the social value of money over moral fiber, which Marmee extensively discusses with her daughters. She is clear in her desires, stating that she hopes that her children will be “beautiful, accomplished, and good . . . admired, loved,

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 and respected, to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and to lead useful, pleasant lives” (Alcott 95). Marmee’s aspirations are similar to those of other mother characters in eighteenth and nineteenth-century American literature, and of real mothers of real American daughters. Yet she is emphatic in demonstrating that money alone is not enough to make a man worthy for marriage and always attempts to point out the importance of virtuous actions when discussing relationships. She states:

My dear girls, I am ambitious for you, but not to have you make a dash in the world,-- marry rich men merely because they are rich, or have splendid houses, which are not homes, because love is wanting. Money is a needful and precious thing,—and when well used, a noble thing,—but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for. I’d rather see you poor men’s wives, if you were happy, beloved, contented, than queens on thrones, without self-respect and peace. (Alcott 95)

The speech parallels the ideas of money and houses with marriage and love. As she develops her daughters into little women, she is also guiding them into the roles of little housewives, shaping the characteristics that will make them successful domestically, but also encouraging the development of their individual natures in the hope that they will form equal matches rather than marrying for money or status alone.

As Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy mimic their mother’s actions, they become more and more house-like, slowly formulating domestic mindsets and the values which make their mother structurally sound.

FORMATIVE EXPERIMENTS: LEARNING THROUGH PLAY

Alcott hinges the novel upon the development of the March girls into little women, and it is critical to identify the means through which she provides for their growth. Especially in Part One, Little Women is strongly grounded in the idea of play.

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In the first half of the novel, the March daughters’ play generally consists of imaginative acting which presents itself in two specific forms: acting out theatrical plays written by Jo or taking on the roles of characters from books. The first performance which Alcott shows her readers is the girls’ Christmas play for which the girls are rehearsing in chapter one. Structurally the plays are mini-narratives within the much larger spectrum of the novel which allow the girls to become people drastically different from who they are. Throughout the text Meg is often most concerned about the way she is perceived by others, and she weakly protests her role in the play, stating, “I don’t mean to act any more after this time; I’m getting too old for such things” (Alcott 9). However, the statement is qualified by the omniscient narrator who informs us that Meg “was as much a child as ever about ‘dressing up’ frolics,” and again confronted by Jo who knowingly predicts that Meg “won’t stop. . . as long as

[she] can trail round in a white gown with [her] hair down, and wear gold-paper jewelry” (Alcott 9). Because Meg is sixteen years old, her performance in these plays could be considered distasteful, and in fact the play acting scenes within the novel were considered highly controversial by the public audience. Though Alcott chose to edit the text extensively due to public response, she refused to remove the acting scenes, claiming that they were authentic components of her own childhood which she draws from extensively in the creation of the novel. As Jo’s description of Meg the

Actress suggests, acting provides Meg with an ability to function outside of the strictures of society. Not confined to proscribed dress or hair styles, Meg is physically free from social constraints. Readers later discover that “Jo played male parts to her

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 heart’s content,” providing her an even broader sense of freedom from society’s guidelines for females (Alcott 19). In chapter two in which the Christmas play is discussed in greater detail, the narrator justifies the girls’ theatrical production:

Being still too young to go often to the theatre, and not rich enough to afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their wits to work, and, necessity being the mother of invention, made whatever they needed. (Alcott 19)

Alcott seems to defend the homemade theatrics by explaining the girls’ lack of money for more ‘proper’ entertainment, but her phrasing seems to acknowledge something more. In home-centered, safe environment, the March daughters’ put on their own performance because “necessity [is] the mother of invention,” or, in other words, need feeds their creativity. Perhaps the same could be said for women of the Civil War era who, in need due to financial straits and loss of male providers, creatively found alternative means to provide for their families. Perhaps the same could be said for women post-Civil War who, after having been independent providers, had to develop means of fulfilling their need for autonomy in ways other than being the head of the household. Perhaps the meaning of the phrase has a more narrow basis, referring specifically to Abba Alcott whose need to provide for her family due to her husband’s antics allowed for her to create for herself a strong, independent persona enabling her to function as the provider for her children. In other words, the creative energy encouraged through the creation of backdrops, props, writing, and acting helps the daughters to develop a critical skill for their future success as women and as mothers.

The narrator further defends the process by stating that their “hard work” served as

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“excellent drill for their memories, a harmless amusement, and employed many hours which otherwise would have been idle, lonely, or spent in less profitable society”

(Alcott 19). She is defending the girls’ theatrics not as play, but as work, thus making them beneficial components of development, a distinction which again illustrates how

Marmee allows them an element of freedom which is always limited by her dutiful incorporation of social expectations within their education. Play seems to be deemed unnecessary as play itself but acceptable as an educational tool. The safety of the at- home theater is also remarked upon, as the narrator explains that “no gentlemen were admitted,” a questionable qualifier which causes one to wonder if this makes the girls’ safer in their play, if lack of male guidance gives their play a subversive air, or if their play is not taken seriously because of its seclusion from the ‘dominant’ gender (Alcott

19). Interestingly, the Christmas play is not simply for the amusement of the sisters, but is performed for a group of their female peers. The girls are always the “audience” rather than mere little girls, an audience which is generally described in very adult terms as they “sat . . . in a most flattering state of expectancy” or “discuss[ed] the merits of the play” (Alcott 19, 21). The play itself allows for the actors, as well their audience of peers, to take on adult demeanors in an environment of safety, experimenting with and building adult actions which they might use in later years.

Marmee’s presence is not mentioned within the action of the play, but her presence within her domestic domain is assumed. Once the curtain closes, however, the girls are called away from the theater by a very proper request: “Mrs. March’s compliments, and would the ladies walk down to supper” (Alcott 23). The playfully adult nature of

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 the theater now transfers to a surprise dinner party which retains the air of adult experimentation. There is no question in the minds of the attendees regarding who deserves credit for the adventure. The narrator states that, upon looking at the table, the group of girls remarks that it was “like ‘Marmee’ to get up a little treat for them,” and the quotation marks around the name Marmee lead readers to assume that all of the attendees are referring to the woman of the house not as Mrs. March, but by her maternal name (Alcott 23). There is a sense of closeness within the group, even though none of them are referred to by name. Within the walls of the house, outside social assumptions come down in favor of the development of a certain female freedom overseen by a matriarchal ruler who cannot be referred to by a name created by patriarchal norms (Mrs. March) but instead must be called by a name of her own making. The magic of the scene breaks down almost instantly as men are mentioned in the framework. Once Marmee acknowledges that Mr. Laurence has supplied the elaborate supper scene, the outside reality of male interference takes over, introducing society’s values back into the domestic haven. In only the last page of the chapter, discussion moves from society’s regulations on male-female interpersonal communication to class issues to war, all concepts of society based upon patriarchal norms. This move shows how creative action is entirely acceptable, but that it is always checked through reminders of society’s proscriptions.

Other instances of seemingly unrestricted play are also major components of the first section of Little Women.Chapter ten is dedicated to what the narrator labels a

“house diversion,” meaning an “amusement” to occupy the girls when it is impossible

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 for them to be outside (Alcott 97). The chapter depicts the girls’ secret society called the Pickwick Club in reference to Charles Dickens’s1837 novel The Posthumous

Papers of the Pickwick Club. The sisters meet at the top of the house in the “garret,” a room which is likely to also be the one dubbed the Celestial City in the opening chapter outlining the game of Pilgrim’s Progress (Alcott 97). Though considered a secret society, since it takes place inside the family home there is no doubt that

Marmee knows the inner workings of the game. The chapter is one of the most interesting in the novel regarding form because readers have the ability to actually seean example of the group’s weekly paper. Five pages of the chapter are formatted in two columns separated by a single line down the middle of the page. The first page provides the heading “The Pickwick Portfolio” written in large bold font underneath which in smaller bold font is printed the date, both of which are a nod to newspapers in the era (Alcott 98). The portfolio is broken up into short segments written by each girl demarcated by bold separating lines, headings or titles, and the author’s pen names. These pseudonyms are adopted from the characters of Dickens’s novel: Meg is the oldest thus takes on Samuel Pickwick, Jo as the literary genius is Augustus

Snodgrass as well as the editor of the piece, Beth becomes Tracy Tupman due to her plumpness, and Amy embraces the role of Nathaniel Winkle because she is “always trying to do what she couldn’t” (Alcott 98). Readers are told that the particular meeting of the club which they have been given access to is an anniversary meeting celebrating one year of the society. The first entry to the paper does just that in a poem entitled “Anniversary Ode” written by Jo. She dedicates an entire stanza to each of her

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 fellow members, but more important are the final two stanzas which define the purpose of the club. The first of the two states clearly that the group “unite[s]/ To joke and laugh and read,/ And tread the path of literature/ That doth to glory lead” (Alcott

98). These lines emphasize the society as a game, a time for fun and playful communion. At the same time, the idea of literature brings a more serious side to the society, for the girls are clearly reading and writing and, more importantly, discussing what they read and write. This is a measure of freedom marking their educational development in a much different way than has been done in prior sections of the text because it emphasizes the power of the written word and the sharing and growth inherent in knowledge provided in book form.

An inherent assumption is that Marmee would be influencing the books read and writing created by the daughters, but the second stanza questions the mother’s influence over her daughters’ reading because it is an example of sensationalized fiction. Much like the Christmas play discussed earlier in my essay, “The Masked

Marriage: A Tale of Venice” written by Meg via Pickwick is the longest piece in the portfolio. It tells the story of a royal masquerade ball hosted by a Count (Alcott 99).

His daughter, soon to be forced into marriage to a man chosen by her father though in love with an unacceptable artist, appears masked but dressed in wedding attire (Alcott

99). Her betrothed appears as well, “arrayed like a bride-groom, except the black mask” (Alcott 99). Suddenly the party is stunned as the couple is whisked into an alcove and a marriage ceremony begins to take place; the masquerade has been a farce requested by the daughter. The ceremony ends, the couple are married, and as the

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 masks come off, the groom is not the man chosen by the Count, but instead is the artist who has embraced royal heritage, taking on his role of an Earl to marry the woman he loves. The images of masks and masquerade are quite common in literature and are not necessarily a bold rhetorical move by Alcott. However, the criticism of fatherly rule imbedded within the story line is surprising in a text meant for children. The father character is completely undermined, duped by his daughter in a way that assures her happiness and criticizes the controlling parental figure, a trope evident even in eighteenth-century texts like Richardson’s Clarissa. The tale reflects Alcott’s perspective on marriage, emphasizing her belief that marriage should be an equal and compatible partnership rather than a pairing of incongruous individuals for money, status, or even female protection. On an even deeper level, it is particularly interesting that Meg rather than Jo is the author of this piece. Jo’s ties to the sensational form are mentioned throughout the novel, while Meg is generally seen as the oldest and most proper, adhering to Marmee’s words. Her dreams of money and status are acknowledged prior to this piece, but her romantic leanings and overtly romantic willingness to break away from filial duty has never before been produced in such a way. It as though the pseudonym “S. Pickwick” enables Meg to act from behind a mask, releasing inner feelings in a free way which she cannot do outside of the

Pickwick Portfolio.5The tale also foreshadows Meg breaking these filial bonds as she stands up to rich Aunt March who forbids her to marry John Brooke and is emphatic that Meg’s duty is to marry a rich man who can help her family. In response Meg

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 states, “I shall marry whom I please, Aunt March, and you can leave your money to anyone you like” (Alcott 223).

This brief moment of separation from Marmee’s formative guidance is not, however, representative of the rest of the Pickwick Portfolio. Meg’s tale is immediately followed by Amy’s entry which is a letter to Mr. Pickwick apologizing for her failure to submit an acceptable piece for publication. The paragraph is breathless with sentences hurriedly run together without the aid of punctuation. It is so ridiculous that the editor himself calls attention to it in commentary following the piece: “The above is a manly and handsome acknowledgment of past misdemeanors.

If our young friend studied punctuation, it would be well” (Alcott 100). While the situation highlights Amy’s disdain for written word, and emphasizes her tendency toward showy representations of words when she does use them, it is more important because it is a personal recognition of failure and an opportunity for the sisters to guide. In this moment it is clear that the Pickwick Portfolio is not entirely free of

Marmee’s gaze, but is infiltrated by her in that the daughters are finding ways to practice policing one another the way that their mother has scrutinized them. Her formative influence is clear in the “Advertisements” section of the portfolio which promotes a “Lecture on ‘Woman and Her Position’ in Pickwick Hall next Saturday

Evening” by an unnamed “Strong-Minded Lecturer,” cooking lessons, a meeting of the “Dustpan Society” who are told to “appear in uniform and shoulder their brooms,” and Mrs. Beth’s “Doll’s Millenry” (Alcott 101-102). In these and other criticisms it is clear that the description of the Club in the final stanza of the Anniversary Ode is

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 accurate; the Pickwick Society is above all “useful” (Alcott 98). Of course the ambiguity of their play remains intact as the Advertisements also include a description of a new “thrilling drama” written and performed by the daughters (Alcott 102). In the very end of the piece there is a short section entitled “Hints” followed by the “Weekly

Report” (Alcott 102). Again, these are places for sisterly criticism, providing conduct suggestions for each of the girls assumedly from one another, but in this instance they refer to one another with their Pickwick Club initials (S.P., A.S., T.T., and N.W.). The

Weekly Report sums up each of the sisters in a single word, using the girls’ actual names for the first time: Meg is marked as “Good,” Jo is scolded as “Bad,” Beth exalted as “Very Good,” and Amy ambiguously labeled as “Middling” (Alcott 102).

Who makes these judgments is not revealed, but regardless they are an example of the guiding maternal principles critical to their development.

The Pickwick Portfolio is an exercise in ambiguity in that it provides both a platform for individual unhampered expression while at the same time representing social constraints. The Portfolio does not function on a merely familial based level as the vast majority of the book does, but actually takes a political stance on examining the outside world. A section entitled “The Public Bereavement” is located in the middle of the piece but is emphasized unlike the others by being framed by two bold lines at beginning and end. The brief section acknowledges a loss in the family, depicting the “sudden and mysterious disappearance” of their cat, Mrs. Snowball Pat

Paw (Alcott 101). Evidently an all-white specimen of beauty whose “graces and virtues endeared her to all hearts,” the cat seems more like a young virtuous woman

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 than a pet (Alcott 101). The author states that “it is feared that some villain, tempted by her charms, basely stole her,” a description which when paired with the image of the innocent and moral young woman, brings up the idea of a seduced woman rather than a stolen animal (Alcott 101). The segment ends in despair and mourning: “we relinquish all hope, tie a black ribbon to her basket, set aside her dish, and weep for her as one lost to us forever” (Alcott 100). The daughters cry for the fallen woman, mourning her as if she were dead and expecting no reunion. In other novels such as

Work and A Modern Mephistopholes, Alcott addresses the fallen woman and exhibits sympathy to her cause which she believes should be extended by society at large. This sympathy is mirrored in a poem following the story of the lost Snowball which in moving and encrypted symbolism adds to the story and enhances the mourning process. The poem, entitled “A Lament for S. B. Pat Paw,” is submitted by a

“sympathizing friend” (Alcott 101). The first stanza is benign as it merely comments upon the sadness of the loss and absence of the missing soul. But the second stanza is strange for it begins not with the loss of the cat, but by pointing to “the little grave where her infant sleeps” (Alcott 101). There has been no previous mention of a child, of a litter of kittens, but suddenly readers are taken to the only grave which is visible, that of the child. There is no possibility to mourn at the mother’s grave for “we know not where it may be” (Alcott 101). All of this gothic imagery of burial is easily related to stories like that of Charlotte Temple, stories of young women who are seduced, die in childbirth, and, buried at a distance, have no centralized location for loved ones to focus their grief. Even in death the only locatable sense of identity for the fallen exists

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 in the mourners, individuals who grieve for the “fair” being who was worthy of

“worship” (Alcott 101). In this underlying political commentary the daughters again learn a maternal lesson, one which is not expressed anywhere else in the text: they are taught to sympathize with a socially unacceptable character. Here it is not only

Marmee’s voice which serves as a guide, but the author’s as well.

DEVELOPING THE INDIVIDUAL HOUSE

The chapter entitled “Castles in the Air,” much like the chapter on the

Pickwick Club, is marked by the sense of a combined inside-outside sort of play.6In this scene the daughters play outside of the house, seemingly free from Marmee’s eye.

Together they walk to a grassy, pine tree-covered area, and it is in this outdoor seclusion that Laurie finds them in a mixture of work and play: Meg sewing, Jo knitting and reading aloud, Beth sorting pinecones, and Amy sketching ferns (Alcott

137). In this beautiful outdoor locale one may only participate if he or she has something to occupy their time, some sort of work. Laurie recognizes their “girl’s game” as another version of a secret society, dubbing it the “Busy Bee Society” because it is a place for work rather than pleasure (Alcott 138).7 Its description makes it a more socially acceptable type of secret society in that it is one focused upon issues considered more appropriate for the nineteenth-century woman. The little hill upon which the daughters sit is an extension of their game of Pilgrim’s Progress, a place which they have dubbed the “Delectable Mountain” because from this hill they “can look far away and see the country where we hope to live some time” (Alcott 138).

Certainly the hill does offer a view of the physical world around them, but more

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 importantly the hill provides them the freedom from which to imagine their futures and to create castles in the air. The dream castles of each of the girls, along with surrogate brother Laurie, are detailed in this chapter. These castles are critical in analyzing the development of the girls into little women, for we are able to examine the ways in which they conform to society and give up their dreams while at the same time retaining some of their personal desires in the real houses they develop. In other words, the mother’s ability to form her daughters can be questioned, and their ability to manipulate social constraints in an effort to retain a sense of self can be identified.

The imaginary castles described in the chapter are some of the most honest examples of female voice which illustrate the least influence from Marmee’s strict socially-conscious guidelines. Laurie, who as a surrogate sister/daughter also comes under Marmee’s influence, dreams of seeing the world and becoming a famous musician rather than joining his grandfather’s business (Alcott 140). Meg’s fantasy images a rich mansion filled with servants, clothing, and luxury, but qualified by the inclusion of “pleasant people” (Alcott 140). Whereas her sisters’ visions seem to be free from thoughts of Marmee, Meg’s is qualifies by her declaration that even in her finery she will “not be idle,” a comment which calls forth her mother’s words and reflects on Meg’s later character development (Alcott 140). The castle dearest to Jo includes horses, books, and becoming a famous writer. In Amy’s imaginary ideal she is a successful artist studying in her beloved Rome. These four castles hinge upon monetary success and renown, both ideals which do not lie in correspondence with

Marmee’s domestic teachings. Beth, however, is much different than her siblings.

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When asked to depict her castle, Beth states: “Mine is to stay at home safe with father and mother, and help take care of the family . . . Since I had my little piano I am perfectly satisfied. I only wish we may all keep well, and be together; nothing else”

(Alcott 140-141). Her wishes are in direct opposition to the others described, exhibiting no desire for adventure, no longings for more than what she already has.

Laurie clearly points out the difference stating that “every one of us, but Beth, wants to be rich and famous, and gorgeous in every respect” [My emphasis.] (Alcott 141).

While the others exhibit an (almost) complete break away from Marmee, Beth remains confined by her. She is so restricted by Marmee’s teachings that she cannot imagine the possibility of subverting those principles. Even from this early point the text points to the fact that imaginative possibility is critical to personal development. In the end

Laurie, Meg, Jo, and Amy find a way to hold onto bits of these imagined castles while still performing according to social norms. Beth never gains this ability. Instead she conforms wholly to the mother, speaking her words and becoming a perfect, dead mimic.

Though the chapter seems to be unrestricted, closer examination does acknowledge the maternal guidance which classifies the text as a whole. The fact that they are in a natural environment calls to mind the image of nature as a feminine realm. They are secluded in a grove of trees, and seen by Laurie at the “heart of this green spot” in a place where Laurie, as a male, must request entrance (Alcott 137).

The spot is safe and picturesque, non-threatening yet shrouded, all terms which seem to parallel the physical house. As previously discussed, Meg and Beth also reinsert the

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 maternal voice into the chapter by taking on Marmee’s words and speaking with her voice. In the latter part of the chapter Meg channels Marmee extensively; she is even described as using her “most maternal tone” (Alcott 142). She lectures Laurie unmercifully regarding familial duty and the necessity of behaving responsibly according to his grandfather’s wishes instead of running off to pursue his music

(Alcott 142). Abruptly recognizing that she has offended Laurie, Meg apologizes and her tone changes from maternal to sisterly as she cries “we feel as if you were our brother, and say just what we think; forgive me” (Alcott 143). Not yet able to demonstrate the maternal force behind the mimicked voice, Meg retreats back into girlhood, and Laurie lovingly responds: “I like to have you tell me my faults, and be sisterly” (Alcott 143). Yet the lecture seems not to equate sisterly action, but rather maternal voice. What Laurie connects together are actually two separate positions:

Meg’s speech is that of a mother; her yearning for Laurie’s approval is that of a sister.

By the end of the chapter there is no question that Marmee has been present all along.

Having professed his deepest desires only four pages before, Laurie has already taken the socially acceptable direction approved by the maternal voice, choosing to “let [his] castle go, and stay with the dear old gentleman” (Alcott 144). The end of the chapter foreshadows the sacrifice each of the characters will have to make, gaining realistic houses framed by social mores and sacrificing unconventional dreams.

FINDING THE “PALACE BEAUTIFUL”

The March daughters’ dreams culminate in the idealized structure of the

“Palace Beautiful,” an image from their Pilgrim’s Progress games which is significant

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 as a physical structure but more importantly as the superlative maternal being. The daughters find out much about themselves and their mother’s domestic goals as they explore other houses, especially the Laurence House which becomes the “Palace

Beautiful” (Alcott 57). As friendship builds between Laurie and the March girls, the

Laurence house becomes an extension of Marmee’s domestic domain. The daughters each find things in the house which they are allowed to freely enjoy: for Meg it is the conservatory, for Jo the library, for Amy the art, and Beth the beautiful grand piano

(Alcott 58). In this house, distanced but not apart from Marmee’s house, their freedom flourishes as some of the small pleasures they desire are provided for. Yet the friendliness is not a one-way path, but rather a mutual exchange. Laurie’s lack of a family, especially a mother, leads him to fall into the March’s lives, and Marmee accepts another child willingly, even speaking to Mr. Laurence about how Laurie is

“studying too hard, and needs young society amusement, and exercise” (Alcott 57). He becomes a member of the family and, due to his feminized portrayal, not a brother but rather a fifth sister. In chapter ten he is even inducted into the Pickwick Society, taking on the role of Sam Weller the “very humble servant of the club” and interpreter of the outside world (Alcott 103). Laurie, also in need of a sense of the domestic and a strong female voice, is greatly shaped by Marmee, so much so that the possibility of his marriage to each of the four sisters is addressed. His inclusion in the family, what

Laurie calls the “promoting of friendly relations between adjoining nations,” serves to extend the maternal realm (Alcott 104). This is merely reified when he and Amy finally marry at the end of the novel (Alcott 426).

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Similarly, Jo’s and later Amy’s involvement with Aunt March’s house, called

Plumfield, also extends the locale over which Marmee presides. Though she may not have extensive control over Plumfield, the home of the wealthy old widowed aunt, she has the ability to go to it in times of need. When the family goes bankrupt, Jo goes to work for Aunt March as her companion (Alcott 38). When Marmee needs the money to travel to her husband’s bedside in Washington, she sends Jo to ask Aunt March

(Alcott 156). When Beth comes down with Scarlett Fever, Amy goes to stay at

Plumfield (Alcott 172). The old woman enhances the development of Meg, Jo, and

Amy. Inadvertently, she even assures Meg’s marriage to the humble John Brooke by protesting it and leading Meg to show her true feelings for the poor man (Alcott 223).

She teaches Jo to bear burdens and punishes her for her non-conformity of manner by taking Amy to Rome with her rather than Jo, but in the end this proves to Jo’s benefit

(Alcott 297). She provides Amy access to Europe which turns her into a true woman and allows her to discover herself (Alcott 390). Some might claim that Aunt March is the true matriarch of the novel, but she does not possess the dependence upon vocalized sympathy and sentiment which Marmee exhibits. She is powerful in that she is the rich, upper-class representative of the girls, providing Meg, Jo, and Amy with the ability to obtain the physical houses which become their individualized adult versions of the “Palace Beautiful,”but she is hindered by her economically-focused visual lens.

By the end of the text, Meg, Jo and Amy attain their individual houses, and become the little women their mother hoped to shape. Each married with a home and

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 life of their own, each happy and contented. Certainly, each is a mimic of their idolized Marmee. In the final pages of “Harvest Time,” the last chapter of the novel, the daughters sitting together with their mother reflect back upon their once harbored dreams as Amy brings up the long ago built castles in the air (Alcott 471). In detail, each of the three remaining sisters outlines the differences in their dreams and their realities. Meg, the first to marry but also the first to give up her dreams of money for a life of poverty, embraces the maternal voice for the entire second half of the text. For

Meg it has not been difficult to mimic Marmee for from the beginning we know that she is an excellent actress. What is hard for Meg is to find uniqueness within the maternal frame. Meg’s morph into the ideal mother requires Marmee’s linguistic guidance because she plays the role of mother almost too well. The scene in which

Meg and Marmee talk is odd, especially because the narrator frames the conversation by stating that the “tie of motherhood made them more one than ever,” again emphasizing that Meg is merely an extension of the mother that the mother continues to shape even after the daughter is a mother herself (Alcott 376). Though Marmee encourages Meg to be a mother and a wife and a representative of the domestic, she inserts again the sense of ambiguity which fills the text by promoting female education of the outside world, a sort of balance between inner and outer spheres. She states:

“Don’t shut yourself up in a bandbox because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take your part in the world’s work, for it all affects you and yours” (Alcott 377). By finding a sense of balance, Meg becomes the mimic of Marmee, an ideal domestic specimen speaking in the maternal voice who can easily

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 claim happiness in her home, husband, and children when reflecting upon the past

(Alcott 472). Amy discovers herself in Europe, due considerably to the help of Laurie who joins her there. In Rome she is a very different young woman than the child readers come to know.Her letters themselves exhibit the division of self which takes hold of her as she travels. Concerned for her family and understanding the privileges money can bring, Amy even considers marrying a man based upon money alone.

Laurie catches her in this move away from the ideal mother and questions her motives, scolding herstating: “I understand—queens of society can’t get on without money, so you mean to make a good match and start in that way? Quite right and proper as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of your mother’s girls” (Alcott 391).

While Amy seems to ignore this advice, she quickly forms a counter-critique of Laurie in which she chastises his selfishness (Alcott 392). For the first time, Amy is truly domestic, encouraging Laurie to be selfless in the way of the ideal woman.

Additionally she and Laurie have discovered that together they balance in the way that

Alcott believes all marriages should. Amy chooses to give up her art for marriage, but has the ability to act benevolently thanks to a rich marriage. Though she speaks in a maternal voice, her voice is tinged with a touch of higher-class ability which provides her greater mobility. Jo, now a mother and running a school for boys, states that her desire for publication and riches appears “selfish, lonely, and cold to me now” (Alcott

472). Though she had been the most opposed to marriage and female social performance, Jo now “sp[eaks] in a maternal way for all mankind” (Alcott 471).

Though the last of the three to fully embrace Marmee’s lessons, Jo sacrifices her

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 ambition for writing and the individuality of her author’s voice and subsumes the maternal language. Even in the final chapter the ambiguities are present: the maternal voice unifies and empowers as much as it confines.

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CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION While the close readings in this essay work to illuminate the dual inscription of feminine freedom and social regulation produced by maternal figures, the dying daughters in Charlotte Temple and Little Women serve as the clearest descriptions of the dilemmas infiltrating mother-daughter relationships. To conclude my essay I will discuss the deaths of Charlotte and Beth, comparing and contrasting them in order to illustrate the skepticism with which the image of the idyllic mother is treated. The dramatic heartbreak of these instances of death exhibit a concern that creating daughters as mimics of their mothers is limiting while at the same time acknowledging a need for some sort of maternal direction.

Death seems to be a foreign element in the initial domestic bliss of Alcott’s

Little Women, but a closer look at Beth pinpoints the foreshadowing of her untimely demise from the early stages of the text. The only items Beth ever longs for are music and nice pianos, and when Mr. Laurence gifts her a beautiful piano “which once belonged to the little granddaughter he lost,” her wants are practically negated (Alcott

61). It as though Beth fills the role of the Laurence girl, becoming not an entity in herself but instead a dead presence. The piano does not give her life, but takes it away for it fulfills her dreams and longings, leaving her only with the ideal of becoming like

Marmee. In “Castles in the Air” as they talk of the Celestial City and ultimately attaining not only personal goals but also heaven, Beth expresses impatience toward reaching a heavenly afterlife, stating that she wants to “fly away at once” (Alcott 139).

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In the same chapter the wording of her only imaginings sounds more like what her mother would say than the ambitions of a young girl: “I only wish we may all keep well, and be together; nothing else,” and it is in their first instance of physical separation from their mother that Beth’s decline begins (Alcott 141).

When the house is shaken by a real “natural phenomenon”—the departure of their mother to attend to her sick husband—, which shakes their steadfast domestic foundation, the degree to which the girls depend upon their mother is most apparent

(Alcott 110). Upon Marmee’s departure, Meg states that it “seems as though half the house was gone,” a phrase which acknowledges Marmee’s parallel to the physical house as well as its emotional connotations (Alcott 163). In her absence the daughters attempt to fill the void she leaves behind, but none heeds Marmee’s words as much as

Beth. She remembers to sit at the window and wave to Meg and Jo as they go off to their jobs, just as Marmee would have done (Alcott 164). As her sisters begin to forget the household affairs and turn focus on themselves, Beth picks up their slack without a complaint (Alcott 169). Though Marmee has only asked that Beth “be faithful to the little home duties,” Beth attempts to mimic her mother wholly, even venturing out to care for the Hummels, the poor German family to whom the daughters gift their

Christmas breakfast at the beginning of the novel (Alcott 163). Her attention to this family leads to Beth’s encounter with death in the form of the dying Hummel baby, and her contraction of scarlet fever (Alcott 171, 176).

It is not until Marmee is sent for that Beth makes her miraculous recovery, and readers, along with the other daughters, are meant to find hope for Beth in the idea of

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 her waking to the sight of her mother’s face (Alcott 183, 192). Yet in the very same chapter, Meg’s relationship with John Brooke is brought under scrutiny for the very first time, ensuring that the girls will begin to grow up, separating and preventing

Beth’s dream from gaining fruition (Alcott 195). She seems healthier in preparing for

Meg’s marriage, taking great pride in Meg’s household affairs as though she approves of her sister’s choice to mimic the domestic (Alcott 233). But Beth grows weaker as each Amy and Jo leave the home, each going out to form themselves rather than to conform to the domestic ideal. When Jo returns home she can immediately see the alterations in Beth, a “transparent look . . . as if the mortal was being slowly refined away” (Alcott 357). When she finally confesses to Jo that she is dying Beth claims she tried to push away the realization but says “when I saw you all so well, and strong, and full of happy plans it was hard to feel that I could never be like you” (Alcott 359).

Unlike her sisters, Beth is a creature who is “piously submissive,” submitting herself willingly and wholly to others’ ideals (Alcott 359).

Rowson’s Charlotte and Alcott’s Beth are clearly extremely different characters: Charlotte has lost her virtue and status in society, attempting to regain her loving mother while Beth has swallowed whole the words of her mother, internalizing her to such a degree that she knows nothing else. Whereas Charlotte chooses a life of clandestine adventure which causes her fall, Beth’s is “uneventful, unambitious, yet full of . . . genuine virtues” (Alcott 400). Both, however, are characters designed to touch the hearts of readers, whether they do so as relatable characters or as child-like characters is questionable. Stern’s claim that Charlotte is “unable to tolerate . . .

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 maternal separation, and . . . she projects the identity of mother onto any available object” can be applied to Beth as well; both characters are young girls deprived of the ability to grow up (Stern 43). What they can do is serve as sentimental images for others. Through their deaths Charlotte and Beth inspire a sort of “collective mourning” in which groups of individuals within the margins of society come together in a symbol of unity to grieve for the lost daughters (Stern 2). In Charlotte Temple it is not real characters that mourn over Charlotte’s death, but instead the group of sentimental readers who have invested themselves in her story. Stern positions this process within a historically centered location as a direct response to contemporary social issues of the new republic. Mourning the loss of Charlotte is a means of mourning the fractured state of society, the separation from the mother country of England, and the divisions yet to come (Stern 67). The social context of Little Women is different, but still fractured by war and social upheaval. The mourning in Alcott’s text takes place in the novel itself, as the daughters return home after Beth’s death. Her death is an awakening for Jo and Amy through which they embrace the possibilities of the domestic practices in which they have been instructed. They seem to recognize the necessity of social conformity. While some critics claim that Charlotte Temple and

Little Women give in to patriarchal norms, both functioning as didactic moral lessons, in this essay I have presented the argument that the inherent duality of the texts makes them more than fictionalized conduct manuals. Stern acknowledges that Charlotte

Temple both warns young women not to separate from their mothers and at the same time recognizes that “separation is the likely fate of most young women, and since

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Texas Tech University, Melissa J Aday, May 2012 patriarchal culture is brutally hostile to females, it is crucial to be educated, rational, pragmatic, and aware” (Stern 59). Similarly Alcott acknowledges the importance for women to develop knowledge of the outside world in order to function within it

(Elbert 142). In the end, the mother-daughter relationships are not terminal nor cyclical, but ambiguous, and it is the dual nature of these ambiguities which should be examined in order to acknowledge the deeper tie between eighteenth and nineteenth- century American cultures influenced by the female patriarchal voice. Both texts represent the mother-daughter relationship in ways that encourage the reader to be skeptical about—though not wholly resistant to—the model the mother provides for the daughter. In other words, both Charlotte Temple and Little Women seem to suggest that readers revise and modify the mother, rather than mimic or dismiss her.

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NOTES 1. In 2010 Studies in American Fiction published a special issue journal dealing specifically dealing with Susanna Rowson entitled Beyond Charlotte Temple. The issue calls for a re-contextualization of Rowson and asks scholars to reimagine her as more than merely the author of Charlotte Temple. The journal examines Rowson’s educational and geography texts, her career as a teacher and actress, and her progressive, even liberating, ideas regarding gender and the early American nation. I have written this essay in response to the information in this journal issue which legitimates my choice to view Rowson’s depictions of the ideal mother with skepticism.

2. Stern herself mentions the connections between her eighteenth-century texts and Alcott’s Little Women. She states, “Alcott’s novel aptly reprises the affective atmosphere of Rowson’s fictional universe and speaks to a recurring maternal homosocial dynamic at the heart of the American sentimental form” (Stern 61).

3. Other texts of the era, such as Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette, also comment upon society’s values concerning money and virtue. Foster creates Sanford who is the character of the “rake” who lacks virtue but is able to socially succeed based upon his “show and equipage,” both money and his ability to manipulate others (Foster 131).

4. Stern argues that the narrator overshadows Lucy Eldridge Temple. She claims that the narrator is actually the powerful matriarch of the tale rather than Charlotte’s biological mother character. I disagree, however, claiming that Lucy Eldridge Temple and the narratorial voice work in cohesion, each reiterating the other, speaking in a single voice and acting in a single powerful maternal body. (Stern 35)

5. Alcott takes up the idea of the mask in one of her greatest pieces of sensational writing, Behind a Mask. The short thriller centers upon Jean Muir, a woman who disguises herself to make her appear beautiful, young, and gentile in order to obtain a position as governess within a wealthy family. Slowly she takes control of the family, eventually marrying the father. She is able to gain power through disguise in a much more twisted and surprising way than the heroine of “The Masked Marriage” in Little Women. She is a femme fatale, and one of many. Madeleine B. Stern’s work on Alcott’s unknown thrillers has opened up an entirely new way of viewing the authorship of Louisa May Alcott (Behind xviii).

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6. The title of this chapter is a marker of Alcott’s upbringing within the American Transcendentalist movement. Taught by Henry David Thoreau, mentored by Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired by Margaret Fuller, many consider Alcott to be the daughter of the transcendentalists (Cheever). The idea of castles in the air is discussed in writings by both Emerson and Thoreau and points to their belief in the metaphysical and in the importance of dreaming of strict realism. Additionally, it is a phrase used by Charles Dickens in several of his novels which greatly influenced Alcott’s writing (Elbert 249).

7. In her 2012 article “Honeybees and Discontented Workers: A Critique of Labor in Louisa May Alcott,” Sarah T. Lahey examines the use of the honeybee image in relationship to Alcott’s political beliefs regarding work and the American work ethic. She discusses in great detail the development of the bee as a symbol for labor and productivity.

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Rust, Marion. “What’s Wrong With “Charlotte Temple?”” The William and Mary Quarterly 60.1 (2003), 99-118. Web. 11 November 2011.

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Bakhtin, Mikhael. From The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach. Ed. Michael McKeon. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 321-353. Print.

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Davidson, Cathy N. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print. ---“The Life and Times of Charlotte Temple: A Biography of a Book.” Reading in America. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1989. Print.

Drexler, Michael and Ed White. “Literary Histories.” A Companion to American Fiction 1780-1865. Shirley Samuels, ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Print.

Eiselein, Gregory and Anne K. Philips, eds. The Louisa May Alcott Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001. Print.

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---. “Illegitimate Children and Bastard Sequels: The Case of Susanna Rowson’s Lucy Temple.” Legacy 24.1 (November 2007.) 1-23. Print.

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Kaplan, E. Ann. Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze. New York: Routledge, 1997. Print.

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Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.

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