Thesis (M.A.)--Villanova University, 2009. / English Dept. Includes bibliographical references.

This project analyzes the ways that Louis May Alcott portrays authors in several texts, including Hospital Sketches (1863), "Enigmas" (1864), "Psyche's Art" (1868), Little Women (1868), A Modern Mephistopheles (1877), and Diana and Persis (1878). An examination of prevailing contemporary theories of authorship reveals that Alcott's interest in authorship (as shown through her experiences as a writer and the author figures she depicts within her writing) cannot be adequately analyzed under any of the existing theoretical frameworks because the theories neglect to consider markers of racial, sexual, cultural, and class-based difference. Being a female author in nineteenth-century America was, for Alcott, a preoccupation. Thus much of her writing features representations of authors. For Alcott, as well as many of her female contemporaries, the question "What does it mean to be an author?" cannot be considered without also asking, "What does it mean to be a woman?" and "How can an author be represented in a text?" Alcott's treatment of these questions in her writing was her attempt to create a dialogue between herself, other writers, and her reading public. By studying Alcott's author figures, I advance a model of authorship that highlights issues of gender and multiplicity; in this way my work has applications to other authors who have been excluded by normative definitions of authorship. The concept of "mutable authorship," a model that more accurately incorporates Alcott's treatment of authorship, is the product of several different literary, historical, and feminist theoretical lenses. This dissertation works through the different structuring figures that Alcott uses to represent the author, beginning with the semi-autobiographical first-person narrator and moving to the more metaphorical figures of the artist and the performer. The discussion culminates with the exploration of adaptation and collaboration in the three Hollywood feature films of Alcott's best-known work, Little Women, and several recent texts that respond directly to Alcott's work.

My dissertation is a historicist examination of the circulatory relationship among popular fiction, theatre, and related non–fiction texts in mid–nineteenth–century America. Though previous critics have acknowledged interactions between mid–century theatre and print, none have fully fleshed out the performative contexts or social consequences of this interplay. In contrast, I contend that the narrative and visual exchanges between theatre and literature are crucial to deciphering how different social classes formed and distinguished themselves. My central claim is that cultural arbiters from the print world (including activist authors and advice–text writers) and from the public amusement realm (entrepreneurial theatre producers and melodrama playwrights) poached each other's work in order to capitalize on preexisting consumer communities. By cultivating socially homogenous audiences, these arbiters became vital contributors to the consolidation of self–conscious, class–based identities in nineteenth–century America. Chapter One examines George Lippard's urban–crime novel The Quaker City; or The Monks of Monk Hall (1844). In it, I argue that Lippard reproduces apocalyptic scenes of disaster familiar to readers from spectacle–centric theatrical melodramas in order to unify a diverse working class. Chapter Two contends that W.H. Smith's temperance melodrama The Drunkard (1844) co–opts the real–life speeches of working–class temperance lecturers and reframes them as a middle–class landlord's story of redemption; through featuring this popular show at their curiosity museum theatres, proprietors Moses Kimball and P.T. Barnum established the nation's first theatrical spaces solely for middle–class audiences. Chapter Three claims that the 1860s proliferation of home theatrical guidebooks—which detailed how to construct makeshift stages, simulate special effects, and adapt well–known stage dramas—offered the emergent middle classes a viable substitute for commercial theatergoing and a key outlet to reinforce their social status. My final chapter studies Louisa May Alcott's sensation novella Behind a Mask; or, A Woman's Power (1866), a work which engages the dissertation's collective themes of theatricality, social class, and private space. By depicting a professional actress utilizing her theatrical skills to infiltrate an aristocratic family, Alcott presents the private estate as the ideal venue to gain social status and reveals performance as a critical means for upward mobility.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka hur karaktären Amy March porträtterats i olikaadaptioner av Little Women. Utifrån Eders karaktärsklocka med ett fokus på fiktiv existensoch symptom analyseras fyra versioner, de från 1933, 1949, 1994 och 2019. Genom att utgåfrån ett genusperspektiv undersöks även hur tiden varje adaption gjorts under formatkaraktären. Resultatet av analysen visar att de två tidigare adaptionerna följer merkonventionella genrekonventioner där Jo står i fokus. De två senare adaptionerna ger merplats åt Amy och ger en mer nyanserad bild av karaktären. Dessutom för de uppmärksamhetentill den verklighet som kvinnor levde i under 1800-talet och har tydliga feministiska budskap.

This dissertation examines how Concord, Massachusetts became a heritage town in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Concord-based authors (including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott) at once contributed to Concord’s attractiveness as a location and took advantage of the growing reputation and popularity of the town as a tourist site. Their writings, rooted in Concord, drew attention to the town and to themselves as authors within it, while also elevating the stature of American literature. Linking literature and site-building, Concordians encouraged contemporaneous sightseeing in a curated landscape. This sets the origins of tourism and site-building in Concord earlier than standard academic narratives of Progressive Era preservation in New England. The primary contribution of this interdisciplinary study is to trace the ways in which collective memory was fashioned for an audience of literary “arm-chair travellers” and then employed to endow private houses with literary and historical importance to national heritage, as public locations to be visited and preserved in Concord’s landscape. This work traces the development of spiritualized “places” in Concord from Revolutionary War monument-building to Emerson’s literary community investing the landscape with poetic associations, Hawthorne’s engagement of tourism as an appeal to readers, and George William Curtis’s efforts to market Concord as a national literary retreat. It further examines Thoreau’s literary career in relation to his interest in local history, tourism, and museum-building in his hometown. Finally, the popularity of Alcott’s Little Women boosted tourism in Concord, and the increase of visitors coincided with projects to memorialize Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Transcendentalist movement in the landscape. These efforts culminated in the development of guide books and organized tours for visitors, and the emergence of a local souvenir industry. The study concludes with the institutionalization of historic house museums in the early twentieth century.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Dennis Moore, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Program in American and Florida Studies. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 17, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 51 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

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Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women in 1868 and the novel has been loved and praised ever since. Throughout the years, Jo March is the character that has been viewed as the heart of the novel, celebrated both as a tomboy and a feminist icon. In the novel, she is initially portrayed with gender-nonconforming traits, with strong ambitions of becoming a writer, and she longs for independence rather than to conform to the norms of femininity prevalent in the 19th century. However, Jo’s character arc takes a surprising turn when she marries Mr. Bhaer in the end, leaving her extensive declarations of independence behind. This essay argues that there is a question of literary ambiguity in the breakdown of Jo’s character arc, questioning the authenticity in her declared happiness at the end. It furthermore offers a psychological analysis of Jo March’s character arc by using Sigmund Freud’s concept of sublimation to examine Jo’s struggle with anger and internal conflicts, revealing that she redirects her excessive emotions into creative processes of writing and ultimately into marriage. The analysis further examines the discrepancy in the portrayal of Jo at the beginning of the novel and at the end, arguing for the “happy” ending as unconvincing and unresolved. Through close readings of the novel with support from Freud’s concept of sublimation, the essay reveals unresolved tensions withing her character that questions the conventional interpretation of Jo’s journey from tomboy to traditional woman. Never before has the character Jo March been analyzed through a psychoanalytic perspective, making this essay contributing to a more extensive dialogue on the unresolved nature of her story.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to compare two American novel suites for young women, Louisa May Alcott‟s Little Women and Good Wives to Ann Brashares series of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The social status of women and children in the US during the 19th century is analyzed and compared historically and literary with the situation 130 years later.The main question is, what differences exist in the books and is there a connection between the changes in society and literature?The method of this Master Thesis is to make a comparative narratological analysis placed in a historical context.The result shows that the multiple character remains and enhances the identification process. Motherhood in the works of Alcott is prominent, whereas in the works of Brashares, sisterhood replaces motherhood.In Alcott‟s US during the 19th century, Christian faith was in the foreground. The goal for girls was the holy matrimony, followed by the sanctuary of heaven. Brashares depicts, in the 21st century, self-fulfilment to be aspired on earth.The strength of Alcott‟s portrayed sisterhood is weakened when marriage is consumed. In Brashares works, the love relationships are no longer the sole purpose of life and consequently not a competitor to the sisterly friendship.