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.

This thesis analyzes the role of performativity within the domestic novel during antebellum America; specifically, the ways in which E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand and Louisa May Alcott’s Behind a Mask subverted cultural and societal norms by exploring the performative nature of class and gender. Through their respective protagonists, the two authors sought to question the power dynamics of an overwhelmingly patriarchal society. By granting their protagonists agency through performance, Southworth and Alcott explored the ways in which women might alter existing power structures to reject the restrictions gender essentialism placed upon antebellum women, and to advocate for women’s rights, such as economic stability and class mobility.

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Women authors in mid to late nineteenth century American society were unafraid to shed the old domestic ideology and set new examples for women outside of racial and gender spheres. This essay focuses on the ways in which Elizabeth Stoddard's The Morgesons, Louisa May Alcott's Behind a Mask, and Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House represent the function of fashion and attire in literature. Each author encourages readers to examine dress in a way that defies the typical domestic ideology of nineteenth century America. I want my readers to understand the role of fashion in literature as I progress through each work and ultimately show how each female author and protagonist set a new example for womanhood through their fashion choices.

Thesis (M.A.)--James Madison University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is focused on the representation and characterization of female characters in the novel The Deerslayer from The Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy from James Fenimore Cooper in contrast to the concept of female characters in the book from Louisa May Alcott Little Women. There is analyzed images of female fictional heroines living in the American wilderness in the years 1740-1805, and these findings are compared with the representation of women in the 19th century domestic novel Little Women. The way of creating female characters is analyzed in relation to the other characters, the space in which they live, the storyline and contemporary values. This analysis should in a literary historical aspect reveal how much the role of a woman becomes a mere fulfillment of a simplified scheme and how it also has many meanings of full-fledged components in literary work. The author of this thesis also focuses on the influence of the environment on the formation of female characters and tracks their role not only in American novels but also in the society. Key words woman, gender, novel, cult of True Womenhood, James Fenimore Cooper, Louise May Alcott, topoi of the forest, home, american wildernes

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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.