Louisa May Alcott’s Gothic Thriller: A Long Fatal Love Chase Analysis

Textual History, Composition, and Mephistophelean Archetypes in Alcott’s Sensational Novel. Compositional History and Textual Rediscovery Written in 1866, rebuffed by early editors but saved by Louisa May Alcott, and bought at auction by Kent Bicknell more than a century later to be published in 1995, this thriller (as its name suggests) is a spicy page turner. The first words of its protagonist, Rosamond Vivian, "I tell you I cannot bear it! I shall do something desperate if this life is not changed soon" (1), presage the difficulties she will have throughout the sad story. The passionate, restless girl is speaking to her grandfather, but she will feel far more trapped when she enters what she thinks is marriage with the visitor who arrives within two pages, Phillip Tempest.

Character Dynamics and Gothic Foreshadowing Again presaging his character, Tempest appears to Rosamond (later Rose) as "the very image" of Mephistopheles, the picture in the drawing room that will appear prominently, too, in the final chapter, when the likeness is unmistakable. He is 35 to her 18. She tells him, "I don’t understand how one can ever tire of pleasure," but he appears to warn her, "There is very little real liberty in the world; even those who seem freest are often the most tightly bound" (8). Tempest, sick and obsessive, is not the only character in chase mode. Rosamond is also desired by a priest, who rejects his vows because of her, and a comte, who is willing to fight for her and almost loses his life in the fight. In the chase she moves through large castles, a theater company, a convent, and a madhouse.

Narrative Allusions, Deception, and Fatal Schemes The life that Rose wishes to flee is fired by books. Had she been heeding the warnings in gothic romances, she might have worried at the "peal of thunder and vivid flash of lightning" (14) that crashed into their introductions. Thinking of such pairs as Hero and Leander or Miranda and Prospero, Rose walks onto Tempest’s yacht, The Circe, and then into a dangerous union with him. The 14-year-old boy, Ippolito, who assists Tempest, tries to warn her, but when Tempest "wins her" in a game with her grandfather, she goes off on the yacht for "the shortest and happiest year" the couple will know. Back at Tempest’s Valrosa, Rose, now wearing opulent, mature clothing and jewels, meets two visitors, Grammont and Willoughby.

Unraveling Deceptions and the Impending Pursuit Readers cannot miss what Rosamond does miss: that Willoughby looks at her oddly, blushes, and says strange things about the boy Ippolito (Lito). In the following chapter (chapter 5), the reader watches as Tempest prepares a death serum (a cholera germ) for Willoughby, who is lured to death in such a way that Tempest is free of blame. He is not without a conscience, however. Just before he learns that his scheme has worked and Willoughby has died, Phillip tells his trusting wife, Rose, "You do not know what I am, and there may come a time when you will cease to hope" (62). That mistrust begins as Rose witnesses Phillip’s cruelty to the boy Lito, whom he casts from the ship. Still she seems to the contemporary reader infuriatingly dense: "She never had been blind to the fact that Tempest was no saint, but like many another woman she hoped to save him through her love" (75).

Escalation of the Chase, Gothic Masks, and Climax There are other signs of danger: Rose sees a mound like a new grave on the Nice property; she sees a woman in profile at the opera (Medea) to which Tempest takes her; she sensed a woman near her as she walked in a grotto and learned of "a tall pale lady, all in black with a veil about her head [who] walks there" (85). Like Jane Eyre in Charlotte Brontë’s novel, she is wakened one night by a noise. Following the shadow of the woman who made the noise, she overhears a conversation between her husband and the woman, Marion. Out of Marion’s mouth she hears, "I gave up all hope of [justice for myself] long ago; I do claim it for this poor girl [who] passes for your wife" (89). So begins the "long fatal chase". Frightened and sick, Rose rushes to the train, on which, unbeknownst to her, the first (and real) Mrs. Tempest is also traveling. Phillip pursues her to Paris.

Denying Marion’s tale of cruelty and exploitation at his hand, he tells her that what she overheard was not true, and he drags her back, seeming to enjoy her spunky spirit. The chase continues, Lito playing an important role in the motivations of Marion, Tempest, and Rose. Rose must hide behind a number of masks and change her name. The last is particularly gothic as the transformation depends on her finding a dead woman’s body and leaving her own name on the corpse.

Even at the convent to which she flees under an assumed identity, she is not safe. When she admits during confession—to the astonishment of the reader—that she still loves Tempest and wishes to save his soul, the grate in the confession booth opens, and Phillip’s laughing face appears. "Like a bird held by the terrible fascination of a serpent’s eye, Rosamond knelt motionless and mute, gazing at that familiar face as if it were a Gorgon’s head which had turned her to stone" (130). Tempest tells Rose that she may go where she wishes on two conditions: that she must not die or marry. He likes the chase, he tells her, so he will pursue her everywhere. The chase continues, as Rose meets Natalie and her father, the comte de Luneville, who woos Rose. That plan for escape is foiled too. En route to her wedding with the comte, she spies Tempest’s lackey, Baptiste, and in the crowd at the wedding is Tempest, who tells her she has disobeyed him. She returns, "You have no right to forbid me anything". "Perhaps not," he says, "but I have the power" (155). Their debate is spirited, but when he threatens to kill the comte, Rose argues and negotiates. Tempest will allow her freedom until he can procure a divorce and actually marry Rose.

In the climax of the book, Rose intercedes between the comte and Tempest and receives a bullet wound in her side. There is more—a madhouse, a boat ride, and dizzying plot twists—before Phillip falls (not quite to his death) over a steep path. Rosamond and Ignatius go to the real Mrs. Tempest, living now in comfort with her son, Lito, but the unrelenting Phillip appears again. Lito hides in the closet. He locks Rosamond in a boat that is damaged in a storm as he takes laudanum and sleeps away in his own Circe. When Phillip returns to the old grandfather’s house where he first saw Rosamond, he finds her again—this time dead. For all the adventures the wicked people encountered, the one good character dies. With Ignatius and Tempest around her, loving her still, Rosamond’s body is laid out on a sofa with her grandfather. While Tempest mourns, his image is reflected in the mirror; as in the first chapter, that reflection resembles Mephistopheles.

For Discussion or Writing
1st question: Review the Mephistopheles tale in the Faustian legend. Why does such a figure frame this novel?

2nd question: This novel was rejected for publication in its own day. If it had not been by the famous Louisa May Alcott, would it have been published in our own day? Under what advertising campaign?

3rd question: The first (the real) Mrs. Tempest has quite a story of her own. What do you make of her motivations?