Work and Domestic Fiction: Alcott’s Evolution

Domestic Sequels and Female Labor Realities in Alcott’s Fiction. Literary Continuations of the March Family Between Little Women and Work, Louisa May Alcott wrote other domestic novels for young people, cashing in on the success of her "dull" book. Each has its own charms. Several are continuations of the March family: Little Men (1871) follows Jo’s teaching at Plumfield; Jo’s Boys (1886) follows the boys and their lady friends and spouses as they grow up. An Old-Fashioned Girl (1870) follows "a country mouse and a city mouse," Polly and Fanny—and their friends—through six years of travels, education, parties, and love affairs.

Societal Lifestyles and Dedication to Working Women There were others as well (270 in all). As with Little Women, in An Old-Fashioned Girl, Alcott presents alternative lifestyles; some succumb to the "matrimonial epidemic"; some have other "talents". An Old-Fashioned Girl includes stories from the May side of the family to please her mother. However, it was the book she wrote twice—once as Success and, in 1873, as Work—that she dedicated to her mother, "whose life has been a long labor of love". The book itself is a labor of love to working women in Victorian America; it was so accurate that there is a story of a poor working woman who appeared on Alcott’s doorstep to ask for a job—and to investigate the sincerity of the creator of Christie Devon. It was real. By the end of the novel Christie would have the praise she so desired. Working in a hospital as Alcott had a decade before, she says, "I never discovered what an accomplished woman I was till I came here" (385). Along with success—finally—in the workforce, she has a husband, though he dies just before the book’s last page, freeing her to enter a women’s community whose business it is to help others.

Picaresque Structure and Narrative Dynamics in Work. Episodic Struggles and Independence Declarations The road toward such rewards is rocky and varied. Although other Alcott novels have been episodic, this one might be called "picaresque". Each chapter almost stands alone as a separate story with characters who do not intersect the action of other chapters; nor is there a consistent movement from worst to best, though the first jobs are pretty bad and the last is indeed a fine resolution and a reward.

Autobiographical Reflections and Psychological Struggles As is Alcott’s pattern, the first line is key to the rest: "Aunt Betsey, there’s going to be a new Declaration of Independence" (2). At age 20, Christie is ready to act like "a boy" and take off before her uncle asks her to leave. Toward the end of that first chapter, after a long talk with her aunt, Christie has a long night of the soul. She thinks of her mother, "who had borne the commonplace life of home till she could bear it no longer" (9), had met, married, and, soon after Christie’s birth, died. Christie looks back on herself as the child who "had tried to appease [a] hunger [for love] in many ways" (9). She considers her sad and desperate alternatives if she does not leave, so, knowing that "she is moderately endowed with talents" (8), she does.

Transitions in Domestic and Professional Employment By the second chapter she has found employment with a Mrs. Stuart, who is as imperious as "Victoria . . . restoring a granted petition" (14). In spite of the advice of the black cook, Christie declares, "I won’t submit" (16). Christie unwisely laughs at her new employers, is fired, but is undiscouraged. She lives at the appropriately named Mrs. Flint’s and begins to make a career on the stage. In spite of her modest success as an actor, Christie soon turns up as a governess in the Saltonstall family. When her employer offers Christie an unwelcome proposition, she becomes a companion in the home of "a worn out child" named Helen.

Existential Crises and Financial Autonomy And so Christie struggles through the next six chapters. Almost halfway through the book she finds it possible to send $100 to her aunt and uncle. It is hard to separate Christie’s joys from those of Alcott, although some of the problems may have been complete fiction. After many disappointments, she is ready to end her life; saved at the last minute by her friend Rachel, Christie says, "I have been ill; I worked too hard; I’m not myself tonight; I owe money. People disappoint and worry me" (160). We see that Rachel saved Christie’s life physically and with moral support.

Transcendentalist Influences and Community Building. Spiritual Guidance and Transcendental Prototypes Rachel’s kindness mitigates the grimness, as does her friendship with a great man, Mrs. Wilkins’s minister, Mr. Power, modeled perhaps on the Alcott family friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. He especially seeks out Christie and asks her to take on important work: to help the Sterling family. Much of the rest of the book concerns her "work" for David and Mrs. Sterling. By the end of the book, Christie’s battle for independence, announced at the beginning, has been won, and, although Christie loses David, she has gained a meaningful life. The book could just as easily have been printed under its original title, Success, for that is what the life of Christie Devon, standing in for her hardworking and courageous creator, achieved.

For Discussion or Writing
1st point: Beginning in the second chapter Christie displays some of the same attitudes Alcott did in Hospital Sketches. Trace such comments and discuss what they reflect about life in the last decades of the 19th century.
2nd point: Read more about Emerson to see how closely Christie has borrowed from her friendship and from the works of this by-then fading transcendentalist.
3rd point: Is this novel closer to Alcott’s "feminist" thrillers or the domestic March family fiction?