Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father

Author: John Matteson
Published: 2007-08-20

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A lively tone accents facts and insights
During Louisa May Alcott's youth her father was a contemporary of Emerson and Thoreau, and desired perfection for his family and life. Louisa challenged him with her moodiness and her longing for fame and wealth. Their stormy yet loving relationship is probed in EDEN'S OUTCASTS, a pick for both general-interest libraries strong in biography and for literary collections seeking a complete set of perspectives on writer Louisa May Alcott's influences and life. A lively tone accents facts and insights.

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Only for those that got an A in college english
I bought this book because it won a Pulitzer prize. The voters for the Pulitzer must be in the upper echelon of literary taste because I found it dry, slow, and horribly uneventful. I can understand how some people would enjoy this book because the author, John Matteson, is a very good writer. I mean good writer in the sense that he could write SAT questions for the English portion of the test.

I was disappointed in this book because I had just finished reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls which tells a true story of her interesting life. I was expecting something similar I suppose.

I was trying to think of people who might enjoy this book. Perhaps people that scored in the high 1500's on SAT tests. Definitely someone who is interested on Bronson Alcott's friends Thoreau and other philosophers.

Genealogy

Eden's Outcasts explores the life of the amazing Alcott family which was the model for Little Women
Eden's Outcast is a literary biography by John Matteson who is a PH.D English professor from John Jay School of Law in New York. It is a work which has won kudos for Matteson as well as a Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) was born in Connecticut. Alcott tried his hand at teaching school, writing and spending a few years as a New England pedlar in the Southern United States. Alcott was not a college man but read widely and deeply. He was much influenced by the writings of Thomas Carlyle and the transcendentalists luminaries of Massachusetts.
Alcott traveled to England where he met Carlyle and visited a school based on the teaching methods he had used at Temple School in Boston.
He wed a wonderful woman called Abba and raised one of the great American families. Bronson is the model used by Louisa May for Mr. March in the Little Women novel. He was a dreamy, eccentric who was skilled at building and planting. He was a vegetarian and eschewed the confines of organized religion though he did believe in God. He would meet with four American presidents during his long and productive career. Bronson sereved as supt. of the Concord schools for a number of years; gave "conversational talks" throughout the nation and was well known in his day. He hobnobed with the literary nobs of Concord. Bronson Alcott was Ralph Waldo Emerson's best friend; lived next door to Nathaniel Hawthorne; often visited Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and others in the transcendentalists coterie of intellectuals.
Bronson was a strong abolitionist usuing his home as a stop of the underground railroad. He also supported womens rights and was a gentle soul. His sanity was frail. Patriarch Bronson was often beset by psychological demons. He was moody but firm in his deep devotion to his wife Abba and their daughters
Louisa May (1832-1888) was born on her father's 33rd birthday. She would die in 1888 on the same day as he was buried. She was a tomboy loving to run and climb trees. Louisa May loved her siblings: Anne the eldest as well as May the artist (who would die in Paris giving birth leading to Louisa's raising of her child) and Elizabeth Sewell who died youg (as Beth did in Little Women). Her lifetime goal was to win the approvcal of her father and care for her family by brining in money needed to keep them out of debt. Times were often hard in the Alcott family as they struggled and strived for security.
Louisa May never married and had only a short "romance" with a young Polish patriot while touring Europe at the age of 30. She was serving as a traveling companion to a rich young lady using the experience to draw her character of Laurie in Little Women.
Louisa May served as a nurse volunteer in Washington D.C. for seven months during the Civil War. During this time she became ill. The mercury used in her recovery would destroy her health leading to an early death. Louisa would write for as many as 14 hours at a stretch churning out stories for the periodicals of the day. In 1868 she became famous with her classic girl's classic "Little Women." She also wrote such bestsellers as "Little Men": "Jo's Boys"; "Eight Cousins"; "Moods" and
"Work>" During her writing frenzy she would work without rest. She called these times her descent into the "vortex." She was strong willed and proper. She gave up a married life to care for her ailing parents and her sister May's orphan child.
Matteson has taken the quiet life of a literary family and made it fascinating reading. It is as if we are in the parlor and the orchard with the Alcotts. The family was usually poor; often had to move to new homes and were at the whim of the eccentric Bronson. Louise May wrote with the keen eye of a born writer as she chronicled the failed utopian experimental farm "Fruitlands" founded by her father and English associates.
If I had to visit one family in Concord during the days when the transcendentalist movement was going strong I would select the penurious, proud and strong Alcotts!
In the last few years we have seen a trend to dual biography. Examples include: Churchill and FDR; Churchill and Hitler: Whitman and Lincoln; Fredrick Douglass and Lincoln; Hiter and Stalin to name a few, This dual look at past lives is a difficult art to master. Matteson has done his work well using the diaries of the Alcotts and first person accounts of t their peers. This book is an excellent work which will be one of the sine qua non tomes one turns to in a study of Louise May Alcott and her long literary career. Matteson's exploration of the family dynamics of a nineteenth century family of brilliant individuals is also done with insight and sympathy.

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Interesting Biography!
For those of you who loved LITTLE WOMEN, it is most interesting to read about the author's actual relationship with her family, most particularly with her father. It is quickly apparent that Ms. Alcott has liberally sprinkled all of her novels with stories from her own unbringing, but paints her fictional family's life with an exceedingly idealistic brush. Mr. Matteson has researched this family thoroughly and builds a convincing narrative. He is obviously invested in accurately describing each member, rather than swaying or prejudicing his audience toward any point of view.

Louisa's father was a transendentalist who was friends with the likes of Thoreau. As an educator, he attempted to raise his girls by his own philosophies on molding children. Louisa never quite fit into his model which caused a conflictual, although loving, relationship between the two. For most of his life he would have been considered a "failure" in terms of supporting his family - financially and emotionally.

The children, (primarily Louisa) were expected to support the family. It appears that she did so willingly, despite the toll that it took on her health and well-being. While Louisa craved Mr. Alcott's approval, she only seemed to fully receive it after experiencing dehabilitating health problems. Ironically, in his later years Mr. Alcott unexpectedly produced a best-selling book, and finally enjoyed the idea of two famous authors in the family.

I could go on and on about their relationship, but the book does a far superior job of it. I found it especially interesting to see how Ms. Alcott reshaped each of her family member's fictional lives, and relationships with one another, in her novels. As the biographer, Mr. Matteson does a masterful job of pointing out how she reshaped and recolored their shared history in almost an "unconsciously" healing manner.

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A Unique Biography of a Unique Family

Thank you to Jim Matteson for reading every scrap the Alcotts left behind and digesting it into this wonderful dual biography.

I was a young reader of Little Women (maybe 10 times) and the rest of the series. Later as an adult, I never quite put together the pieces the family. Now I know how the Alcotts fit in with Emerson and Thoreau, the role of Fruitlands in the life of the Alcotts and how it was the Amy came to marry Laurie.

The above paragraph could sound flip without the understanding of how Louisa's fiction was a byproduct of both her father's idealism and his inability to support his family. Louisa would be his standard bearer, but she would at all costs, support the family.

Bronson's philosophy of education was ahead of his time. While it can be debated whether his career ending publications served the cause, it is clear, it did not serve the family well. Followed by a second public humiliation in the touted but failed Fruitlands experiment, you can imagine the grief of a former idealist with a young family to feed.

How many father's careers have been rescued by their children... and in the 19th century... any by their daughters? In the case of the Alcotts, it is more than a career redeemed, it is also values and virtues.

Matteson gives a wonderfully readable dual biography. He sticks with his thesis. It's good that he resisted the temptation to delve into the other interesting personalities of the time. Just like when I first read Little Women, I didn't want this book to end.

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