“Impertinent Curiosity:” Author of Little Women Claimed to Hate Celebrity Gawking

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)

Courtesy of Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-53264

Alcott wrote in her diary at the age of thirteen that she longed to be famous. She had received from her older sister a photograph of Swedish singer Jenny Lind and believed that fame must have made Lind the happiest woman in the world.

Alcott published Little Women about twenty years later and became as much a celebrity as Lind. Fans sent her bags of mail. They showed up at the family home Orchard House and grabbed souvenirs from her yard as well as her writing desk. Celebrity gawkers followed her in the streets and begged her for hugs and kisses. Fans started Little Women Clubs, treasured her photograph, and felt entitled to demand that she publish more and that she marry her characters according to their wishes.

Artists drew her as she picked fruit in the orchard and journalists tried to interview her for their articles. In Jo’s Boys, Alcott explained how intrusive a reporter could be, walking in the door, asking questions, and all the while gathering what information he could, “bound to see something and bag a fact if he died in the attempt.” The writers then produced articles that made it seem they were Alcott’s dear friend and confidant. A Boston Herald reporter assured readers that Alcott was “whole-souled, generous, hearty, and unpretending” as well as authentic: “author and woman are one; and to know her books is to know Miss Alcott.”

Alcott appreciated that fame allowed her and her family to escape poverty, but in her journal she called the celebrity treatment “impertinent curiosity.” She and her three sisters earned wages at a young age to help her educated but economically unsuccessful parents make ends meet. Alcott published her first book in 1849. She steadily increased her reputation and payments for her work during the 1850s. Alcott started writing for Atlantic Monthly in 1860 and reached a wide audience with the publication of the letters she sent home while serving as a nurse in the Civil War. Little Women, published in 1868, made her a star. Now that she had the fame she sought, she declared a dislike of the attention and showed her disdain any way she could.

Orchard House

Courtesy of Library of Congress, LC-DIG-stereo-1s13243

Alcott deceived visitors to Orchard House by posing as a maid and wanted to douse others with water from the garden hose. She escaped to the woods, Boston, and even Europe to avoid celebrity gawkers. Alcott ignored most notes from her fans; her sister Anna answered some of them. When her mother forwarded the fan mail to her, Alcott asked her to stop sending her letters from “cracked girls.” She refused to marry Jo to Laurie in the second volume of Little Women, as her fans begged her to. Instead, Alcott played a joke on them by making a “funny match” between Jo and Mr. Bhaer. She realized it was going to be an unpopular plot twist but she wrote to a friend that she eagerly anticipated “wrath to be poured upon my head.”

Alcott engaged with some select fans though. When five sisters in Pennsylvania asked her in 1872 to subscribe to the newspaper they had started, Alcott not only agreed but offered to contribute stories for free. She also seems to have enjoyed her visit to Vassar College in 1875 for the opening of an art gallery. Alcott denied the students’ call for a speech but agreed to stand in a prominent spot and slowly turn so they could get a good long look at her. She told this story of “revolving” and wrote in her journal that she would like to return to the campus even though the students smothered her with kisses and autograph requests. Maybe she relished the attention a bit more than she liked to admit.

Sources

Alcott, Louisa May. Jo’s Boys, and How They Turned Out. New York: Roberts Brothers, 1886.

Cheney, Ednah, ed. Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1919.
https://books.google.com/books?id=_FU-6_ocQxkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22she's+come%22+Jenny+Lind&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjOz9yEtqfgAhUQ2qwKHTSBBOo4FBDoAQhcMAk#v=onepage&q=%22she's%20come%22%20Jenny%20Lind&f=false.

“Louisa M. Alcott.” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 21, 1880, 11. (reprinted from Boston Herald)
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84031492/1880-05-21/ed-1/seq-11/#date1=1868&index=9&date2=1888&words=Alcott+ALCOTT+LOUISA+Louisa&searchType=basic&sequence=0&sort=date&state=&rows=20&proxtext=%22louisa+alcott%22&y=13&x=13&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=67

“Odds and Ends.” Watertown (WI) Republican, Feb. 2, 1876, 6. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85033295/1876-02-02/ed-1/seq-6/#date1=1868&index=17&date2=1888&words=Alcott+Louisa+may&searchType=basic&sequence=0&sort=date&state=&rows=20&proxtext=%22louisa+may+alcott%22&y=11&x=13&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=2.

Reisen, Harriet. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010.

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