It's incredible that Abigail May Alcott has so long been ignored. The papers of her husband and daughter Louisa have been in print for generations, while her journals and letters are being published only now. The conventional wisdom was that Abigail’s papers were all burned, as Louisa claimed. Louisa made the same claim about her own private papers, though, and that did not deter scholars from finding and publishing hundreds of pages of Louisa’s surviving letters and journals. In the case of Abigail, her papers were neglected and her importance was obscured. Could it be that as readers of Little Women we felt we already knew the character of Louisa’s real “Marmee”?
A larger phenomenon may be at work here. Women, long excluded from American public life, have largely been neglected in American history.
Think how few female figures in American history were not (at least first) the wives of famous men. In early America a woman was expected to be silent in church and all other public spaces. Her proper realm was private; if she held public power she was seen as a threat to society. Women who challenged this established order were hanged as witches or banished as heretics. This, too, may explain why Abigail May Alcott’s writings have so long been hiding in plain sight -- a few in attic trunks and rural farmhouses, but most of them in university and archival collections.
A larger phenomenon may be at work here. Women, long excluded from American public life, have largely been neglected in American history.
Think how few female figures in American history were not (at least first) the wives of famous men. In early America a woman was expected to be silent in church and all other public spaces. Her proper realm was private; if she held public power she was seen as a threat to society. Women who challenged this established order were hanged as witches or banished as heretics. This, too, may explain why Abigail May Alcott’s writings have so long been hiding in plain sight -- a few in attic trunks and rural farmhouses, but most of them in university and archival collections.
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