Louisa May Alcott’s Father

by Elder M. Lindahl

I recently saw the delightful movie, Little Women, based on Lousia May Alcott’s book of the same title. Both the book and the movie portray the unusual family of Marmee and Father March, close reflections of Lousia’s own parents. Marmee March has an important role raising four daughters, while Father March is, for most of the dramatic action, off to war. True to form in real life, Louisa May Alcott’s father, A. Bronson Alcott, was often away, not on military duty, but administering schools and giving philosophical talks around the country. To an outside observer, he might be thought of as an absentee father.

A New York Times Book Review editor for children’s books, in a Good Morning America interview, called the Alcott family dysfunctional. That word, actually a medical term, has come into fashion as a label to describe disjointed, fractured, malfunctioning social units, particularly, families.

To characterize the Alcott family as dysfunctional is, I believe, not only anachronistic, but also quite inaccurate. A father’s continuous physical presence in a family certainly is desirable, and in Bronson’s case, would have been a positive factor. The question, however, is whether physical presence or absence is the central issue when discussing family stability. There are fathers who are always around, but never really present emotionally and spiritually for their children, or much worse, are there violently. On the other hand, there are fathers who, though they are away for extended periods, are somehow always present in a deeper sense as nurturers. A case can be made to include Bronson Alcott in the latter group. It’s possible for families that lack the usual patterns and normal parental symmetry to function effectively.

Lousia May refers in her writings to her own family in thinly disguised ways. She talks about her father in Little Women as “Father March;” in Transcendental Wild Oats, as “Abel Lamb.” Papa Bronson, though often away giving lectures (“Conversations”) around the country, was always deeply involved in the life of his entire family. His letters and journal reflect warm, sensitive relationships with his four daughters. He wrote in an 1842 letter from England:

My dear Girls,

I think of you all every day and desire to see you all again; Anna, with her beauty-loving eyes and sweet visions of graceful motions and golden hues and all fair and mystic shows and shapes—Louisa, with her quick and ready senses, her agile limbs, and boundless curiosity; her penetrating mind and tear shedding heart alive to all moving breathing things—Elizabeth, with her quiet-loving disposition and serene thoughts her happy gentleness and deep contentment, self-centred [sic] in the depths of her affections—and last, but yet dearest too, in her frolick [sic] joys and impetuous griefs, the little Abba with her fast falling footsteps, her sagacious eye and auburn locks and word-forming tongue with ready lips to help . . .¹

A more devoted, loving, concerned father would be hard to find. He respected his children’s separate identities, knew their personality traits, and understood their intellectual and spiritual development needs.

Bronson’s general pedagogical approach reflects similar concerns for other children. He was a philosopher, teacher, and spiritual confidant. Born on a farm near Wolcott, Connecticut in 1799, he had little formal education, though he was an avid reader. He tried, unsuccessfully, even when young to begin a teaching career, but for a while he had to sell his father’s writing, and later, to peddle tin products, almanacs, goods, silks, trinkets and other things.

Even so, Bronson was to make his mark, not as a Yankee Peddler, but as an educator. He taught for several months in country schools and then at the common school in Cheshire, Connecticut. His life-long passion was to improve schools, to make education inviting rather than threatening. He related to children with courtesy, affection and charm. Rote memorization and birch whips, traditional for that day, were out of the question in Bronson’s approach. He believed that each child has an Eternal soul, packed with inner knowledge and insights which could be teased out by imagination, parables, pantomimes, questions, and conversation. He was called “The American Pestalozzi.” To quote from his letters:

I find that whatever children do themselves is theirs, and besides the intellectual progress, this gives an increase of intellectual power. Originality, at the same time that it marks progress, tends to produce strength and ability to handle more severe trials.

. . . I believe that the trials and experiences of life . . . impart to us our best and most effective lessons. It is in the school of Experience that we are taught almost all we know . . . .

In his Temple School, which he began in 1834 in the Masonic Temple in Boston, his classrooms were arranged artistically. Ideals of beauty, and perfection he believed would bring out tranquility, repose and spiritual qualities in his young students. Representing these ideals were pictures/busts of Jesus, Plato, Socrates, and Milton. Meaningful artwork graced the walls. Attractive desks, clock, hour-glass, mirror, cases, vases, books, and geometrically-shaped pieces furnished the central classroom. No wonder Lousia May has Amy make the following directive in her last will and testament:

To my father, my best pictures, sketches, maps and works of art, including frames. Also my $100, to do what he likes with.²

Bronson believed that Jesus was the best model for the Spiritual life. He talked frequently with his students about the Gospels and the Gospel stories, arranging the four Gospel records in two volumes.³ In his journal for Dec. 15, 1835, he writes:

I see in this little assemblage the germ of a Church that shall bring not only the young but adults to hear the simple words of the Gospel, and find something in them suited to their spiritual growth and joy.

He reminds his daughter, Anna, in a letter dated December 24, 1837:

...Remember the birth night of Jesus, think how beautiful he was, and try to shine in lovely actions as he did. God never had a child that pleased him so well. Be like a kind sister of his...

Some of his ideals for a teacher, in the tradition of Jesus, the Master Teacher, are found in his journal. I mention just a few of the general maxims he recorded:

• To teach, with a reference to Eternity.
• To teach, as an Agent of the Great Instructor.
• To teach, with charitable feelings toward all rational and animal beings.
• To teach, with unremitting solicitude, and faithfulness.
• To teach, that alone which is useful.
• To teach, in imitation of the Savior. Teach by the exercise of Reason.
• To teach by encouragement.
• To teach nothing that pupils can teach themselves. To teach by cultivating the moral and sympathetic feelings and affections.
• Teach by intermingling Questions with Instruction.
• Teach by persuasion, not by coercion.
• To teach, endeavoring to fix things in the understanding rather than words in the memory.
• To teach, as the former of character, and the promoter of the collective happiness of man.
• To teach, depending on Divine blessing for success.

That Bronson had an extraordinary vision of life and being in this world is undeniable. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim Progress, his favorite book from early childhood, provided the life pattern he wished to instill in young people. Louisa May has Marmee say of Father March,

He never loses patience—never doubts or complains—but always hopes, and works, and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him. He helped and comforted me, and showed me that I must try to practice all the virtues . . .⁴

Just the same, Bronson was a speculative, imaginative thinker and planner. He lived so profoundly in a thought world, was so attuned to the intellectual, spiritual, and mystical dimensions of Eternity, that his concern for the realities of this world suffered. One must call him a visionary, a dreamy, saintly mystic. He imagined a society which was based on views that transcended expected social ways and ordinary economic means.

I recently visited again the site of Bronson’s most imaginative, romantic social experiment, Fruitlands Farm, in Harvard, MA, a rural area 20 miles Northwest of Boston, just off Highway 3. With Charles Lane, whom he met in England, Bronson organized a communal farm, a “New Eden,” at the foot of Prospect Hill. Founded on Utopian ideals-kindness to animals, anti-slavery, discipline and education, sharing work and possessions, and so forth-it lasted only from July 4, 1843 to January, 1844. They did not screen the potential residents well, and some weird types—“Consecrated cranks” someone called them—became part of their love colony. Bronson’s optimism and hope for what people might become knew no bounds.

Also, critical in the demise of the group was the argument between Alcott and Lane on the nature of the family. Alcott was firmly committed in love and devotion to a traditional family; Lane, who thought that the traditional family, based on sexual love and companionship, was a roadblock to the good life, joined the Shakers.⁵

Daughter Louisa May describes the six month consociate experiment at Fruitlands in a teasing essay, Transcendental Wild Oats. She puts it right when she says: “They were so busy discussing and defining great duties that they forgot to perform the small ones.” The whole experiment ended as Alcott, deathly ill, was carted off, with his loved ones, to a nearby rental house, saving them all from certain death by freezing and starvation.

Reflecting on that venture in letters some years later, Alcott argues now that the family, rather than collective, utopian farms or such, is the prime social unit:

...The family being the nearest approach to absolute association attained. . . . The ideal Paradise is to come, but must first be embosomed fully in individual members. The family is the unit around which all social endeavors should organize, if we would succeed in educating men for the true ends of existence.

Despite the fruitless Fruitlands adventure and other crises, Bronson and his wife, Abba, held their marriage vows firm. Their family, although it was subjected to material strain and stress due to Bronson’s visionary, impractical nature, was a loving, traditional one, in no sense whatever “dysfunctional.” Louisa May writes that the four girls:

...gave their hearts into their mother’s keeping, their souls into their father’s; and to both parents, who lived and labored so faithfully for them they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death.⁶

The opening lines of Little Women say it all:

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed Meg, looking down at her dress.

“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have lots of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

“We’ve got father and mother and each other, anyhow,” said Beth contentedly from her corner.

It is appropriate that this intimate family, with the exception of May, rests together on Authors Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA. While Louisa was the literary star, as well as the source of financial stability for the family, Father Bronson was the family’s inspiring, molding background force, its polestar.